How to Build a Better Landing Page

• Your headline should be straight to the point and persuasive. Address how what you are offering can help your potential customers solve an issue or improve their lives.
• Include keywords in the headline and subheading, but don’t force it. Keywords are valuable, but addressing your audiences’ needs in a natural way is more important.
• Figure out what makes your business unique compared to others like it and promote those features.

2. Strong & Clear Calls-to-Action

The call-to-action is the ultimate objective of the page; the action you want your customers to take before they leave your site. Think about what customer actions are the most important to your business. Depending on what you do, this could be getting the phone to ring, getting appointment forms filled out, or selling a product. If you have a larger investment item, like a software as a service, your customer might need more information before deciding; in that case, your CTA could be a link that takes them to more information or different plans. Pick one action to feature on each landing page and make it the focal point.

• Your CTA should almost always be above-the-fold. If you have a longer landing page, it doesn’t hurt to have the CTA appear multiple times on the page.
• Use strong verbiage for your CTAs, such as “Get Started Today” or “Call Now”. These tend to drive action better than simple “Submit” buttons.
• Make eye-catching CTAs. Whether you have a button or a clickable phone number, make sure it stands out from the rest of your page’s content. Utilize colors for contrast and consider different fonts as long as they aren’t too distracting.

3. Mobile Optimization & Page Speed

Smartphones are a part of everyday life now; this means a large portion of your potential customer base are using mobile devices for research and purchasing decisions. Google has also put its support behind the mobile trend in a big way. Google has started using the mobile version of web pages to establish ranking on the search results pages; meaning your page’s mobile performance determines when and where your pages show on Google.

Page speed is another huge ranking factor for both desktop and mobile pages. The likelihood of a customer leaving your page increases with every second that it takes that page to load. Fortunately, Google provides some tools that highlight issues which could be slowing down your site; their PageSpeed Insights is a good example.

Landing pages need to be designed with all of these factors in mind. A page that delivers a concise, quick, legible answer to a potential customer is more likely to get them to act.

• Make sure your headlines, key information, and CTAs are visible and readable above-the-fold for all devices. Responsive website design is a good way to cover as many devices as possible but may require some tweaking.
• Follow best practices for page speed and mobile-first indexing.
• Use the tools that Google provides to measure your site’s performance and troubleshoot issues.
• If a form is your CTA, try to keep it short. Ask only for information you absolutely need. Consider limiting the form to 3-4 items (name, email/phone number, the reason for messaging, etc.) then reach back out to the customer via another method.

4. Proofreading & Troubleshooting

Before publishing your landing pages, read through the copy carefully. Ideal landing page copy will be easy to read, engaging for the visitor, and free of any misspellings or grammatical errors. It is easier to convert a page visitor to a customer if they don’t have to decrypt any readability issues.

In addition to proofreading, test every clickable element on the page. Every button should be working correctly when clicked, every link should be going to the intended destination, and every form should gather the information you need. If you make updates to the page, re-test everything before you publish the updates. Remember, the main purpose of the landing page is to generate leads; if the elements which gather customer data are broken, then your landing page can’t do its job.

5. A/B Testing

Testing is critical to the success of any landing page. Create and test landing page variations with different headlines, images, CTAs, etc. Focus on one different element at a time to see what works best. You may find that certain variations work better for different audiences; this can be very beneficial for PPC campaigns.

Other things to consider:

• Images & Videos – Multimedia content helps to keep visitors engaged with your landing page. The right images, infographics, or videos will boost the credibility of your page and drive visitors to act. Keep media elements relevant to your products and services. Finally, remember to optimize any media to minimize your page load speed.
• Simplicity is Key – Too much information can overwhelm potential customers causing them to leave your page. Remember, an ideal landing page focuses on driving one main action. Try to leave any content or page elements that don’t help the CTA out of the page.
• The power of testimonials – Reviews are powerful confidence builders for potential customers. Selecting the right reviews for your landing page can make or break a business lead. Choose the most relevant and outstanding reviews to feature. For SEO benefits, make sure your reviews have schema markup.
• The Landing Page Experience – As noted above, the ultimate goal of the landing page is getting potential customers to convert. The best way to do that is by focusing on how your business, services, or products can make their lives better. Tout what makes your business great, but do so in a way that shows benefit for your customers.

Conclusion:

Landing pages are valuable assets for drawing in visitors and converting them to customers. The tips above will provide you with the core elements needed to develop effective landing pages. It will take time and testing to learn what works best for your business and customers, but you have the right foundation for a strong start.

If you need more help with landing pages, contact SEO Rocket.