Landing pages are important for digital marketing success. They are designed to attract visitors and convert them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.
To create a strong landing page that entices customers, follow these five design tips:
- Use a clear and direct headline that tells visitors what you’re offering
- Create a subheadline that elaborates on your headline and further explains your offer
- Use beautiful and Eye-catching images that are relevant to your offer
- Use a clear and concise CTA (call to action) button that tells visitors what you want them to do
- Use a strong and convincing testimonial from a satisfied customer
Wait a Minute — What is a Landing Page?
First, it is beneficial to understand the purpose of a landing page and why you might need one. A landing page is a page that is designed to convert visitors into leads or customers. It typically has a form that collects information from the visitor in exchange for something of value, such as a free ebook or course.
A landing page is a page on a website that is designed for marketing or advertising a product or service. The term “landing page” comes from the fact that this is the page that a visitor “lands” on when they are sent to the site for a specific purpose.
This means that a landing page has a unique call-to-action button.
An excellent landing page has fields for your name and email address, and a CTA button.
Digital marketers often create landing pages when they want people to arrive at a specific page on their website. A landing page is a common destination for Google pay-per-click ads and Facebook ads.
Let’s work through an example together to get a better understanding.
If you are a dentist and want to run a Facebook ad for a teeth whitening campaign you are running for the week, you would want to link that ad to a landing page. On that page, visitors can quickly schedule their appointment and possibly even pay ahead of time. This makes it easy for them to take advantage of your discount.
The CTA tells them to schedule an appointment.
The goal of a landing page is to get people to take a specific action, such as scheduling a time or buying a product. Your call-to-action (CTA) can be anything you want it to be, including submitting an email address to join a mailing list.
You want the reader to take action, without complication.
You Can Use Landing Pages However You Like!
In other words, a landing page is not only for paid campaigns, but also for free campaigns.
Many digital marketers are willing to spend money on ads because they are often effective.
Now that you know what a landing page is and what it’s used for, you may be eager to create one of your own. However, it’s not that easy.
When someone arrives on your landing page, they should want to do the thing that you want them to do.
Many digital marketers create landing pages, generate a lot of traffic through ads, and become frustrated because even though they received the traffic, very few people converted.
What steps to take before creating a landing page?
A landing page is a web page that is specifically designed for a prospect to land on. The user is referred to this page by clicking on a CTA in an email, an ad, or through another channel.
The purpose of creating an effective landing page is to increase a conversion rate, whether that means generating more leads, direct sales, downloads, or signups. By directing traffic from your ad to a landing page that’s been specifically designed for your ad campaign, you can increase the chances that visitors will take the desired action.
Before you start designing your landing page, you need to develop a strategy to make sure you’re targeting the right audience, keywords, and goal.
- Study goals:
Before you write, design, and build your landing page, start with a solid strategy by answering these crucial questions:
- Who is my target audience?
- What are the campaign goals?
- What do visitors need from your landing page?
- How will visitors get to your landing page?
These questions will help you understand why you are creating your landing page.
- Research your audience:
Understanding what kind of visitors you want to attract to your landing page will help you better tailor the content. Your target audience will influence different aspects of your campaign, including:
- What kind of CTA you should use
- The description you should provide
- Whether you should add special elements, like images or videos
- Your tone, approach, and your brand’s look and feel
Even if you think you know who your buyer persona is, it’s still a good idea to use tools to check your website audience so you can ensure your persona is accurate. Such tools as Competitive Research help you easily visualize valuable information on your location, language, traffic geography, and many other valuable data points.
- Find the right keywords:
Keywords are important to consider when creating any type of content because they are how people search for information online. If you want your content to be found, include keywords that are relevant to what you’re offering. Selecting the right keywords can result in more traffic and conversions.
Before starting a campaign, research the ads that come up for your target keywords. This will give you insight into your target audience’s needs and allow you to see how your competitors are meeting those needs.
- Optimize your website for mobile:
According to research, 54.8% of traffic worldwide is from mobile devices. This means that your landing page should be responsive to the dimensions of a smartphone or tablet so that users don’t have to pinch or zoom.
Make sure that your text, CTA buttons, videos, and images always fit the screen, no matter the size or orientation of the device. Remember to also consider things like loading speed, accessibility, and other important aspects of mobile optimization.
What are the key features of a landing page?
The design of your landing page is important for how successful it is and how well it can convert visitors.
The most important thing for your landing page to do is to make it easy for visitors to convert. Make sure that every element on the page helps to achieve that goal, whether it’s filling out a form, making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or anything else.
- Consistent branding & color: Color psychology can be applied to your brand logo, website, or blog, but also to landing pages. When it comes to a landing page, you may be better off selecting lighter, muted hues for your main background colors, and saving bright pops of color for elements such as CTA buttons to make them stand out.
- Clear & compelling headline: You’ve got less than 15 seconds to grab a person’s attention on a landing page—which means the headline is probably the most important thing you will write. Make sure it’s memorable, clear, and solves the problem your visitors care about most.
