Sep 11 2007
11 ways to improve conversions from your landing page
Landing page is perhaps the most ignored and neglected part of online marketing campaigns. Marketers spend million of dollars in trying to bring traffic to their websites but most of them do not spend any time on improving the quality of their landing page. Studies show that most people judge a website in the first 5-10 seconds of their visit and based on that judgement they abandon or continue surfing the website. This is where landing pages are important. Landing page is the element that provide users a first hand impression of your site. This further results in users sticking or leaving your website.
Designing a landing page that meets your objectives is a tedious process. It involves defining your requirements and having a clarity on what you want a visitor to do on the landing page. Getting a visitor to take an action is the basic prerequisite from any landing page. This is also known as a conversion in online marketing methodology. A conversion happens when a click on a ad leads to some valuable user action such as a lead, purchase, registration, signup, or view of a important page. But how do you make sure that a person visiting your landing page actually converts? There are a number of things online marketers can do to improve overall ROI from their landing pages. Following are 11 ways that will help you improve conversions from your landing pages:-
1. Call to action - There should be a definite call to action on your landing page. Call to action can be best compared to a roadsign, where the user is directed to perform an activity. Without a proper call to action phrase or buttons, the visitor tend to get confused and is not able to engage with the landing page, which distracts him from performing any activity on the landing page. Examples of call to action can be Register Today, Buy Now, Order Now etc.
2. Connect with creatives - You can choose to have a connect between your creatives and the landing page. For example, you can have the same look and feel of your creatives as the landing page. Use the same colors, fonts, pictures and most importantly similar call to action.
3. Information in points and bullets - Always present all information in points and bullets. People have a habit of not reading entire paragraphs on the Internet. They want to go through your content faster. Representing information in points and bullets help them to read important things while weeding out not so important info.
4. Use facts and figures - Facts and figures have always been a great idea to use on the landing page. People get impressed by facts and figures easily. If your brand is No.1 in a particular area, its important to tell it to your users. If you sell 1000 items daily, its a good idea to include it on your landing page. Similarly you can include other interesting trivia about your brand which actually helps you to convince your visitor about the quality of your brand.
5. Use pictures - There is a very old saying, A picture is worth a 1000 words. It holds true even in the case of a landing page. If you sell T-shirts, you would want to show your best T-shirts on the landing page. Pictures helps the user to understand your product. Even if you sell a book on the Internet, its important to show the book cover on your landing page. If you sell holiday packages, you should never mind showing a picturesque scenery on the landing page.
6. Testimonials - Testimonials helps you to connect your future customers with your existing customers. Most importantly it builds a trust factor for your brand. Before trying a new product many people often ask friends and relatives who are already using that product. Testimonials work similarly in the sense that they tell your would be customers that your existing customers are satisfied with your product. Moreover, your existing customers feel happy when you show their faces and comments on your landing page.
7. Maintain consistency in communication - Consistency is critical when it comes to landing page communication. You can not have two-three different communications on the same landing page. Asking the user to do more than one thing at a time is as good as asking him to do nothing. Therefore, the communication needs to be focussed and to the point.
9. Use analytics software - All modern online marketers should definitely think of using analytics software on their landing page. This help the marketers to understand user behaviour on the landing page. Things like bounce rate, time spent on landing page etc. are critical to any landing page success. Some of the analytics software that one can use for this purpose are webtrends, google analytics and clicktracks.
10. Use bookmark/forward to friend buttons - It’s not a bad idea to use bookmark and forward to friend buttons on your landing page. This way a user can engage with your landing page later whenever he has the time to do it. Also, forward to friend buttons help in spreading your landing page URL to new users. Thus, your landing page acts like a viral and you pay nothing to catch new users.
11. Ask the user to perform more actions after the thankyou page - This can be a little tough to implement but can act as a great idea for marketers with multiple or similar websites. Once a visitor reaches your thankyou page after performing the required action on your landing page, you can still ask the person to do more stuff on your website. This way you ensure that the visitor engage with your site from the first day. Also, if you have multiple websites, you can redirect the user to your 2nd website once the user has already made a conversion on your primary site. This will work best if you have two closely related websites.
These are some ways which have personally worked for me in the past. If you know any other ways for improving landing page conversions, please feel free to add those in comments section.
