Everyone knows landing pages are important but there are so many elements to a landing page that people often forget the important elements that help increase conversion rates. Yeah, it’s only one page, but that one page could be your lead generating machine. We’ve provided this checklist to help you NOT forget these important parts when designing and writing your landing pages.
The RIGHT Content
First things first, you need to look at the bigger picture of your landing page. What is the message you are trying to get across? What is the end goal that you want the user to perform? This should be your value proposition. You need to make sure this is CLEAR to the end user. To make this clear, you can place your proposition in a variety of areas within your content.
Headline
This is where you need to catch people’s attention.
Your headline should have actionable content that provides only points that matter. Whether your action is to get the user to fill out the form or sign up for a free trial – make it clear in your headline.
“What matters is that I’m the best in this space.”
That’s exactly where you’re going to lose your audience. By saying you’re the “best” or your product is the best. Say what matters because you and all your competitors are going to claim they’re “the best,” so be unique.
What is your offer? Be relevant and straight to the point with your headlines. Your headlines should also match with the marketing campaigns you’re pushing out… But we’ll get into that more later on.
Supporting Headline
This is the headline where you want to provide supporting details about your value proposition and main headline. What will the end user get if they fill out your form or sign up for your trial? Clearly lay out the benefits of your offer here.
List Your Other Benefits
This is where you can really show off your goods. Good use of bullet points here will help on the eyes for the user. Bullet out what the benefits are of your offer. Don’t go overboard and bore them, but provide enough information to support your headlines and entice the user to reach your end goal. What makes your offer unique?
Meta Data and Ads Contain Similar Content
Meta data isn’t just about SEO. It’s about enticing internet users to click on your landing page from the organic search results. Your title tag should be very similar, if not the same, as your main headline. When people see your headline and click in the search results – they want to see relevant content on the landing page. They don’t want to see something completely different.
Same goes when writing ads. You want the value proposition clearly stated within your ad as well as a very similar headline and call to action.
Reinforce Your Offer
Repeat, repeat, repeat. Most of the time your value proposition should be shown at least 3 ways on your landing page. This is meant for those who scan content instead of actually reading it.
Reinforce your offer by placing it again, with slightly different wording, below your benefits and form. This is similar to your supporting headline.
Images
You want to have the right image on your landing page because this is how you can visually show your offer. Whether you want to show an actual picture of what the offer is or a personal message from the CEO – images are important.
Think of what would compel your users to to meet your conversion goal – put it in your image!
A Clear and Concise Call to Action (CTA) – Also Known As Your End Conversion Goal
EVERY LANDING PAGE NEEDS A GOAL.
This is ultimately how all of the content and CTA’s are structured on the page. Your goal will define what type of CTA you’re going to need.
A lot of landing pages contain a form of some kind. Whether you’re trying to get someone to download an eBook or fill in their information for a free trial – you want to capture the end users’ information.
This isn’t always the case for every business. Your final CTA may be to call to receive more information. Whatever your goal is will help determine what your final CTA is.
Forms
Okay, let’s be clear right away about this one – size doesn’t matter.
When you’re creating forms, you want them to be long enough to capture the information needed for your end goal, but short enough you can still keep the users’ attention. There’s no right or wrong length for forms as long as they provide you with the information you need. However, longer forms are statistically proven to have higher bounce rates – so IF possible, keep it short and to the point.
Just as important is the form CTA button. You want to make sure this button clearly stands out. Most studies suggest having an entirely different colored button increases conversion rates dramatically. You want to also make sure your button clearly states what the user is going to receive when they click that button!
Buttons
As mentioned above, your button should stand out on the page with both design and context. Since not all landing pages are form-driven, another option is enticing the user to take a Next Step to get to another offer. This would be where buttons strongly come into play.
For example, you’re writing a blog post about “Tracking Your Marketing ROI.” The goal of this blog post is to attract people interested in marketing and ultimately turn those interested people into leads.
The blog itself is not going to turn each visitor into a lead, but it can be a gateway for visitors to get to a landing page, where they have to fill out their information to receive your offer.
The button is extremely important for these types of landing pages because they are your final CTA. The buttons should provide content that explains the next step and matches the landing page content to where they’re being led to. Ding, ding, ding, ding! Relevance.
Closing Thoughts
You made it through, yay! You can now see that landing pages have many different elements that we can easily forget. Now that you know exactly what needs to go into each landing page you can start creating them and testing them for better conversion rates. Of course there are a lot of other things you can do as well, but sometimes a simple fix, such as a change to your heading, can sky rocket your conversion rates!
What are some landing page optimization elements you utilize in your design and content? Let us know below in the comments!
And, if you need help with your landing page optimization give us a call, we can help: 1.800.871.4130.
I’m not sure where you are getting your information, but great topic.
I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more.
Thanks for excellent information I was looking for this information for my
mission.