- Persuasive subheadlines: The next element you need to create for an effective landing page is the subheading. If the headline makes the visitor look, then the subheadline should ensure they stay. Particularly when the user is scanning the page, the subheadings should be doing a powerful job to deliver the key details.
- Supporting copy: In general, landing pages tend to convert better when they’re straightforward and easy to read. Avoid complicated business jargon, keep your sentences short, and try to cut out any unnecessary text that you don’t actually need on the page.
- Clean layout: The advantage of a landing page is that it eliminates all the other distractions you find on regular web pages. Give your visitors a single path forward. This means avoiding featuring navigation links to other pages, headers, footers, or any other calls to action.
What are some design tips for creating high-converting landing pages?
You will want to make sure that the visual elements of your landing page are appealing to visitors and persuade them to take action. Creating a more appealing experience for first-time users will help with this.
1. Videos
There are several types of videos that work well for video landing pages. Choosing the best one depends on what information will best persuade your audience to convert:
- Background videos:
The popularity of using large hero background videos on landing pages has increased in recent years, due in part to sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. Videos are interactive and can help show how your product or service works quickly and easily.
This demonstrates how effective video backgrounds can be for your business when used correctly. In this case, Y.CO, a specialized yacht services company, provides the opportunity to explore yachting in the most compelling way possible—beautiful landscapes and happy people living their best life.
- Explainer videos: A perfect way to introduce your brand, what problem your company solves, and why you’re the best option for solving that problem.
- Promotional videos: Great for driving brand awareness. These videos present your products/services in an attractive way and convey their value to your audience.
- Brand videos: Great for telling your company’s story. These videos focus on the business as a whole and show your audience what the company stands for.
- Testimonial videos: Also a great method for nurturing leads who like to do their own research. These videos give prospects a relatable and valuable perspective from fellow satisfied buyers.
- Product demo videos: Show viewers in more detail how a product or service works. This is a good video type for nurturing leads who like more information before making a purchase or for existing customers who are looking for useful resources.
The main purpose of using a video on your landing page is to provide potential customers with the information necessary to make a decision or take the next step.
Now, let’s see what it takes to properly use a video on your website. You should use a video that is relevant to your website and that will help you to achieve your desired result. The video should also be of good quality and it should be placed in a prominent location on your website.
4 essential steps in using videos in landing pages
- Write a script:
It is important to have a clear storyboard and script before you start making a video. Make sure that the video is created in a way that is relevant to the industry, the buyer persona, the product/service, and your overall goal.
- Choose a thumbnail:
The small images that you see when you scroll through videos on social media are called thumbnails. They are designed to grab the viewer’s attention and give them an idea of what the video is about. You can either make your own thumbnail or choose a screenshot from your video. If you want people to watch your video, make sure the thumbnail is simple and consistent with the style and key theme of your video.
- Optimize for SEO:
Keyword analysis for videos is important for SEO. This can be accomplished by using videos on your landing pages. However, using video SEO successfully, requires more careful thought than just adding numerous videos to your site:
- Consider your Core Web Vitals score:
The three pillars Google uses to judge your site are loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. This is especially important to keep in mind when adding videos to your site, as they can slow down the loading time.
- Keep your video as small as possible: With video SEO, you want to reduce the amount of data mobile users have to use to view your site by reducing the amount of buffering time. To aid in this, any videos you embed directly into your site should be compressed, and background videos should not be looped indefinitely.
- Consider lazy loading if you have lots of videos on a page: If videos are the primary form of content on a page, consider loading all assets asynchronously so that it doesn’t take too long to load the first render of the page and make it interactive to users.
- Ensure the video is clear: All users, regardless of their device and screen size, should be able to understand the video. Your videos have to be responsive and adjust to different screen dimensions with the proper ratio. Ensure you include the dimensions in the CSS file for your embed, and set the proper width and height to help the browser allocate the correct amount of space in the page while your video is loading.
2. Minimal design
A landing page should be simple and streamlined, with less content and visuals that are not overwhelming. This will help to make an impact and keep the visitor’s attention on the page.
This has two main benefits:
- Optimized speed: Less elements mean faster load times, which can increase conversion rates.
- Improved cognitive load: That’s a fancy way of saying that people’s brains will understand what’s going on much faster.
3. Bold & oversized typography
Large and bold fonts are currently popular for web design. They can make a big impact by drawing attention to key information or headlines.
Designers usually avoid decorative fonts when it comes to creating websites with oversized typography and instead go with neutral and simple scripts.
The investment firm Emergence used clear, simple typography to give their landing page a modern look. The typography elements are playful and bold, yet still have a professional appearance.
4. Live chats & interactive elements
It is important to build a personal connection with potential and existing customers in order to encourage them to become valuable leads or customers.
Live chat integrations let you communicate with people more quickly and in real-time. You can use them to answer questions and encourage conversions.
5. Custom illustrations
Another popular trend for landing pages in 2022 will be the use of custom illustrations. This is because they can effectively communicate different aspects of your offer, while also being visually appealing and unique.
