Before you start to launch your online marketing campaign, you’ll need to finish the tasks of search engine placement, Google (and/or Yahoo, MSN, etc.) ads and blog/viral marketing. Do your best to make sure your creative is designed correctly, focus on your click-through rate by planning on going live hoping to bring a large number of targeted traffic flowing to your site.
The above sounds good, however even after you successfully bring a customer to your Website, there is still a chance that the transaction (conversion) can be lost, because of unforeseen Website functionality and usability issues causing your customer to lose interest.
There are simple things you can do in order to earn trust. For example, always make sure that your privacy policy information is easily found, and test your online forms to make sure they process transactions correctly.
But you still have more work to do.
Conversion Rate:
When customers visits your Website, make certain that they know exactly what it is you want them to do… for example buy a product or service, or even subscribing to your newsletter. It is very important to make it clear as to what “action” you want your customers take. Then only after an online visitor takes that action, is when you’ll have a qualified “conversion”. Ultimately, you and your Website is considered successful only if you have a high “conversion rate. There are many ways of attracting online traffic to your Website, however to convert traffic in to conversion requires skills, experience and great “landing pages”.
Landing Page:
A landing page is the Webpage your online visitors come to initially, after clicking on a links (usually from paid ads). The first purpose of your landing page is to create enough interest for your online visitors to stay long enough to understand what you want them to do (what action to take). For example, you may want them to complete and submit an online form (researchers have found out that majority of people do not like forms), provide personal information (again, researchers say that most people will not provide accurate email address or other personal information), or buy a product or service. Technically it may seem easy to create landing pages, however as you can imagine the reality is that there will most likely be challenges in enticing your online visitors to take your desired action. This is where thorough understanding of landing pages (along with skills and experience) will be extremely important. If done correctly, landing pages will help you convince more people to take specific action, even if they normally would hesitate and perhaps not even do. Landing pages will help noticeably increase your conversion rate.
Put yourself in your online visitors/users place, and you’ll see that most of them do not come to your landing page noticing every single piece of your landing page’s design and HTML-related codes… basically they want good information so they can quickly find answers to their questions and concerns.
Your landing page must answer some basic questions immediately upon visit, or else the online visitors will get distracted and abandon your landing page. For example, they would want to know if your Website content is relevant to their needs, Webpage looks and feels as they had expected, should they hit the back button and leave your landing page, can they trust your landing page (Website and company), and most importantly if they can quickly get what they really wanted when they visited your landing page.
Once again, think if you were the online visitor, would you take action. This is very important, and is mostly dependant on your marketing copy/content and sales pitch. Make sure you have plenty information available for the visitors - but do not clutter the Webpage. For example, make sure you have a good intro, content, product and service information, and lots of testimonials. Make sure the landing page is pleasing to the eye and that the design theme is appropriate for your industry (including logo, colors and layout). Look at your landing page from the online visitor’s point of view and make all the changes as needed before making it live.
Remember to test for reliability of your sever and web applications that support the landing pages, because you may lose conversions even after the online visitors take action. Meaning any technical flaw in your landing page and Website functionality and usability may still cause you to lose the conversion. Also, make sure you have an easily accessible privacy policy on all your Website pages. And test all your online forms multiple times for functionality.
How to design a landing page:
First and most important thing to do is to know exactly what action you want your visitors take. You will not be able to design a landing page properly without knowing exactly what will constitute a “conversion”. Have a clear definition of conversion first.
Investigate whatever it is that you are planning on offering on your landing page. Research as much as possible and know the demographic. Get a good feel for you’re your visitors are really looking for. Do your best to find out what offers will work out best. For example, tempting introductory offers can get you high conversion, and then convert those in to upgraded conversions. Write down the profile of your ideal customer and online visitor, so it will be easier for you to focus the actual design of your landing page. Once you have the mentioned profile, then don’t lose focus of it as you build your landing page. Just think that the landing page is only focused for the profile you’ve so carefully written. Do not get distracted, because if you make the landing page generic then your landing page is sure to fail.
