Are you finding your paid advertising is receiving plenty of traffic and click-throughs, but you aren’t getting many conversions? Your website could be the problem; or more specifically, a lack of landing pages.
In our guide on How to Build a Landing Page that Converts in 2020, you’ll discover:
- The purpose of a landing page.
- 11 top tips for optimising your landing pages.
- How to ensure your landing page users convert.
- One of the most affordable ways to build a website in 2020.
Photo by Kevin Bhagat on Unsplash.
What is a landing page?
A landing page is a single web page built with the intent to convert people who see the page after having clicked through to it from an online ad or other marketing. They are also known as a lead generator or capture page, static page or destination page.
Marketers will create landing pages to capture information of people seeking more information from a Google Ad, Facebook Ad, email or SMS, search result or any other type of marketing they’re running.
As landing pages play a crucial role in a marketing sales funnel, they must be very purposely built. Their creation must provide the user with more information on the topic in the ad they saw, as well as provide easy options to enquire or buy. This is how to do it.
11 Top Tips for Optimising a Landing Page
1. Ensure your contact information is always visible.
You want whoever is visiting your landing page to be able to click call or submit an enquiry the moment they make a decision to buy. There are a few things you want to do to ensure this:
- Display your contact information with a call to action (CTA) at the top of your website (normally in the navigation bar or header).
- Include a button and CTA on every fold (scroll of the page).
- Keep an enquiry form or chat box on the screen as people scroll.
Utilising these three tips when building a landing page will give the users plenty of options with constant access to covert.
2. Stick to a simple design.
There should be nothing on your landing page to distract your user from what you want them to do. To avoid distraction, you’ll want to try to:
- Use only 2 to 3 primary brand colours.
- Disable your nav bar taking people outside of the page.
- Avoid external or internal links.
- Use a streamlined UX-optimised design.
- Ensure the font is simple, clear and large enough.
- Optimise your landing page for mobile devices.
These simple tricks will help your user flow through the page as intended, and if optimised correctly in other areas, convert.
3. Put an enquiry form above the fold.
Above the fold refers to the top part of your website you see when you land on it. By including an enquiry form and some of the other tips below above the fold, you maximise your chance of a user converting.
Building a landing page with an enquiry form above the fold actually has a psychological affect. Having one of the first things people see being an enquiry form immediately triggers a buy or enquire thought in a user’s head. If you’ve ticked all the other boxes, this instinct won’t be deterred.
4. Use direct call to actions.
Like having an enquiry form at the top of the page, call to actions have a psychological effect on users. Think about an infomercial and how often they say, “Call now and receive…”
The type of call to action you use will depend on what it is you’re selling, trying to do and your audience. Even if you are confident with what you’ve chosen, A/B test (see point 11) your landing page to know for sure.
You will also want to lead with the enquiry for the most positive result. For example, instead of ‘For more information, contact us now’, you’d be far better off using, ‘Call or email us for more information’.
5. Structure your content using the inverted pyramid.
The inverted pyramid is an age-old journalist and marketer’s trick. Using the inverted pyramid simply refers to structuring your content using the most useful and important information first, with it dwindling down to a ‘also useful to know’ basis.
When you build a landing page, you’ll want to ensure your most important information is above the fold, including:
- Your contact information.
- An enquiry form.
- Ad headline.
- Top reasons people should BUY NOW.
As people have already seen your ad or marketing to get to your landing page, you can assume they already know a bit about you, so you can move that further down the page.
6. Feed in your online reviews.
Depending on your marketing strategy used to lead people to the landing page, they may not know much about you. While this isn’t the most important information, it does need to be on the page, just a little further down. What’s even better is if OTHERS can vouch for you — i.e online reviews.
An easy way to integrate your online reviews onto your landing page is to use a widget or plug-in, like the Localsearch Review Widget. All you need to do is add a HTML block and insert the code.
7. Avoid stock images.
An easy way to instantly build trust in your brand is to have happy smiling pictures of your existing customers or clients. Alternatively, you could use photos of your staff, product, service, location or something relevant to customers or clients as your business.
As a last resort, you could opt for some graphics or your logo. It’s best to avoid stock photos as they’re normally very obviously just that and don’t add anything to your page.
8. Display partnerships and awards.
Another way to add trust in your business when building a landing page is to add recognition of any partnerships and awards. For example, Localsearch is a Google Premier Partner, so we display this logo on our advertising. It shows people a trusted brand like Google has acknowledged us as trustworthy.
