“Store window are like landing page on the website.” – Angela Ahrendts – Former CEO At Burberry and Former Senior Vice President, Retail, at Apple

A landing page’s very purpose is to offer a potential customer something in exchange for any of his basic information. This can be an email address, phone number, or residential address. It is the page on which a visitor arrives after clicking an ad. Inexperienced business owners and marketers like to direct all the traffic to their homepage, but that’s not a good strategy. Specific landing pages need to be designed for different offers.  An effective landing page is the one which can engage and delight a customer through anything related to the product or the company’s industry. Getting something after filling out a form is akin to make a person trust your brand and become loyal to it. 

Your Goal

What’s your idea of a landing page so that it can make your business grow? It is a newbie mistake not to have a goal for your landing page.

Do you want new leads from it? Or just looking for good traffic that you can move forward to the homepage? But what if not many people are willing to go to your homepage? Before devising complex strategies, define your goals as this will make it easy for you to reach your destination.

Your Competition

Who are you competing against, analyze how they are dealing with their landing pages, and what can you learn from it? Don’t copy their design and strategy as it is, but you can always get some inspiration to start with. But exactly how to start designing the landing page to great effect?

How to Start?

A landing page must offer some information about the product but rather get essential information from the visitors. As mentioned above, it is about enticing visitors to provide the info and then proceed to the home page. In return, a person can get an eBook or link to an event without spending a dime. See the example below to know more, as this is a classic example of how Microsoft does it, time and again.

You can see how smartly Microsoft has offered its visitors a chance to attend the webinar. In a few lines, it explains why the webinar is important for IT professionals and what will be discussed in it. Mentioning the speakers’ names and pictures, the impact is enhanced as visitors get more interested in the webinar. 

A Clean and Organized Design

A clean and organized design has a huge impact on how effective a landing page can become. Think about the factors in the picture below, and you can have a great idea about what you can put on a landing page. 

A simple anatomy of a landing page is mentioned above. From a heading, a short video/picture, CTA, brand name, and testimonials besides the form, it is what constitutes a great landing page. 

A landing page design uses color and images to offer something that can lead to conversions. The contrast between the colors of buttons and that of the background is vital so that they are visible for all the visitors. However, if your goal is to create a truly winning landing page then your have to add video testimonials. While static visuals and image sliders are still working, videos are exactly what users are looking for. Multiple studies confirmed that by adding video testimonials you can dramatically improve the performance of any landing page. However, you need to keep in mind that you need to ensure that all your videos are updated with subtitles since not all your visitors might be in a position of listening to your video messages.

Minimalism

Minimalism in the design of the landing page is another aspect that is often left behind. Think about only the critical factors for a landing page in the picture above and be minimalistic in your approach. Offer everything that can compel the visitor to give all the information you require but nothing extra.  Even at the bottom of the page, you can offer some information but stick to the regular items we see in the footer. Focus on providing a clean and attractive visual for a website that looks the part. Don’t try to overdo a design factor as the landing page doesn’t need it. 

Use of Trust Signals

This is another vital factor as trust signals can make a brand important and worthy in the visitors’ eyes. Testimonials are the oldest form of trust signals any site can put in. Through this, any brand can expect word of mouth to give them every chance to succeed. The like counters for a post on your social media platforms can be displayed here, with the counter increasing steadily, giving the impression of a popular post. 

Even the use of some buttons, which are more or less meaningless in reality, can also make a good impression on most visitors. 

Customize Landing Pages for Specific Audience

The response you will get from one of your best offers will vary greatly from many different sources. For example, the audience from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter will be different from anyone coming to your landing page through a PPC ad or newsletter. That’s why you need to customize your landing page accordingly. Don’t present every visitor with the same version of the landing page. Even a little tweak in terms of content or treatment of the graphics will go a long way in getting their instant attention.

For example, you can devise a strategy to match the landing page copy with a PPC ad. That’s one way to develop a landing page with content using the keywords and text of the PPC ad. After seeing the same language and key phrases as in the ad, your visitors feel assured that they are browsing through an authentic and reliable portal. And they will get the product they want. That’s how conversion can take place with the visitor to get the best deal according to his requirements. 

Test

Finally, after putting up all the efforts, put your landing page to the test. Without being cent percent sure about your landing page’s capability to get visitors hooked on it, don’t finalize the design and content. Only after testing and tracking results can you be certain that you have come up with a great strategy. Evaluate the result as what is right and what’s causing the trouble so that you can build an effective landing page.

Over to you

A great landing page can make your visitors go through your desired pathway and act upon it. This may lead the visitors to convert in the end. With a crisp design, eye-catching headlines, and engaging copy, you can make visitors towards conversion. 

Please offer your feedback for this blog or ask any questions, and I will be more than happy to answer them. For any feedback too, please use the comments section below.