It’s not enough that you have a website and then passively wait for the right people to come to you. In today’s cutthroat online marketing world, you have to step up and take action in order to attract the right audience. Creating an interesting, compelling and relevant online content is a sure way of converting a casual visitor into a loyal customer.
There are many strategies to target your specific audience and gain increasing conversion rates. One of the ways is building landing pages.
First off, though, you need to know what a landing page is and what it means to your online marketing campaign.
A landing page is webpage that appears after you click on it from a search engine optimization (SEO) result, online advertisement, marketing promotion or an email advertisement.
Landing pages will definitely become one of the biggest weapons in your own online marekting campaign. The key advantage of a landing page is its ability to bring traffic and increase conversion rates in a cost-effective way. There are many possibilities when you see increased conversion – among them are higher sales, greater leads or a bigger subscriber list, or any or all of these. Ultimately, these goals will be advantageous to the growth of your business.
In order to achieve those goals, you need to sharpen up the content of your landing page to attract potential customers and boost your conversion rates. The following lists some good tips on how to create landing pages that will guarantee actual conversions:
How to create a high quality landing page that converts
1. Be credible
Just like traditional business, your online business needs to establish credibility early on. People have always been skeptical towards advertisements. And with the spread of spamming and fly-by-night operators, people have grown more suspicious of whatever they see on the web.
In order to gain trust from your prospects, create a landing page that will make a big and positive first impression on them. Create a banner at the top of your landing page where you will put your company name and logo. Those elements should be the first things your visitors will want to see.
Inside the banner or immediately beneath it, write one or a couple of testimonials that are brief but powerful and to-the-point. This will help you drive home your business’ purpose and vision to your prospective visitors. It would be helpful to add a subhead or a prehead that will outline your company’s mission statement and a summary your company’s credentials and products and services. These can give an indication to your visitors that your brand is credible and trustworthy.
Making yourself credible to a lot of online users is surely a daunting task. But if you manage to convince them, it will definitely be a huge first step and allow you to proceed to the next move.
2. Make your landing page to look interesting
The overall appearance and feel of your landing page will also contribute to its effectiveness, since its primary goal is to make conversions as easy as possible. A good landing page should have a clean, organized but eye-catching design.
A lot of Internet users like easy-to-read pages. The key to achieving that is to put bullets to explain the details, features and highlights of your products and services.
Visual content is, of course, essential. In fact, people will react to images more quickly than they do towards plain text. In choosing images, they should be relevant to your products and services but at the same time they should immediately grab the attention of your visitors. And of course, use high-quality images to make your landing page more attractive to potential customers.
Always keep in mind that in designing landing pages, keep on including elements that will help you achieve your conversion goal, whether it be signing up for a subscription, making a purchase, booking an appointment or filling out a form.
3. Be conversational in your copy
Many business and corporate websites tend to sound like that – businesslike. While they do provide information, they deliver it in a deadpan and unemotional manner. So try to connect to your potential customers by making your landing page copy to sound more “human.” It should “speak” to your audience, so it’s better to sound natural in advertising your product and services.
And even if you’re plugging a product that’s too techy, it will still incite your prospects to actually place an order to it, thanks to your landing pages’ conversational tone.
4. Make your landing page mobile-friendly
Many people have gone mobile these days, and the numbers do not lie – over 30% of online activity comes from the use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. And pundits believe that this number is likely to grow even further. It’s best to take advantage of this trend by optimizing your website for mobile devices. It has been proven that having a mobile-friendly site can have a better chance of increasing your conversions.
5. Include methods of contact
Again, your business should establish credibility. Including your business’ contact details will indicate to visitors that it is legit and trustworthy. Landing pages contain the usual contact methods such as a street address, a phone number, an e-mail address and a contact form. Some websites even have a pop-up chat feature where a CSR asks a visitor if they can be of help.
These features will put you a step ahead of your competitors as well as help in strengthening credibility with your existing and potential clients.
6. Don’t forget guarantees!
People love guarantees. Who doesn’t? A guarantee makes people feel reassured, no matter what type of guarantee it is or how is it advertised. It also helps in building up your trustworthiness meter. By offering guarantees to visitors, they can increase the chances of conversion.
Just make sure you choose a guarantee that works for your business. Then explicitly state the guarantee on your landing page.
In lieu of a product guarantee (“satisfaction guarantee” or “100% money-back guarantee” if the visitor is not satisfied with the product), you can provide something more different such as “100% Risk Free Guarantee” or “Forever Guarantee.”
7. Create a powerful “call to action”
Landing pages are there for a reason – to urge and incite a visitor to do something such as buying your product or subscribing to your newsletter. A call to action (CTA) can guarantee instant conversions, as long as it is done right.
Make your landing page copy compelling and persuasive. For example, if you’re running a food business or a restaurant, instead of the generic “Submit” or “Click here,” you should use “Order Now,” “Book a Table” or “Download Free Recipes.” This will generate interest from your visitor and encourage them to proceed to the next action – to order pizza online, to book a table for two at a French restaurant or to download new and exciting Asian recipes.
Another example: if you are running a paid app or selling a computer software, you can call your visitors to action by adding “Sign up for a 30-day trial.” This will encourage visitors to try out your product for free. Once they are satisfied by the product during or after the trial period and they want to exploit its full features, they finally place an order and purchase it.
For more effective CTA, use buttons. It has stuck in many people’s minds that they expect buttons whenever there’s CTA.
Apply different and contrasting colors on your CTA buttons. It will draw the visitors’ eye to your page and compel them to do the click. Incorporating graphics will further attract your visitors and encourage them to do more clicks!