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Have you ever tried to download an informative template, ebook, or guide from a website and you were directed to a sketchy, underdeveloped landing page? You most likely were hesitant to download the value piece you originally came for and did not feel comfortable entering your information in the form provided. Many professionals may not know that a generic landing page can be the line between customer conversion and disinterest. With this in mind, it’s imperative to structure your landing pages based on your projected results.
You may be thinking, what exactly defines a “landing page?”. Essentially, it’s a web page that is designed with one central purpose, such as one call to action, or one main focal point. There are a wide variety of reasons to design a landing page such as:
Collecting prospect information
External page to download a value piece (ebook, blog, guide, etc.)
Signing up for an event
Obtaining a promotional code
It is important to note that landing pages have the highest conversion rate of 23% in comparison to all other forms to collect customer information. Source: Hubspot. This means that strategically designed landing pages can establish brand credibility, assist in collecting customer data for your CRM, retargeting interested customers, and ultimately leading prospects further down the sales funnel.
This blog will serve as a step-by-step guide to designing the most valuable landing pages for your brand’s needs and ultimately helping you convert more customers into leads.
1. Eye-catching, Clean Format
There is a fine line between successfully obtaining prospect information and disinteresting them- and it comes down to the page’s layout and aesthetic. Stick to a consistent and mild color scheme that matches your brand’s color palette. Make the page’s color eye-catching but not distracting from its main purpose. You can also incorporate images or elements that can assist to guide the prospect to complete the call to action (arrows, lines, change in color scheme, etc)
Also, be sure to design your landing page in a way that guides your prospect to complete and digest the value provided with your main call to action. For example:
Signing up for an event:
In the description, provide details (date, time, location, etc) incorporate pictures that relate to the event, title something like “You don’t want to miss this!”
Downloading an eBook:
Highlight contents of the eBook, what value it has to your audience, title example “Your Roadmap to Improving Your Social Media Presence”
As we know, almost everyone has short attention spans. In fact, the average amount of time one is able to focus on a task or an object is for 9 seconds. Source: Wyzowl.com. For this reason, be sure to let your audience know the value proposition upfront as soon as they open the landing page.
2. Provide Strong Trust Signals
People don’t want to download content or submit their personal information to a landing page that lacks forms of credibility. This is why trust signals are the red carpet to landing page conversions. Trust signals can be used synonymously with “social proof”. Their main purpose is to portray your credibility and show you are an established brand in your industry. There are three main types of trust signals that can be shown on your landing page:
It’s common to place social proof at the bottom of the landing page near your brand’s social media handles. Yet, they also can be properly and strategically placed throughout the landing page to establish reliability and build trust.
3. Customization
Customers are more willing to download your eBook or submit their social media handles on the landing page form if they feel you have clearly identified and propose to solve their challenges with your solution. Automated and unmodified landing pages do not provide value to all customers because not all are the same. Through customization strategies, your landing page will be able to target specific audience needs and convert more customers.
There are three recommendations to customize your landing page:
Send to specific audience groups – Form email lists that all have similar needs (are all in attract stage of sales funnel, signed up to receive your eBook, opened a recent email from your company and clicked on all the value pieces attached, etc)
Make personalized CTAs – Customizing your landing page CTAs have converted 202% more customers than a default CTA strategy. Source: Hubspot. Be very specific with the call to action that you desire from your prospects. It must align with the instructions and information provided on the landing page while creating a sense of urgency. Some examples are “Try Now, Download Today, Start, Watch” etc.)
Address customer pain points in the description – Similarly to customizing the landing page header, explain and identify the precise pain points of your audience. Since the description is one of the first sections to view at the landing page fold, the customer will be more likely to give your company their information as they see you have identified what they value.
“Social proof is the red carpet to landing page conversions “ – Chelsea Davis, Marketing Specialist
When transferring prospects to an external page, it’s detrimental to portray many forms of trust signals (logos, 3rd party testimonials, certifications). Establishing trust is the first step to getting customers to keep scrolling down the landing page and to complete your specified call to action.
4. Be a Minimalist
When designing your landing page, always remember: less is more! Overwhelming prospects with too much information can easily lead to disinterest- especially for those in the early stages of the sales process. With that in mind, identify the key details that will assist your audience in converting.
It’s better to hone in on one offer of a service, and one CTA. Let’s say you are a talent acquisition company and have just published an eBook with a guide to researching top-tier candidates to interview. Also, you just sent out an email campaign that identified 5 strategies to filter candidates on LinkedIn. Instead of a summary of the entire eBook, describe how the eBook has many LinkedIn/social platform strategies to help discover future rockstars. Include this information in your landing page that will be sent to the same list of people who opened your campaign.
Not only should you be a minimalist in the content of your landing page, but also when collecting information from your prospects. Make short forms, and focus on what details are needed from a potential lead to add them to your CRM. Ask for information like first & last name, email, company name, etc.
5. Run Tests
Not every landing page will be a huge success. They require editing, test runs, and digesting how they were opened/where the users clicked. CRM software like Hubspot allows you to send test emails with landing pages all in one. A great strategy when designing several copies is to run A/B tests. These trials allow you to change the template, word color, position of pictures, or headings to see if one copy drives more conversions than the other and which performs better with engagement, and clicks.
Designing a customized landing page that identifies different audience pain points, represents one individual call to action, has a minimalist layout and color scheme, and builds trust with social proof can ultimately enhance your landing page strategy. This can lead to more conversions and opportunities to communicate your brand’s value to a large number of prospects.
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