What is a landing page?
A landing page, simply put, is an attractive, elegant, and clean page that immediately grabs the attention of your site visitors.
When built innovatively, a landing page can act as the cornerstone of a successful online marketing website campaign.
Why all the fuss over them?
“Landing pages are the new direct marketing, and everyone with a website is a direct seller.” -Seth Godin
The landing page is a place where conversions happen. Having an effective landing page can turn your website into a money maker.
According to Marketing Sherpa, 68% of B2B companies use those pages to get new leads for future conversions.
A business that makes $1,000 a day could lose more than $25,000 a year if the landing page is slow to respond, says internet marketing guru Neil Patel.
Here’s an example that’s old, but still demonstrates the importance of building a landing page well. In 2010, President Obama was able to raise an additional $60 million ONLY by A/B testing the page that was created for a particular campaign.
Remember: You only have a couple of seconds to make or break the deal.
So…give it all you’ve got!
What makes a landing page work as a conversion machine? What are the best elements to incorporate into your lead capture page to get even the most reluctant visitor to your site to vote for you?
To answer these questions, let’s take a look at seven of the top things to consider when designing your landing page.
7 Ways to Captivate Users with Landing Pages
1. Create compelling headlines
Your page title is the first thing your visitors will see and read. Therefore, it makes sense to create an impactful headline that will instantly impact them.
Years ago, Basecamp swapped out their landing page based on standard software features/benefits for an image of a real customer.
Basecamp turned the headline into a quote summarizing the top benefits the client’s company received.
The result was a massive increase in conversion rate by 102.5%.
Here are some tips on how to create impactful headlines.
• Be useful
When writing your landing page title, remember to connect with your visitors’ fears and desires.
According to Kissmetrics, Carelogger increased their conversion rate by 31% when their headline focused on the fear and desire of their target audience.
• Be urgent
Encourage users to act right now by providing a deadline or giving some useful offers. This strategy can easily increase your reader base and compel them to take action.
• Command Warning
Your words must provoke emotion among your users. It is always advisable to choose vivid adjectives for this purpose.
Some power words you can use are:
• Amazing
• Never seen before
• High prices
• Force
2. Use videos to tell your story
Landing pages with videos can increase your conversion rate by almost 80%, according to EyeView Digital. Also, recent statistics reveal that 95% of users retain the messages in the videos.
Videos provide passive participation. With minimal effort, visitors can figure out exactly what you want to convey.
Many marketers don’t know what a heat map is. So CrazyEgg hired the Demo Duck team to point out the reasons why small businesses need more than Google Analytics to improve their conversions.
Do you think visitors will leave this page?
Never.
Some important points to keep in mind when creating a video on a landing page are:
Use an enticing thumbnail to engage and convert your audience.
Put your video above the fold.
Keep your video meaty enough to be interesting to your target audience.
Try to include a transcript of the video. Some people may want to watch the video, others may want to read it, and others would love the idea of doing both.
What is the secret?
According to Entrepreneur, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a great video equals 24k words per second.
People love videos. The Guardian even claims that video will be the future of content marketing.
Cisco claims that video will account for approximately 79% of consumer Internet traffic by 2020.
3. Create a 3D effect using parallax scrolling
With the help of parallax scrolling, the background of your landing page moves at a reduced speed compared to the foreground.
This feature results in a 3D effect when visitors scroll down the page.
What’s good about hover effect?
It allows you to tell your story on your landing page. It allows your visitors to know more about your services or products.
When you use effective copy with parallax scrolling, the result will be a very persuasive and professional page.
4. Signs of trust
The best landing pages make proper use of trust signals.
Why do they use this tactic?
Trust signals tell visitors that your brand and offers are credible. These signals can take various forms such as testimonials, endorsements from previous clients, etc.
FiveStars has done a fantastic job of providing trust indicators on their home page. The company displays “proven results” and customer testimonials, as well as personal information about website activity.
Another robust tool that acts as a trust token is trust badges. These are nothing more than logos of well-known companies that you have worked with in the past.
When using trust signals, always include the following:
• Customer recommendations
• Third party seals
• Trust Badges
• Privacy Policy
5. Use gifs to demonstrate your products
Demonstrating the way your product works is extremely important.
Gifs explain how your product can be used in a faster and more persuasive way compared to videos.
Marketers are now realizing the importance of Gifs. They have become the go-to feature for businesses looking for better social media engagement.
Since Facebook allows brands to post Gifs and Twitter also implements autoplay videos, they definitely deserve a spot on your landing page.
Gifs are the best substitutes for videos on landing pages.
In fact, they are much more cost effective compared to videos when it comes to visually demonstrating a service or product.
Gifs are also gaining popularity, particularly in this year’s mobile marketing trends, so you should keep an eye on them.
PineGrow uses a Gif on its home page to explain how users can build responsible websites faster.
6. Give offers
An offer is something you give your visitors in exchange for them doing what you want.
Offers can include discounts, coupons, a free version of your product, a free trial, an equivalent gift, or a white paper.
There are some strategies that you can use.
A website that pays bills may offer users $10 for the initial bill they pay. Users would have to sign up for the service and link their accounts to it.
A consulting company might offer a free 60-minute consultation, which could be a meeting to describe how the agency can help people.
Industrial Strength Marketing provides potential customers with a free guide to creating mobile-optimized websites.
7. Put the title and the form in two columns
By dividing the screen into two columns, you can display multiple page elements with the same degree of prominence.
Do you think your landing page form deserves the same attention as your headline or subheadline? Can they have a cumulative impact on your visitors?
While there’s no exact formula for creating an ideal landing page, there are some common rules of thumb to improve your chances of creating one that stands out.
Are you looking to achieve a high conversion rate this year?
Then don’t forget to follow the steps above when creating your landing pages.