A landing page serves one purpose: convincing visitors to move to the next stage in the sales funnel. Although this sounds simple, creating a successful landing page requires detailed planning and creative testing. Whether you create one for a PPC campaign or for an email blast, the following five tips will help you optimize any landing page.
- Take time to create effective calls-to-action (CTA)
- Keep CTAs above the fold
- Improve forms on landing pages
- Understand that content is key
- Use landing pages for your paid search campaigns
To get a better sense of how these techniques are used in the real world, browse websites from different industries. Be on the look out for interesting landing pages and how they are used to facilitate conversions at various stages of the buying process.
Landing Page Optimization Tip #1
Take time to create effective CTAs
Your CTA is one of the most important parts of the landing page. Without one, visitors may wonder what they are doing on your site.
CTAs are things like Buy Now buttons, Download Here links or whatever it may be that you want your visitors to click through to. Having a strong CTA will reinforce their desire to purchase whatever you are offering. Make sure your CTA is visible and clear to see by stepping back from your screen and seeing if it jumps out at you.
Taking time to create effective CTAs also means testing the colors, wording and placement of the CTA. Run A/B tests to see which option performs best. Remember to have fun with this, because the results can be interesting, and a small change can go a long way in improving conversion rates.
Landing Page Optimization Tip #2
Keep CTAs above the fold
Scrolling is useful for homepages or longer content marketing assets like white papers and infographics. But a long, scrolling landing page with a CTA at the end of the page is not best for promoting offers of services and products. You want that promotional information to stand out at first glance in order to have visitors do as little as possible. Therefore, keep your primary messaging and CTA above the fold. If your content runs long, the CTA can be repeated further down at the bottom of the page.
Check out how your different folds appear on various screen sizes at:
Landing Page Optimization Tip #3
Improve forms on landing pages
You want to increase conversions on your landing pages? Improve your landing page forms! Only ask for information you need, like a first name and email address. Many marketers, especially in the B2B software space, ask for way too much information in their landing page forms. When designing a web form, ask yourself what information you need from the user, and what information you personally are comfortable sharing with other web sites. You will find that generally after six fields you are asking for a lot of information. In general, the more form fields you have, the more conversion rates fall.
Landing Page Optimization Tip #4
Sprinkle links within content for organic search traffic
Frequently updating your website with relevant, high-quality content positively impacts its position in search engine rankings. So it is important to understand that the content that brings in this organic search traffic also function as landing pages. But these landing pages don’t have to lead directly to Buy Now buttons.
Instead, you can use links within the content piece to guide visitors to other areas of the website that will incorporate micro-conversions. Experiment with different media types such as explanatory videos or screencasts that give a walkthrough of your product. Aside from a clear and visible CTA, educational and informative content is the way to engage with your visitors. It provides them the expert knowledge to help them make a good purchasing decision.
Landing Page Optimization Tip #5
Use landing pages for your paid search campaigns
Those of you with pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns need to drive more sales and raise your quality score. Since you can’t just send visitors from a paid search ad to your home page, the goal of PPC landing page optimization is to generate more conversions, lower your cost-per-click (CPC), and raise the ROI of your PPC campaigns.
If you mention a product in your ads, mention them again on the landing page. Also, make sure that there is no discrepancy between the ad and landing page in terms of prices or discounts.
Keystone
Optimizing your landing pages can really increase conversions and sales. Planning is key and continual testing allows you to see what works and what does not work. A small tweak in your design can return large results. Keep your messaging consistent and relevant with interesting content that is focused on your target audience.
Amy Carabini is an Affiliate Marketing Manager at cleverbridge.
Want to learn more on how to optimize your affiliate website? Contact our Affiliate Management team at am@clevebridge.com.
