Landing pages are a key component of your lead generation funnel.
A landing page may be the first experience someone has with a brand. A good landing page with relevant information and a solid layout can make the difference between someone wanting to engage further or bouncing and never returning again. If you want to keep your landing page visitors around long enough to convert them, you have to give them a compelling reason to stay. Here are 6 steps that are crucial to optimizing your landing pages for higher conversion rates.
1. Create a delightful user experience (UX)
Even the best landing page design won’t convert a visitor if your page loads too slowly, the layout isn’t mobile responsive, or your forms are poorly designed. You need to capture attention and build excitement the moment a visitor lands on your page.
There are multiple aspects to consider that focus on user experience:
- Page speed: how quickly and smoothly your website loads determines your landing page's impact on the user experience. If the page load is too slow they will click away and go somewhere else.
- Mobile friendliness: making your landing page design responsive for mobile users minimizes bounce rates. Test your design on different browsers and devices to ensure it’s working the way you need it to.
- User behavior: examining this helps you identify the barriers that might stop users from completing a form and the hooks that persuade them to convert.
- Optimized Content: your landing page content needs to address your users’ key pain points.
2. Clear value proposition
Your value proposition is a short and compelling summary of the main feature or benefit that your brand’s product or service offers to customers. You may know what your value proposition is, but are you effectively communicating that to your visitors? Do they understand your product's value the way you do? And will it convince them to take the action you want them to?
Here are three things you need to get right before you publish your value proposition statement on your landing page:
- Understand your ideal customer: the best way to optimize your landing page is to really know your customers. What’s driving them to your page, convincing them to stay on it, and stopping them from finding what they need? What are their major pain points and how do they discuss and search for solutions? The answers should guide what you offer on your landing page and how that translates into your value proposition.
- Address specific features: Focus on one primary benefit and include your product's qualitative or quantitative results. How will your value proposition specifically solve the pain points of your visitor?
- Detail your competitive advantage: what makes your brand different from competitors and how is that beneficial to your users? Use your unique strengths to convince your visitors to stay longer and take action on your landing page.
3. Attention grabbing copy
Landing page copy is the easiest thing on the landing page checklist to change—but the hardest thing to get right. This is your one chance to clearly communicate the value of your product or service.
Your copy needs to grab attention, communicate your value proposition, and motivate action quickly.
When optimizing your landing page copy, check the following:
- Headlines: headings and subheadings should grab attention and communicate your value proposition. Your copy should be SEO friendly and focused on one topic. They need to describe a clear benefit and relate directly to your offer and CTA.
- Readability: ensure your landing page content is easy to read—keep it simple. Don't overwhelm your audience with too much text or highly complex information.
- Urgency: your landing page copy should motivate visitors to act now. Persuasively describe your offer’s features and benefits. Utilize compelling incentives like countdown timers, limited-time offers, and exclusivity to encourage visitors to convert.
- Conversational tone: depending on your offer and product, the tone of voice of your content can make a real difference in landing page conversion rate. Leaving out industry jargon and using short sentences, active voice, and informal transition words implies a more conversational tone.
4. Compelling CTAs
When people visit your landing page, your CTA opens the door to conversion and walks visitors right through it. Your CTA should resonate with the rest of the content on the page to entice visitors to click the button. Know your audience and speak to their pain points to transform each CTA into a valuable asset. Guide the user to an expected action and directly tell them what will happen. No ambiguous button text!
When optimizing your landing page CTAs, check the following:
- Consistency: a good CTA uses action-oriented copy that communicates a clear benefit across the entire landing page by directly supporting your value proposition and reminding visitors what’s on the other side of a click
- Copy: Make your call to action button as specific as possible so visitors know exactly what they’re signing up for. For example, instead of a ‘Submit’ button, try ‘Download our free ebook’ or ‘Signup for a free trial.’
- Colors: CTAs need to be conspicuous on the page so visitors don't overlook them. The button should be easily recognizable as a button. To ensure the button is distinct from the content around it, use a contrasting brand color that stands out from the background to draw their eye in.
- Placement: feature your CTA button prominently above the fold—the top section visitors first see when they arrive on your landing page, so they don't need to scroll down to notice it. You can include multiple CTAs on your landing page if they all lead to the same goal, such as a signup.
5. Straightforward trust indicators
From the moment a visitor lands on your page, you have about five seconds to ensure they trust your brand enough to invest in the product.
It’s important to use these few seconds to communicate your message and build trust with your potential customers.
Pull them in with social proof from reviews and testimonials or recent case studies.
Alleviate objections by including an FAQ section with quick answers to commonly asked questions.
6. Short and easy-to-use forms
Your lead generation form needs to be optimized to be effective. It should be an easy way for your visitors to take action, whether it’s located within your page or appears as a popup.
Check the following to make sure your forms capture leads instead of driving them away:
- Form length: when designing a signup form, remember to keep it as short as possible. Only add fields essential to your campaign. You can gather more detailed information in a questionnaire or survey after they’re added to your pipeline.
- Thank you page: while often overlooked, thank you pages are the perfect place to reinforce your value proposition, make an upsell, or deliver a secondary CTA.
- Autofill: having your form fields auto-populate can help users take action 30% faster.
After taking these 6 crucial steps to improve your landing pages, you should review your analytics to see how well these 6 optimizations have boosted your conversion rates. Creating high conversion landing pages doesn’t have to be a resource-heavy, time-intensive task. Most CRM tools like Hubspot, ConvertKit and Mailchimp include easy to use landing page builders.
If your website is on the Webflow platform you'll be happy to know that all those tools integrate directly with your Webflow website. You can also use the Webflow CMS to create a landing page design system and keep all your landing page development in house. If you're not in a DIY frame of mind, check out our landing page design and development packages. We'd love to help you grow your business and reach your goals!