If you have logos for your partnerships and awards, this will easily help you integrate them into your page. Otherwise, you could create a designated ‘Why Us’ section.
9. Align your message with the connecting ad.
Something in your ad obviously resonated with the user enough for them to click through to your landing page. What you want to do is continue this messaging, but reinforcing further reasons why it’s a good idea.
To continue your messaging on, use an image similar to that in your ad (if relevant) and optimise the title and text above the fold. For example, if your ad says, “Two for one”, your heading could say, “Normally $80 — SAVE $40!”
10. Give the user contact options.
There are many studies out there to say X% of people prefer email over calling, and vice versa. Regardless of which it is, you want to give people both options, if possible to ensure you’re not cutting yourself short.
A few options of contact methods to place on your website:
- Call.
- Email.
- Text.
- Chat.
- Enquiry form.
- Facebook Direct Message.
11. Track and test your results.
Once you have built your landing page, you want to do two things:
- Integrate tracking software, like Google Analytics.
- Utilise A/B testing software.
Tracking software, like Google Analytics, will allow you to see how many people are entering your landing page and performing an action, like submitting a form. To see acquisitions, you will need to setup conversion tracking within Google Analytics, which is something done for you if you have a Localsearch website.
On the other hand, there is A/B testing (also known as split testing). Good A/B testing software will be a paid subscription, but is well worth it to ensure your landing page is converting.
What is A/B testing?
An A/B or split test is when you create two versions of a web page, which is shown to two different audiences. The purpose of this is to see the effectiveness of different variations of headings, buttons, images, etc. so you know which to run.
However, an effective A/B test can only be run on one element at a time. For example, you may run a test for one month testing the effectiveness of a red button versus a green button. This is so you can tell exactly which element is the cause of the conversions.
You will also want to ensure your A/B test has enough time to reach enough people for there to be a definitive answer. Anything less than 5,000 people will not give you optimal results.
How to Create a Landing Page Funnel
Now you know how to build a landing page to convert, what do you do with the enquiries to maximise your return on investment? This next part will show you how to create a landing page funnel to help capture more leads, even from people who do not submit an enquiry.
Step 1: Draw up a landing funnel with alternate endings.
To increase your chances of converting people once you hit your landing page, you need to address the various avenues people may take. You will need solutions for:
- People who view your landing page and leave without enquiring.
- Those who view your landing page and submit an enquiry.
Once you have these two steps, you need to break down your funnel even further.
Step 2: Use remarketing to capture drop-off landing page traffic.
Your next step is to try and have users who did not submit an enquiry re-enter your landing page funnel in step one. Remarketing through Google Ads and Facebook Ads will allow you to do this without even having the person’s name or email address.
Remarketing campaigns can be set up to put ads in front of people who have visited a specific page on your website, like a landing page. Get the ads right and you can get these otherwise lost users to re-enter your marketing funnel.
Step 3: Create an acquisition funnel.
Your acquisition funnel will be broken up into nurturing those who convert and having those who do not enter an EDM database.
Step 3a: Retain conversions with a nurturing funnel.
Once you have converted a lead, you want to keep them as a client or customer. To do this, you want to remind them of their value. This will be dependent on your business, but could include:
- Customer-only offers.
- Product update emails.
- First-look releases.
- Customer-only early access.
Step 3b: Non-conversion marketing funnel.
The aim of the game for a non-conversion marketing funnel is to help provide a solution to whatever the problem was preventing the person from converting. They will also be looped into your remarketing mentioned in step 2, but depending on your business, you’ll also want to try:
- Sending a reminder they have items in their cart or have not been responsive to an enquiry.
- Offer a discount or free shipping to complete a transaction.
- Include them in on-going email marketing with offers, updates and tips.
How to Build a Landing Page Quickly
Of course, if your business does not yet have a website and you need something to link ads to, you could be in a pickle — but we have the answer here too.
Build a Website for 10 payments of $99.90 + GST.
The Localsearch COVID-19 Savings Package Single-Page Websites allow you to build a high-quality website fast, and for only 10 monthly payments of $99.90 + GST. Every website is designed, developed and written by specialists in their respective fields, ensuring your website is built to hit search engines once it’s live.
For more information, visit our COVID-19 Savings Package Page.