In the era we live in now, your landing page is likely the first thing your customers are going to see. When they hear about you, they look up your site to see what you have to offer, and how you can possibly benefit them. As a wise person once said, "You never get a second chance at a first impression." And that's true. Once a perception has been formed, about a person or a business, it's incredibly hard to change that perception. Here are some tips to show you how to make a great first impression with an effective landing page.
1. Plan it. There are no fancy words and no sage pieces of advice that can top this simple common sense pointer when it comes to learning how to make a landing page work. If you don't have an idea of what you want your landing page to do and how you want it to look, chances are it's not going to be effective. To you, it's as simple as getting your message out in an attractive fashion. To your developer, this is a big project. So ask them to help you plan it. Detail everything over a planning period. Look at your competition. What works for them? How have they achieved the things that you aspire for? Who is your audience? All these points are things you need to know before you even begin to craft your landing page.
2. Make it short, sweet, and confidence-inspiring. You want the content on your page to be short enough to read quickly, interesting enough to hook attention, but not too long and overwhelming. You need to inspire confidence in visitors. Show them the potential of your product or service, despite the short text, and make them want to know more.
3. Have incentives. People might visit, but they won't stay if there's nothing in it for them. Have some sort of offer in plain view. Only a small number of people will stay longer than a few seconds. Make sure that your offer or promotional material is visible, and makes visitors want to progress further into your website.
4. Pay attention to color and design. Any art student, even the beginners, can tell you about the impact and effect of colors and how people perceive them. I can't count the number of websites I personally have left immediately, just because they didn't look well built, professional and legitimate. Make sure that your visual aspects, including your color scheme, are up to date and attractive, facilitating the reaction you want.
5. Put the landing page through intense trials. Test your landing page using tracking in an A/B testing environment. Test out different layouts, wording, even content. This will help you create a landing page that customers love to use and will stay on for more than eight to ten seconds, leading to more conversions. The last thing you want to do is waste money on a landing page that doesn't work. The testing process will teach you how to put yourself in the shoes of your customers.
6. Match any and all calls to action (CTA) to your headlines. If your landing page headline references a product demo, or a free trial, make sure that your CTAs are all written with corresponding language. This way, the main message is emphasized, and there is no confusion as to exactly what service the customer is receiving.
7. Encourage social media sharing. A portion of the people visiting your landing page will not turn into customers. But those people know other people and, given the ability to share your landing page through social media, will likely connect you with people who will take you up on your services. This will push more and more traffic through your landing page as person after person shares the page for the people they know would appreciate your product. The potential for new customers, conversions and even an increased web presence and brand familiarity is exponential, really.
Using these tips and more, you should be able to craft an effective landing page, or make your current one much more effective. Check back for more handy tips, and look into how our Landing Page Generator could help you with your day to day business needs.
You can read more about our tips for marketing here on our blog, and learn about our 360 Marketing Automation Platform.
