Effective Landing Pages: Top 10 Best Practices

Everyone follows some best practices, but with landing pages, it’s more important than ever, since you can increase effectiveness and ROI from PPC, SEO, Email, Blogs, Public Relations, and more. Here’s the way we think about it at HiveMind Marketing:

1. Reinforce continuity. Landing pages perform best when the content is promotion-based. If you want prospects to respond to your banners, emails and clicks, keep the content concise and focused on one appealing message. Reinforce the exact messaging in the search, in the hit, and on the landing page for best results.
2. Visually engage the user. Tell a story or sell a product using imagery with impact, rather than simply explaining the purpose with lengthy copy.
3. Keep it crisp. With today’s media-induced attention deficit disorder, it’s easy for people to lose interest and stray.  Use a Direct Headline and make certain that this is the first thing a web visitor notices when viewing the page.
4. Deliver a clear value proposition. Think of your landing page as your online salesperson. It should answer any potential “whys.” Limit the value proposition to three or four compelling bullet points and don’t mince words.
5. Don’t let visitors slip away. The vast majority of people will exit from a landing page in a few seconds. To combat this, embrace the idea of simplicity and resist the urge to include navigation to other pages on your website or multiple offers. Instead make your information easy to follow:
   • Keep the main message above the fold
   • Create clean navigation and succinct calls to action.
   • Use plenty of whitespace
   • Use bulleted text, with straightforward language
6. Don’t ask for too much. It’s common practice these days to trade information, that is, to ask for information before providing information. You tell web visitors a little something about your company and its products, they tell you a little something about themselves — and over time, you create a mutually beneficial learning relationship. If this is your first contact with someone, you should probably only ask for the essentials, like name and email address.
7. Tailor your offering. Make sure that what you are offering is tailored to fit the exact needs of your target audience. It sounds easy, but it isn’t. Most companies offer whatever whitepaper they have on hand. But if the topic is not timely, if the writing is not crisp, and if the title is not compelling, it simply won’t work.
8. Don’t ask for big commitment. Direct words like “Buy,” “Add to Cart” or “Subscribe” indicate a commitment that the visitor may not be ready to make and can lower conversion rates. If you use a softer call to action like "Try it Now" you can increase conversions.
9. Don’t settle for thank you. Once you’ve delivered the goods, redirect your prospects to a page that does more than offer a simple thank you. Ask yourself, what would this person possibly like to see next? Then provide links to that information on your thank-you page.
10. Understand your analytics. It’s easy to see how many people clicked through to your landing page, but analytics can tell you much more if you pay attention. For example, if 75% of visitors leave without filling out your form, that’s a danger sign. Is your form too long? Is your call to action to vague, or too big of a commitment? Is the title of your whitepaper too generic? Use analytics to point you in the right direction. Then test alternatives.