Landing pages are like your forefront warriors in battle. They are the first in line and are trusted to get as much enemies as they can before all the other knights follow. They try to make everything else easier for the fleet.
In the realm of landing pages, we don’t really call them ‘enemies’. Instead, we regard them as leads that can be eventually converted into sales.
Today, I’m going to talk about landing pages and how you should effectively create them. Considering how much of an impact landing pages can cause your website and the entire reputation of your business, it’s only right for you to pull it off correctly.
Before anything else, what are landing pages?
Landing pages are the first pages someone sees when they are linked from a source or a referral and directed to your website. These pages focus on conversion that aims to gather leads or sales.
Now how do you make effective landing pages? Here are 5 easy steps you can take to make your landing pages irresistible.
1. Prioritize content.
Whatever happens, it’s still your content that will make or break you. Just in case you don’t know, in the world of online marketing, content is king. All the other elements of your landing page are secondary (but of course, still significant).
Below are the main elements of content needed in an effective landing page:
Call to action and ad alignment: The statement in your call to action should connect to your ad campaign. It’s important that once they click on your call to action, what they will see for the rest of the website is still aligned. Remember, consistency is key. The last thing you want is to mislead your market.
Content value: Make your content count. If you want people to avail of your products/ services, what makes yours so important? What will they get out of it that they can’t get from your competitors?
2. Design creatively and critically.
While what’s in your landing page is the most important, it’s the design that people will see before anything else. It’s how your page will look that can determine whether someone will display any interest at all. So make a design of your own, something people will remember you by.
Below are some of the things you need to consider when designing landing pages.
Layout: Keeping it simple is probably the best advice I can give you. The simpler the design, the easier it is to notice the other elements of your landing pages. It also gives quite a minimal but professional finish, which any business needs to add credibility.
Colors: For every color you use, you transmit a different kind of vibe to your readers. Red connotes energy, green is wealth, blue stands for security and black can emanate luxury and a real sense of style. It’s up to you how you want to play out with all the hues for your landing pages. It’s just about knowing which ones to complement.
Text: Never, ever use big bold “Hello There!” greetings in flashing fashion. The way your text appears can easily be an eyesore or an eye candy to the public. Make sure you know which text you need to increase in size, which ones you need to capitalize or bold. Learn balance when doing design because it gives a sense of unity to your page.
Images: Don’t use stock photos because that just comes off as lazy and unprofessional. It’s important that you personalize and customize your design— and a lot of this will come from your images.
Placement: Place your call to action where it can easily be seen. Don’t clog one side with a lot of images or a lot of writing. Put your headline on the top part of your landing page. It’s about how you place all your elements together so it can produce balance and ease in reading.
3. Create a clear call to action.
Probably the most critical part of your landing page is your call to action. How it’s constructed, where it’s placed or if it’s even effective at all, it can determine whether or not you bagged a sale or managed to turn off yet another customer.
There are three personal advices I can give you when dealing with CTA. First, here are three S’s: short, simple and straight to the point. People naturally have a very short attention span that’s why keeping them on the edge of their seat is the way to win them over.
Second, bank on numbers. It usually gives a bigger impact and a sense of reputation to any business. Say for example: “Be one of our 250 (and counting) customers enjoying 15% discount on all items!”
Third, try out a safety net CTA. When I say safety net, it usually involves social media. You can place your Twitter or Facebook account for those who are not entirely ready to commit to you. This way, you don’t waste any leads and you’re able to keep them on the loop.
4. Don’t scare them off with forms.
I personally hate landing pages that ask me to fill out a form containing my personal information. The problem with some online marketers is that they don’t understand the fact that landing pages are supposed to generate trust, not question it right then and there. If you end up putting forms in your landing pages, you’re going to scare more than half of your market away. They will end up thinking they are being spammed.
Keep in mind that asking for information from your market should be secondary. Your priority is to gain their trust and be able to draw them in smoothly. Focus on your call to action instead.
5. Test it out.
Once you’re able to fully create a landing page, it’s time you test it out. Use Google Analytics to see if it’s working and if people are actually clicking into your pages. If you want, you can choose a target market and try them to see if they will respond well or not.
Remember; think of your landing pages as the front soldiers in this endless battle of earning profit and generating sales. Treat them as tools that can effectively gather as much people as they can and eventually, put your business in a secured, trusted and winning position.