How to Create a Luscious Landing Page

July 3rd 2016 | By Steve Grant

If your promotional strategy involves email marketing or clickable adverts, then knowing how to create a brilliant landing page is essential.

Have you ever clicked or tapped through an online ad or a promotional email and found yourself on a website’s home page, or some other cluttered page that doesn’t inspire trust or instantly reassure you that you’re in the right place? What did you do? No doubt you’ll say you clicked back. That’s precisely what visitors arriving through your ads or emails are going to do, unless you’ve sent them to a tailored, great looking landing page.

What are Landing Pages?

Landing pages are what sit between click-throughs and sales, sign-ups or enquiries. They are vital elements of any conversion toolkit. Without a well-structured landing page, money spent on email campaigns and pay per click or display advertising will be money wasted: it really is as clear cut as that.

So what does the perfect landing page contain, what does it not contain, and how does it look? And where do you begin putting one together?

Landing pages are what sit between click-throughs and sales, sign-ups or enquiries.

Start with Goal Setting

Let’s start by answering the last question first. The place to begin is by setting goals. We’ve said it before and we will say it again: never start any marketing initiatives without having a clear set of goals. What do you want visitors to do once they find themselves on your landing page? Make a purchase? Download a guide? Sign up for a free trial? Once you have ascertained what you want your visitors to do, you can guide them to doing it.

Define Your Audience

So we’re almost at the stage of beginning the creation of our perfect landing page, but before we do, there are two more considerations before we get off the starting blocks. The first is, who are we looking to attract? Defining a target audience is imperative, and understanding the individual needs of that audience is just as important so that you can tailor your messages and offers.

This leads on to thinking about whether different ad groups or audiences need different landing pages. The more tailored the pages, the higher conversion rate you’ll enjoy.

We’re ready now to start looking at what makes a great landing page.

Make it Flow

Firstly, think about flow. If you are searching for something online and you come across an advert that appears to meet your needs, when you click on it, what you find after that click needs to correspond, otherwise you’ll instantly think, why am I here? Use the same keywords on your landing page as you do in your ads (or email campaign text) and make sure everything flows beautifully and stays relevant. Don’t, for example, talk about fence repairs in your advert then direct visitors to a page about gates or a general page about fencing: be specific.

Make your message flow consistently from advert or email through to your landing page.

Great Content Pays Dividends

Next up, get the content right. Your words need to inspire trust and compel action. At the same time, you don’t want to overload visitors with too much information, and you definitely don’t want to go on about how great you are. Instead, switch the focus onto the visitor. Be clear about how what you offer will benefit them. Be relevant and deliver useful material that will be appreciated.

We just mentioned that it is important not to bombard visitors with too much information, and this is key also when it comes to the overall design of the landing page. Imagine landing on a chaotic page where you feel like you don’t know where to look or click next – what would you do? What you really want is a nice, clear pathway towards your destination.

Mark out a Clear Path

So mark out this pathway: clearly. Provide nice, strong calls to action towards your goals and keep to as few steps as possible. And never direct visitors away through outbound links. Make forms as short as possible – keep the amount of information you request to a minimum – you can always ask for more afterwards.

Don’t forget, web visitors are in a hurry. They scan rather than read. So think big, bright buttons; arrows; gleaming testimonials; relevant images; bullet point lists and well-written, bold headings with compelling sub headings are all good features to include on a landing page. Video also offers major benefits.

Mark out a clear path for your visitors so they can reach where they need to be with ease, allowing you to achieve your goals.

So there we have some points to follow towards creating a great landing page. But before we sign off, here are a few bonus tips.

Bonus Tips

Firstly, make sure your landing pages work across all types of device. If visitors can happily view your page on their mobile, tablet and PC then your conversion rate will receive an even greater boost. Secondly, make sure you have a process in place for tracking your conversion rate so that you can measure the success of your campaigns. 

Next, keep testing! A/B testing is a great way to work out which of your pages are performing best. And finally, always follow-up by saying thank you! There’s nothing worse than submitting a form or signing up for something and then not receiving any sort of instant confirmation or gratitude. You can use your thank you page to cross sell more products or services or direct people to useful information on your website to further hold their attention.

Need assistance with landing page copy writing and design? Get in touch!