Your landing page can do one of two things: help you to close a deal or send your visitors away to your competitors’ landing pages. Everybody wants to create an effective landing page, but the only problem is there is no straight universal formula that defines how a great landing page should look like. To make matters worse, creating an effective landing page requires patience to test and perfect your landing pages until they perform.

Consumers are getting more intelligent by the day. The moment it seems like you are trying to sell them something, they resist immediately. Convincing them to complete that registration form, subscribe or download your stuff is the ultimate goal of your website.

The simple truth is that even an increase of 1% in your landing page conversion rate can result in thousands of dollars in increase in revenue, which can even go up to millions of dollars over an extended period. For expert marketers, a landing page must move beyond the basics such as interesting copy, great format of button and minimal navigation. Follow these advanced steps to create a compelling landing page for your business.

1.


Create more landing pages

Since landing pages play such a critical role in driving leads – and consequently, revenue, many successful online marketers are creating an arsenal of landing pages for their products. There is a lot of data-backed proof that shows more landing pages lead to more conversions. It can only be logical because more landing pages create more conversion. Apart from that, more landing pages offer more variety and marketing opportunity.   According to Hubspot, companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7 times more leads than those with fewer than 10.

2.


Include testimonials

Testimonials are important component of landing page optimization. Such is the effectiveness of testimonials that they increase

landing page conversion rates

by up to 218% when placed conspicuously on a landing page. And we are not talking about generic testimonials with questionable credibility. You know the ones:

“Great product. I enjoyed it” —Steven B

“Fantastic services.” —Willy C

“A++++” —Jane M

“Amazing!”—Kent L

We are talking about substantial testimonials that tell potential customers what the product looks like, how it was able to solve the problem better than the existing products and how great the customer service was, among others.

Apart from testimonials, other trust indicators include:

• Corporate endorsements
• Reviews
• Press mentions and
• Guarantee seals
• Display the number of people who have bought or who are currently using your product

 

3. Address Prospects’ Pain Points with Benefits

Customers don’t buy your product because it has many cute features; they buy it because it can solve their problems in a better way than existing products (if any). Remember, customers are motivated by the promise of increasing pleasure of avoiding pain. So don’t just list features. Mention how the product will address the prospect’s pain points as well as how it will make the prospect’s life easier, enjoyable and fun.

4. 


Create likable images and give directional cues

Research shows that adding images to your landing page will greatly enhance the balance of your landing page. However, it is important to note that not all images are created the same. Follow the following guidelines to create effective visual cues:

• 
  People 
  
  – human beings are by nature attracted to other human beings, especially those we deem attractive. That is why you will see baby images, beautiful girls and handsome images in most advertisements. These images help potential customers to take immediate step because their eyes are drawn to them.
• 
  Directional cues
  
  —human beings like being lead and given direction. It reduces their reluctance and gives them a little push when they are shown exactly what they need to do. Flow charts or arrows are good directional cues.

Advanced marketers can also use implicit directional cues apart from explicit cues like arrows. E.g, this can be in a form of a baby looking at a packet of chocolate sweets.

5.


Make a scan-able landing page

Many people do not have time or will power to read your landing page from A to Z. most likely, they will just make a quick scan of your page before making a decision whether they like it or not. If your landing page is not scan-able, you are inviting more trouble. Your goal is to keep readers engaged with visual, easy-to-navigate landing page.

6.


Less is more

Lengthy text content in landing pages is something you need to take with a pinch of salt. While it is important to include text in your landing page, make sure it is not acting as a distraction. Less text will lead to more conversions. When it comes to landing page optimization, content is more important than creativity. Forget about using baseless adjectives, idioms and phrasal verbs. Stick to the points and facts. Always double check your content to remove fluff and grammar errors. You landing page should be precise and to the point.

7.


Use a strong Call-to Action

What next after visitors have read your landing page copy? It is crucial that you direct them on what to do next. Your call-to-action button text should be laced with some sense of urgency. When Firefox changed its CTA from “Try Firefox” to “Download Now–Free”, conversion rates increased by 3.6%.

8.


Less choices

When you bombard your customers with half a dozen products to choose from in your landing page, you run the risk of not converting as many as your would have liked. By so doing,  you are putting your customers in a situation where they are spoilt for a choice  so much that they find it difficult to make a decision. This is called paradox of choice. Ideally, you should create one landing page for each product or specific action you want your potential customers to take.

9.


Appeal to their emotional side

It is important to invoke the emotional side of your prospects. People who are emotional can make quick decisions. For instance, if you are selling baby cloths, you can appeal to the emotional side of parents by telling them how their sweet babies would look adorable in those cloths, how it will create a lasting bond with their lovely kids and how the cloths will bring out the best in the family.

10.


Give them a story

While hard facts are important, throwing in a compelling story might help to convince the prospect to take the next action. According to one study conducted Carnegie Mellon University, prospects are twice more likely to make a buying decision when they are given a story than when they are just given hard facts only. In short, story beats data.

11.


Don’t Skimp On Design

A professionally designed landing page will convert more prospects than a budget design.  How do you want people to trust you with their money when you did not spend any of it in creating a compelling design? The genesis of trust is the general design of your landing page.

12.


Test your Copy for different landing page elements

After all is said and done, it is now time to know which of your different landing page elements need some changes and tweaks. This is where A/B testing comes in. A/B testing is simply the process of

testing an element of your landing page

(the control element) against a changed version (the challenger) in order to discover which of the two performs better in terms of conversions. It is advisable that you test one element at a time over a given duration of time using the same amount of traffic. Different elements you need to test include the headline, the CTA buttons (colors, text, design etc) and the landing page text, among others.