We have recently covered ways to employ effective banner design in your marketing efforts. Getting traffic from your PPC of display advertising however is only half of the equation. A second crucial aspect of converting your traffic is having an effective landing page.
1. Don’t Just Use Your Home Page.
I am always amazed how many purchasers of traffic simply send this traffic to their main home page. This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First you don’t have the control of being able to specifically tailor your messaging and unique selling proposition to your advertising. Your home page is for the average surfer wandering in where as a landing page is used as a very specific means to an end with careful pinpoint tailoring to match your marketing efforts. You have already pre-qualified the user to some extent via your marketing. They already have expectations as to what they want, its your job to deliver it without the user having to drill down from your main page. Second your home page is full of traffic leaks which is a bad thing. See point #6 below.
2. Be Consistent From Ad To Landing Page
Wether you are marketing via display, text links or email it is vital that you ensure that your messaging and “look and feel” or your marketing closely matches your landing page. Make the colors and fonts consistent. If you are using text links ensure that the headline used in your advertisement is repeated prominently in your destination page. This creates a smooth flow of experience for the user and greatly increases your potential of generating a sale.
3. Keep It Simple
The same rules of banner design apply to landing page design. You need to keep your messaging and value proposition simple and direct. Explain what you are selling and list a few key reasons why your product or service is unique (you don’t need to list every single bell and whistle). Make sure the eye can easily grasp the key propositions in your pitch at a glance. Its also a good idea to not use large blocks or small text. Try to break them up with headlines.
5. Eliminate all traffic leaks
This is an error I see all the time. Eliminate all links on the page that lead the user away from a purchase. After you have a captive audience you don’t want to loose them on a link that leads them away from a purchase. If you need to provide more information try to use daughter windows (small pop up windows) to provide this. A click to another page on your site is counter productive.
6. Use strong calls to action.
Wether your are selling a product or service include a very prominent button or form to make it clear what the user is supposed to do on the page. This call to action should *always* be above the fold and separated visually from the other content on the page. It should leave no doubt in the users mind what to do next. If you are in doubt if your call to action is bold enough then it probably is not. Make it larger and bolder.
7. Make the user feel safe and secure.
If you are collecting user information or credit cards be sure to instill faith in the user that their information will not be mismanaged or abused. The first step to this is a professionally design landing page. The second is to let the user know their information is safe. If you are using a secure server include the padlock graphic and tell the user the site is secure. If you are approved by the better business bureau use their graphic. If you are hacker safe use that graphic as well. Don’t link these graphics to eliminate traffic leaks.
8. Break long processes into multiple shorter ones.
If a form cant be completed in 30 seconds or less then you need to break up the form into separate pages. Make the first page very brief, ask for a name, an email address and a zip code. Then have the user complete the rest of the form on the next page or pages. It is a well know psychological trait of humans that if you can get them to commit in a small way to a process they are more likely to complete. This technique gets the user to begin the process without scaring them away from a long form at first glance.
Two Good Landing Page Examples
I have include a couple examples below of landing pages i consider to be very well put together. I will explain why below the images.
Netflix does a good job of showing the user their unique selling proposition with minimal text and a clean simple design. I really like how their form only asks for minimal information and uses a strong call to action “Start Here”. By placing this form on the right side of the page they keep it well above the fold and leave no doubt what the user is to do once landing on this page.
This is a perfect example of a clean well designed landing page. The value proposition is clearly explained at the top of the page with a strong call to action with “Get Your Insurance Quote”. There are literally zero traffic leaks and the only information they are requesting of the user is a zip code. The call to action is very clear with a nice clickable green button.
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