Landing Page best practice – 12 key elements

FACT: Landing pages can dramatically

improve the number of leads and

enquiries you receive from

your marketing.

In my last post, I explained how the key objective of a landing page is to motivate your prospects to volunteer their details (or make a purchase from you in the case of direct sales sites).

Today I’d like to look more closely at what an effective landing page needs to contain.

So how do you encourage your landing page visitors to take action?

The answer – Offer something of real value

It’s vital that your landing page offers something of real use and value to your prospects — either for free or at a low price – to remove any risk or hesitation that the prospect might feel which stops them from taking action.

For service-based companies you can either make one single facet of your service available at a low (or very advantageous) price, or you can use your special reports. These offer advice, tips, how-to information or other informative knowledge that you are probably taking for granted, and keeping locked away in the minds of your key, experienced employees.

These reports (or “white papers” as they are called in many IT circles) should be offered as PDF downloads, available immediately to prospects when they submit their details on your landing page.

Or if you operate a bricks-and-mortar retail store you could offer vouchers which can be printed off (after submitting details) and redeemed in-store. If your retail store also has an e-commerce facility, you could offer a low-priced, popular consumable product at a specially discounted price for a limited time period.

The focus of the text on the landing page needs to be on your offer and the benefits it will bring your prospect by getting their hands on it.

Below are the 12 most critical elements that need to be incorporated into your landing page to help optimise your ability to convert larger numbers of landing page visitors into sales leads or customers:

Checklist – 12 Critical Elements For Landing Page Success

1) Use your most persuasive, benefit-led headline, large and bold at the top of the page.

2) Exclude obvious navigation links to any other pages. If for any reason (e.g. legal or technical reason) you have to link to other pages then consider having them open as separate pop-ups over your current landing page. This helps to keep their focus on the landing page and reduces the risk of them not returning and not taking the action you want. You may want to test having links to your main site (or related pages) at the very bottom of your page — out of sight from the main content on the initial screen visitors see.

3) Make sure your call to action can be seen ‘above the fold’. The call to action panel is the part of the page that asks the prospect to enter their details and usually click a button to submit.

The call to action panel should be high enough up on the page to be visible the moment the page appears in the prospect’s web browser, without them having to scroll down the page.  (If they have to scroll down to respond then again research has shown that a proportion of visitors will miss the call to action and your response rate will suffer).

4) Use easy to read typefaces. Use an easy to read font for the main body text on the page. 10 or 12 point Arial or Verdana, or 12 point Times New Roman or Courier are good fonts. Small font sizes may look “subtle” or more highly designed, but they reduce readership and response.

5) Make sure your Privacy Policy is prominent and easy to read. Ideally this should be positioned very close to the call to action panel, next to the button prospects click to submit their details.

6) Be consistent in the design of your landing page. If you are using display advertising or online advertising with some kind of campaign “theme”, make sure that the page design reinforces the design style of the advertising. This will help prospects recognise your offer and reinforce their interest.

7) Use an image of the author and/or the front of any report you are offering, ideally with a benefit led caption.

8) Don’t be tempted to include more than one product, service or special offer. Keep your proposition to the prospect nice and simple. As soon as you introduce additional offers on the landing page you’ll confuse the purpose of the site and dilute responses.

9) Ask for the minimum information necessary. The more you ask for, the fewer people will fill in the form. So don’t ask for details that are not essential to a first–stage enquiry.

If the next step in your sales process is to communicate via e-mail then you only need their name and e-mail address.

For purchases from a landing page, you should ask for their name and e-mail on the landing page and then redirect then to a secure payment page where they submit full credit card details and address.

You can however, deliberately ask for more information (address and / or company details etc.) to make the lead much more qualified, if it will involve you in significant time or expense to respond to, or to fulfill.

10) Use a relevant and unique web address (domain name) for each landing page. The name you register should either reflect the offer you are making or the benefit of your product or service. For example if your landing page is offering a free report about nutrition – then the landing page web address could be www.FreeNutritionFacts.co.uk or similar. If your landing page sells low cost car parts, register a domain like www.CarParts4Less.com You get the idea.

11) Make your domain name easy to remember and spell. If a prospect sees your landing page in an off-line promotion or advert – make it easy for them to type it into their web browser.  This aspect is less important if you mostly e-mail prospects to drive them to your landing page – but be aware that some e-mail software may not allow the link to be directly clickable, so it’s best to keep the landing page name simple.

12) Make maximum use of your “Thank-You” page. Use the page that usually appears after prospects click the submit button on the call to action panel for some additional purpose. You could use it to upgrade the prospect to a more valuable, enhanced version of your product or service — or to offer additional information to help them get maximum value from their purchase, allow them to access a discount coupon off future purchases, sign-up for a newsletter etc.

Or you could just link to your main web site. Remember, by the time this page appears you’ve already captured their details, so now you’re safe to send them to your main web site.

Here’s an example of a landing page on a leading Natural Health website that demonstrates many of these 12 critical elements.

http://www.mercola.com/Downloads/bonus/discover-the-benefits-of-natto/report.aspx

Cheers,

Richard

 

This blog was written by Richard Lomax & Associates. To contact telephone 01692 538800.
For more examples and free advice visit www.common-sense-marketing.com  or contact sally@common-sense-marketing.com