Landing page design

How do you go about building effective landing pages?

The first step is to be humble. Remember, it’s the customer who decides what makes an effective landing page design, not you - until you’ve tested your idea, you won’t know whether it’s any better than my six year old daughter’s.

From which you’ll gather that testing is essential to the process of creating effective landing pages.

Where do you start?

By using the tried and tested techniques of the old fashioned direct marketers. These include:

• Compelling headlines that draw people into your copy
• Benefits not features
• Positive imagery
• Clear calls to action
• Testimonials and case studies for reassurance
• Bonuses to build value
• Guarantees
• Time limited offers.

When you have two landing pages with one variable, you can ‘A/B test’ them, trying out one variable at a time. Let’s say you’ve identified keywords that are attracting lots of visitors but few conversions. By testing and optimising elements such as headline, layout, call to action button colour and imagery (family holiday/family in garden) we know of campaigns where conversions have increased by as much as 165%.

A/B testing has its limits because it’s one variable at a time, which means it takes time.

More sophisticated marketers use multivariate testing which allows them to test multiple variables simultaneously and deduce which elements and combinations of elements achieve the best conversion rates.

Here are five landing page testing tips:

• Grab attention in seconds. Make it crystal clear what you’re offering in the first few lines, especially the headline.
• Fewer options works best. The more choices you offer, the greater the potential for confusion. People are more and more impatient - if they don’t see something relevant and inviting instantly, they’re likely to hit the back button and explore another search result.
• Your headline should reflect your ad copy. It provides reassurance that the visitor is in the right place.
• Resist the temptation to be clever - clarity wins every time.
• Don’t use your slogan or approaches that work offline on the assumption that they’ll work online.

FIND OUT MORE

To discuss how we can help you develop effective landing pages, call Paul on 0845 303 3001.