How to Create an Effective Landing Page
Have you ever wondered what you’re missing on your landing page that enables you to convert more users? It’s quite simple actually. HashTag ME drills down into our 8-step process of creating an effective landing page.
Creating an effective landing page takes a bit of skill, but once you have the strategy down the implementation becomes quite easy.
As a digital marketing specialist agency, it’s our job to stay on top of the trends and to understand what motivates people to convert online. These motivating factors are made up of a variety of elements that we like to call the 8-step process to create an effective landing page that converts and even helps to bring your CPC (cost per click) down. Many people over-think when it comes to creating landing pages or on the other side of the coin many others don’t even know where to start with their landing page to convert. This is why we stick to the age-old phrase of “keep it simple stupid” when creating landing pages.
Our Secret Eight-step Process to Building a Perfect Landing Page
- Captivating Headings
Start creating your landing page by deciding what you want your topic to be. Lure a reader/user in with a headline that speaks directly to their search query. For a user, this will be one of the first bits of information they see when they open up your web page. Affirm this information by including your keywords into the heading so the user will know they have come to the right web page for information about their web search.
Be bold and captivate your user with a heading that will stand out.
- A Gripping Sub-heading
Remember those old school days sitting in English? Ugh, we know. Your teacher most probably told you how to write an article that included a sub-heading. Landing pages also need subheadings. Don’t remember the lesson, that’s okay – we can explain in one line: It’s a short sentence that grips your reader/user in even further and restates what your heading and body is about with a little bit more flare.
- Identify your Value Proposition
Once your reader now knows that the page that they have come to is the right page by reviewing and understanding your headings, you would then dig deeper into why they would choose your brand for its products or services. This can be done by adding in a list of bullet points that highlight the benefits of your business or your product and/or services. This is also the selling area of your landing page, as you want to highlight basically why the potential customer should choose you.
- Video and Images
Today, more than ever, people are visual and can make an instant connection with what a piece of content is all about, by simply looking at the images placed in front of them.
By ensuring you are including relevant imagery on your landing page, you will be indicating to your user through a visual quest what this page is all about.
Video, on the other hand, is a nice and effective marketing tool that you should consider including onto your landing pages as a way to tell users in summary what the service or products on that specific page are all about. People love watching videos and if you can use them in the right way, they will do wonders for your conversions.
- Lead Capture Forms
Having a lead capture form is a MUST. How do you know if the lead form is positively benefiting you?
It all comes down to understanding people. Think about it – how excited are you really when someone approaches you in person, emails you, or you come across an online form which you then have to actually sit and fill out with the information that they want? I’m going to guess not likely. Well, the same applies to your lead capture form on your landing page, users don’t want to fill out your “101 questions” just to get a bit more information or a call back from you. Instead, people are more likely to fill out forms they can see are not going to take long at all. However, there is a little bit of quality vs quantity that you need to also take into consideration. And that is that when you have a very simple form only asking for a maximum of three bits of info, a lot more people will be happy to answer it, this is quantity. But let’s say you ask eight or nine questions in your form you will get a lot fewer people responding, but the ones that do who went through all that effort will be a higher quality lead because they were willing to go through the added effort to get the feedback, download or offer you will be giving to them. So, it is up to you to determine, what is it that you really need from your potential customer and whether you are looking for quality leads or more quantity?
- Privacy Statement
When you ask a user to fill out forms or give you any type of personal information, many people become wary of this and often don’t wish to disclose their personal data. This issue applies to landing pages as well which contain forms on them. So, you might be thinking well how does one reassure someone of their data privacy. It’s quite simple actually, by being mindful of adding in a small disclaimer and link to your privacy policy just underneath the form you can achieve this.
This gives people more confidence in disclosing their sensitive information with you.
- Compelling Call to Action’s
The number one rule when creating a compelling call to action is to never use the word “submit”. This is too vague and also subconsciously it leaves a bad association in one’s mind, of giving away a bit of oneself. Rather tell potential buyers exactly what it is that they will be getting when they click on your call to action i.e. a free e-book, access to your digital coupon code, or even your monthly newsletter.
- Social Proof
We’ve all heard the saying before, that the proof is in the pudding, and this couldn’t be truer than for online advertising. You can tell someone till you are blue in the face how great your product or service is, but the true value comes when they hear it from someone else. When businesses can get online reviews or client testimonials, these help to showcase to others that your business is reliable and reputable. Social proof is an example of positive reinforcement that proves that to a potential buyer that someone else has previously used this product or service and that they had a positive emotional experience when dealing with you.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article by Hashtag Marketing. If you would like any help in developing effective landing pages for your business to improve your digital marketing activities then get in touch with us. We’re just a click away.
Article by, Chris Watkins (CEO) – HashTag Marketing
