Designing Landing Pages For Higher Conversions

Most websites have a conversion problem over website traffic. High conversion rates at a low cost per conversion are possible if your website has a well-thought landing page. Constructing an effective landing page isn’t rocket science but it definitely requires some thinking and action. You need to figure out how to design a good landing page that gives your customers what they want. That means thinking not only about colours and designing but also content that will give the visitors value.

What is a Landing page?

A landing page is known to be a standalone web page, designed uniquely for a marketing or advertising campaign. Its a page on your website where a visitor “lands” after they click on a link in an email, or ads from Google, Bing or various other social media websites used for brand promotion.

Why do you need a landing page?
According to stats of Hubspot, 48% of digital marketers craft a new landing page for each new campaign. Knowing the fact that every online business has a specific purpose why they require a landing page. Simply putting it, you need an effective landing page to reach a particular goal, whether its building brand value, growing your email list or making profits. Here are some of the main benefits that you can gain for your online business by using specific landing pages for your marketing campaigns:
1. Builds positive first impressions: Did you know, an impression is formed in the 1st/20th of a second? An eye-tracking study highlighted that it takes 2.6 seconds for a user’s eyes to land on the part of your website that will be remembered. Landing pages can hence help you make your audience feel good in order to stick around and take the leap from reader to customer. Keeping it short, people won’t stay long on your website, so first impressions count.
2. Opportunity to foster trust factor: It’s a proven fact that infographics and videos can attract your visitors and encourage them emotionally to take action. That’s because 40% of people respond better to visual information than to text. It makes for positive user experience.
3. Increase in conversion rate: It is cumbersome to calculate conversion leads from a blog page compared to a well-designed landing page. This is mainly because a blog may have various affiliated links along with the head topic where-as the landing page has just ONE purpose.

How to create a landing page that converts:

Before you even begin to chalk down your landing page, you need to think, what you want your visitors to finally do? Set your goal right, it’s ideal to work backward. Define what are you actually looking at? Example: grow your email list? Promote a new product? Promote a discount on a subscription service? Once you have your goal ready, think about how you will put forth this message. Answer the question, how can your offering solve someone’s problems? Once this is done you proceed to the next step i.e. keyword research. Keyword search is, what do people type in the search bar while they are looking for your products or services.
Once you have your goal, message, and keywords, you can start putting your landing page together. All effective landing pages have nine common elements. Let’s take a look at each of those elements in detail.

1. Catchy headline:
This is where your selling starts. From interest generation to attention-grabbing to finally customer engagement. Let’s look at some value proven tips to keep your visitor on your website longer through a captivating headline:
a. As a digital marketer, you must ensure your tagline is all worth the visitor’s attention.
b. The tagline must incorporate slighted details about what your products and services are.
c. Follow the KISS rule while crafting an effective headline. Do not make it as long as a paragraph. We recommend it to be under 10 words or sometimes can contain 15 words, do not cross this word limit if you are looking at efficient headlines.

2. Compelling sub-heading:
The second most critical element while designing a high conversion landing page is crafting an informative and effective sub-heading. If this gets your audience to stay on the website, you have designed it well. Put together, the headline and the sub-heading makes up the first impression for your brand/company. You must keep in mind the following pointers while you make your sub-heading:
a. It should be placed right below the headline (as if it’s an extension or brief explanation of the headline.)
b. Some influencing words or phrases must be used to persuade the visitor to browse your website for a longer period of time.
c. This can contain details of your services or products offered.

This is an example of designing catchy headlines and compelling sub-headings on your website landing page.

The Headline is “A Digital Marketing Agency you can trust” i.e. 7 words and the sub-heading includes persuasive words like professional, creative, driving business performance and so on which allures the visitor to browse the website further for their respective requirements. The visitor will most likely press the “meet the team button” as his/her first website navigation.

3. Visual Content:
Incorporating pictures/graphics on your landing page is the next critical element. Did you know, the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text? This implies that the visitor will be keener to see a picture on your landing page and will immediately feel a connection. Some basic picture pointers you must adhere to:
a. The picture must be of high-quality.
b. The picture must be relevant to the business/service/products offered.
c. The picture should not be too tiny. It should be large enough to grab attention.
We do not recommend you to pick up last-minute photographs from google. Instead, you can consider browsing relevant graphics from free stock image websites or get your graphics team to design a fresh graphic for your landing page. If pictures are the first things your visitor sees on your landing page it is possible that the copy/content can be sided away.

This is an example of how you can incorporate visual content related to your business.

A digital marketing agency used this graphic on its landing page, which depicts a man in front of a desktop or a laptop. This ensures the graphic is relevant to the business and shall grab the attention of the interested visitors.

In the case of a product-driven business, your product photos shall work wonders, as it allows people to see the products if not physically at least virtually. 

4. Clear product/service explanation:
If your potential clients have not understood your product offering or services clearly, you have lost them. Only when your products and services claim to solve some problems of the visitor will he be interested to learn more about your brand. Hence, we recommend you to be clear and explain in detail. While you communicate your product and services details, you must keep in mind:
a. Either blend the product details with your headline or keep it independent of the tagline. Do not try both. Take a call.
b. Craft your explanation in a way to benefit the visitor.
c. Choose titles very discreetly:
For a product-driven businesses use titles: Product name, Product Code, Features, Benefits, Price, Testimonials, Product rating, etc.
For service-driven businesses use titles: List your main services with a line or 2 explained under each service category you offer.

This is an example of how a service-driven business i.e. a digital marketing agency communicates its services offered very clearly.

Here all the services are titled in simple user-friendly language with a one-liner under each. That’s not all, post the one-liner explanation if the user is keen to know more about the services, the visitor can click on the “Read More” button. Here you ensure to leave no questions/doubts in the minds of the visitor about your products and services.

5. Mention something about Agony:
Here is the logic behind designing a small paragraph that talks about the visitor’s agony/pain. A human mind is attuned to avoid the agony and that where your business comes into play with a solution or relief. Some things to keep in mind while designing content expressing agony/pain.
a. Be sure to clearly state the painful statement as your products or services are like a remedy. Note: Never mention a problem without a solution. This means a problem statement must be followed by a solution statement.
b. As we know agony is a powerful human element, backing it up with real-life testimonials where the agony statement is mentioned.

This is an example of a digital marketing agency how it shares a displeasing story.

The text explains the agony of the ever-changing marketing and advertising trends. In this digital era is the need of the hour where everyone has access to mobile phones and the internet. Hence, why you as a brand must consider investing in digital marketing services before your competitors eat the cherry on the cake.

6. Follow it up with something pleasing content:
Humans are not only agony-avoiding creatures but also who look out for pleasure. There are many ways to communicate this. The most efficient medium is to communicate how your products and services meet emotional needs over and above its core functional role. For example, a Pharmaceutical brand sells a muscle pain-relieving gel/cream. Other than relieving yourself from pain from a particular body part it also gives you the freedom to move, joy and energy.

Here is an example of how a service-oriented business can add pleasing content to make an effective landing page.

Here the agency has used factual data to ignite the feeling of pleasure. The statement “your business is visible 24/7 – 365 days” hence the visitor to feel business-oriented round the clock. This also opens gates to tap customers beyond the geographical limits of your business place which also gives him a higher reach.

Over and above from the above-mentioned points, you must also ensure you follow the golden rules of content writing before you finalize your landing page copy/content. Now that you know the numerous elements that go into an effective landing page, you are geared up to unleash your landing page for higher conversions.