Creating a landing page can be tricky but not impossible. The essentials are mostly contingent upon what your brand wants to achieve with it. Essentially, the definite goal of a landing page is conversion. It can also help widen your reach and add connections to grease your community marketing efforts.
Any guide brave enough to call themselves “definitive” will say that creating a landing page always comes down to your goals and aligning these with user needs. Basically, there’s no one-size-fits-all criterion since brands’ individual landing pages have different goals. These nuanced features complement your needs and various audience preferences. What we do have are a few “constants”, like the four we’ll discuss below.
Four Essentials to Creating A Landing Page
We came up with four constants which we tackle in depth within this article, such as your ability to:
- Answer landing page questions that are pertinent to your and your prospects’ needs
- Design for usability (not mere “aestheticism”)
- Nail the website basics
- Finish with an impressive CTA
Answer landing page questions that are pertinent to your and your prospects’ needs
Before you wow your visitors, some things about your own landing page must first be clear to you. Call these questions your guide. You simply cannot build without answering these. The questions are all essential for getting you from the first point to the end. It’s another way of laying down your intentions for the landing page, as well as configuring everything before the actual development phase begins. Sit down with your team and have a dialogue about it.
We think it best to do this first before focusing on anything else. Last week, we came up with questions essential to creating a landing page that converts. We don’t want to repeat ourselves in minute detail, so here’s a quick rundown:
- Do you have a single, narrowed-down purpose?
- Do you know your specific prospects?
- Is your offer defined clearly?
- Did you include relevant keywords to drive your point?
- Do you have reliable social proof to appear more trustworthy?
- Is your copy arresting or just “full of fluff”?
Design for usability (not mere “aestheticism”)
The visitors you wish to convert expect your landing page to exude professionalism. Whatever you display on your landing page, you leave for them to judge. Before the offer itself, they’d base their snap decisions on its design. If it’s an eyesore, they’d leave. If it’s not responsive, they would absolutely leave. While we’re not asking you to ditch the glamour and your desire for the aesthetics, we ask that you go for it without sacrificing the quality of your content for mere aestheticism.
Another thing to keep in mind is where most of your visits are coming in from. Design is more than typography or colour. The design also encompasses how user-friendly the whole experience is to visitors, as well as its mobile usability. About 23% (or 1 in 4 Ecommerce dollars) of revenue comes from mobile transactions. That’s more than just choosing the right Ecommerce platform. So, you must make sure that your landing page is mobile-friendly and optimised accordingly.
As a general non-negotiable, be sure that your landing page can load in the shortest amount of time. It must load no more than 2 seconds after your visitors land on the page. You can reduce loading time by focusing only on the essentials like:
- having plenty of white space
- using a clean, legible typography
- minimising image resolutions
- using concise language to get your message across
You can’t just settle with something that looks good. Go with something that will resonate with your visitors, enough for them to say, “Why yes, I’m here for it!”
Nail the website basics
The website basics are the key components that make up your landing page. Here, we give you four:
Killer headline
Not all who lands on your landing page is guaranteed to opt-in and engage. What you need then is to spark their interest with a killer headline. The killer headline is the hook; it stops your visitors on their tracks. It’s a persuasive, one-liner that compels your visitor to stay and observe what you’re offering. Persuasive headlines must be able to grab your visitor’s attention and say what the product is all about in a clear and concise manner.
Overall copy
Previously, we’ve talked about how the landing page copy (or the actual body text) must be free from unnecessary fluff. The overall copy must be powerful, but not really plenty. Don’t put too much text on the landing page—save that for your website. Since the landing page is just focused on one clear end-goal, everything you put there must drive towards the achievement of that goal, which is usually to compel visitors to opt-in. If you want to at least provide more information, categorise them under bigger subheads or use bullet points.
Accompanying images
Humans are visual beings. Being so, it’s important that you put accompanying images to your landing page. Not only are images one of the first things readers process when they see a website, it also has an automatic, emotional pull. So, select or create images that resonate well with your brand. Make it something that the visitors can easily connect to you. Additionally, images break up text within a page, giving it variety and helping visitors absorb information better. The images give visitors a sense of what it’s like to use your product or service. Images are usually branded, so it helps visitors decide whether it’s (or you’re) the right fit for their needs.
Prominent conversion form
Finally, we end with conversion or “opt-in forms”. The opt-in forms are basically consent forms. Once visitors sign up to it, it signifies that your landing page did what it came to do—it converted them. They must readily see the opt-in form somewhere below the other aspects such as the headlines and subheadlines. In essence, it’s a signal that you’ve been successful in your attempt to persuade and have been authorised to penetrate your visitors’—now your customers’—inboxes. Hurray!
Finish with an impressive call-to-action (CTA)
“Get Started, It’s Free!”, “Sign Up Now”, “Get Your Free E-Book Here”, or “Create Your Account Today”. All those are examples of call-to-action buttons that I’m pretty sure you’ve stumbled upon or are familiar with.
Arguably the most important part of a landing page, the CTA is a direct call to engage and sign up. It’s commonly situated at the bottom part of your landing page and solely created to directly tell your prospects to make an action. It’s a culmination of your previous efforts so make sure that all the other portions of your landing page make their way to your call-to-action. This is what gets you the converts you need in order to call your landing page a success.
The call-to-action portion must be highlighted. For this portion to stand out, you can opt to use bigger, bolder font size to draw people’s attention to it. The colours should also be contrasting with the background so people could easily pick them out. It’s usually tied up with a big button, which then entices people to engage.
Creating a landing page takes wit and determination to convert visitors into customers and community members.
High-impact landing pages tie up all your efforts to increase conversions and subsequently, your revenue base. It’s a platform that helps aid your visitors’ decision to click, know more, and finally opt-in with your brand. So, make sure you don’t mess it up!
Start with this handy list of essentials so you’re guided. Still need some help? We can help set-up. We offer full-service digital solutions like web development and digital marketing expertise to help grease your digital marketing journey!