Remember that your ads, if done/written correctly, will bring visitors to your landing page, whom potentially match the profile. Such visitors expect to see specific and targeted information on your landing page. So stay on target and do not lose focus.
Keep your design as simple as possible. Take out any distractions, meaning any design element that is not really “needed”. Remember the profile discussed above, so your people visiting your landing page are there for a targeted purpose, and are looking for specific information.
Another important fact to remember is that the landing page much be relevant to the ad that lead the visitors to your landing page. For example, if your ad has a header that states “Laptops at Half the Price”, then you should repeat that in the header of your landing page, or if the ad banner is yellow, orange and blue, then your landing page should follow the same theme. Basically, you want to make sure that the visitors to your landing page know that they landed on the right place.
It is safe and a good idea to exclude all top, bottom, left and right navigation links from the landing page. Remember that the landing page is not meant to be a normal Webpage. A landing page can basically viewed as an electronic flyer, which is targeted for a specific purpose, so if any link on the page is irrelevant to the main content of the landing page you must remove it.
The main purpose of the landing page is to keep your visitor focused and get them to take the action you want them to, and ultimately increasing your conversion rate. Whatever you are offering your visitors must be their focus until they take the action.
It would also be safe to assume that most people have their monitor screen resolution set to minimum of 800×600 and maximum of 1024×768, then pay attention to what displays on the page without scrolling up or down (never left or right). So it would be a good idea to make your tables fluid (not fixed) using percent widths. You want the main content to display on the page when the visitors first come to your landing page, without scrolling down. It would be a good idea to request an action on the first view of the landing page. Provide enough information for the visitor to be able to make the decision and take the action, or at least continue reading the remainder of the landing page. Otherwise you’re the visitors will hit their browser’s back button without hesitation.
Your landing page has to make it easy for your online visitors to take action and convert, so it would be a good idea to have multiple calls to the action you want the visitors to take. Meaning if your content is long, then you would want to include the call to action at about every one and a half screen page.
Get creative and use every possible design element to lead the eye towards the call-to-action. You can even use the whitespace to your advantage. The more experience and skill you have in this area the quicker you will be able to accomplish your goal. Use large fonts, and large images to make your landing pages appear smaller. Don’t lose focus, or you may end up distracting the eye to the point that your visitor will end up dealing with a horrible headache. Always be thoughtful and carefully choose the perfect place for your creative graphics and images.
Another technique used by professionals is creating a focal point near the center of the screen, where graphics, images and/or large fonts are carefully placed in order to lead the eye towards the call-to-action. In a landing page it is not a good idea to have sidebars, so eliminate them. You do not want the eye to pull away from the main content.
Test your online forms and test them again multiple times. Make sure they function correctly. Also, the faster the landing page loads the better, and the faster the form processes the information is as important. Basically, optimize your landing page in every way you can, and make sure the online form is quick and easy to complete. When creating your online form, keep focus on the essentials, and let go of the less important form fields. It is proven that the shorter forms generate the highest conversion rates. For example if your form is for the visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, then only ask for the email address. If needed, you can always provide them the option of updating the rest of their information once they have successfully subscribed.
This is very important… Never use misleading ads. The content of the landing page must always confirm what was stated in the ad. Your visitors are smart, and will feel tricked and leave your landing page faster than you can say “sorry”.
One of the most important tasks prior to launching your landing page is to test, test and test again. Once you feel your landing page is complete, contact your colleagues and friends to help you test every aspect of your landing page. Ask them to inform you of any bugs, and also feedback for landing page improvements. It is recommended to create a checklist for your test team to follow, so you can keep the testing process organized and thorough. In your checklist you can ask your test team to list the first, second and third things they noticed when first visited your landing page, what they see on the first screen view of the landing page, etc.
A landing page is worth every dollar and every minute invested in it, and a great landing page is worth a million times more! Are you currently averaging five or less online leads per day? How would you like to generate five, ten, twenty times that, or even more? Better conversion rate means more online leads for you and your organization. It’s absolutely possible, and we’ll help you achieve your online marketing goals.
Contact us for a free consultation today.