Landing Page Design & Optimisation Tactics
You are a digital marketer who runs a campaign for your business or your company, and you have a specific media budget. Alongside that, you have other specific KPIs and campaign objectives some of which are focused on Acquisition – hopefully. If you are SAAS business, these could be new subscriptions, signups, free trials, etc. If you run an e-commerce business, these might be new purchases, abandoned carts, upsells, purchase $ per customer, etc. If your business model relies on a sales team, your campaign objectives could be based on leads generated, cost per lead, etc. Whatever your business is, one of your digital marketing goals should ultimately be generating leads in a more effective way, day in day out.
Regardless of how effective your targeting, bidding, ad copy, and all other digital advertising associated factors, your landing page design remains, in my view, the most important and significant part of your campaign.
To give you an idea, we lately seen a 400% increase in the conversions (performance) of one of our clients’ campaigns just by making some landing page optimisations. That’s a hefty increase in a very short period of time. Do we get these results every time we test landing page changes? No. But when you hit the jackpot, you are highly rewarded. To increase the likelihood of you hitting the jackpot, there is a list of tactics you need to integrate into your landing page design. Here is a comprehensive list of all the landing page optimisations you should be considering that will dramatically change your performance.
1. Your header is half of the work
The first thing that your visitors read is your title and sub-title. This is where you make the 1st impression along with the header visual. Your objective here is to provide a captivating line that connects and tells your visitors when they are on your page and why they should continue reading and exploring. Your copy should be clear and concise. It should convey the value they will get by spending time on your page and accepting your CTA.
The use of visuals in your header is secondary and should be there to enhance the message and not distract your visitors. Visuals can make it or break it when it comes to your page design. Try to use visuals with negative space as much as possible so that your copy shines on the page. Busy images can take over your text and lead to poor user experience.
Pro Tip: Your h1, h2, and h3 are quite important, and in the case of Google Ads, it’s crucial they are as relevant as possible to your keywords and Ads.
2. Write copy that sells without selling
Your copy needs to be on point. From style to the choice of words, your copy has to communicate effectively with your visitors. Make sure that the landing page content is 100% aligned with your buyer persona. With that said, here are things you should focus on to write effective copy
2.1 Raise Their Pain Threshold
One of the main reasons your visitors are on your page is that they have some sort of pain or a problem they need to address. But people’s level of awareness of their pain varies based on a few factors. Your job is to shed light on the problem or pain they are experiencing to a point where they are ready to take action. This is especially true in B2B but also applicable in B2C. Essentially, you want to raise your visitors’ pain threshold point in order for them to take immediate action by following your CTA. Your copy doesn’t need to be offensive or aggressive. You don’t need to tell anyone ‘if you don’t get this or buy this, your life will be miserable’. You can convey the pain points in smarter and smoother ways. Tell them what problems you were able to solve for other customers and consumers. Explain to them how your product or service helped change lives and how things used to look like before and after.
2.2 Showcase your Unique Selling Point
Tell them what your USP. Focus on the benefits that your competitors don’t have and let them know these are benefits they won’t find anywhere else. You don’t have to have many USPs. One or two can make all the difference if highlighted properly and tied with the pain points and main drivers behind their decision-making process.
2.3 Build Your Credibility
Build credibility of your company especially if it is not a well-known brand or if it’s a startup. Trust is everything in sales and marketing. Tell them about your company and what you stand for. Show them all your partners, affiliates, credentials, clients and key testimonials. We call all of these ‘social proof’ in this context. Use your most powerful social proof at the top of the page – usually after the header or straight under the above-the-fold part. The rest of your social proof elements can be added at the bottom of your landing page for added credibility for the visitors seeking more information. One of the best ways to showcase your credibility is user-generated content.
3. Use videos to complement your copy
Videos can increase landing page conversions by up to 80% according to a recent study. Embedding a video on your page can help many visitors understand and connect more with your message. You can use videos in different ways. For example, you can have user-generated content by your loyal customers to act as testimonials. You could also have one of the business leaders or founders talk about your product or service. This can raise the trust and credibility of your company which is a key driver to sales conversions, especially in the consideration phase. To capitalise on your video content, you can also use it to direct your visitors/viewers to your page CTA by saying something along the line of ‘get started with your 7 days 100% no obligation free trial below’.
4. Personalise your landing page design
Instapage, one of the best landing page builder tools, has recently introduced the personalisation feature which allows you to personalise parts of your landing page based on the profile or demographics of your visitors. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of this is scaling the 1:1 Ad-to-page relevance which will have a ripple effect on your PPC campaign performance and your landing page performance in general.
5. Nail your call to action
Your Call-To-Action is the most important component of your landing page. You can get everything else right and screw up this one, and you won’t get great results. A crucial part of designing an effective CTA is its aesthetics. Why? In order to draw attention to it. Having a CTA button in a contrasting colour will dramatically increase views and click-throughs as opposed to having a CTA with the same colour as your page. In fact, using the same colour is considered a sin in the world of conversion rate optimisation. To increase your conversions, try a sticky CTA which could be embedded at the top of the page (menu header) or the bottom of the page where visitors can see the CTA as they scroll up and down of the page. This saves them time and effort when they decide to proceed.
6. Don’t ask for information you don’t need
Some people think that the more information you collect, the better the sales conversions or remarketing will be. Perhaps. But this comes with a huge downside which is losing potential opt-ins and sign-ups. Your job is to make sure the experience is as frictionless as possible. If you have a form, don’t jack it with a ton of fields you don’t need. No one has the appetite, time or confidence to give you a ton of details especially when they are interacting with you for the 1st time. Make it simple.
7. Connect on a personal level
Connect with them on a personal level. The most successful brands are those who build communities and recognise their customers and consumers human needs to connect and belong. A great example of this is when Lacoste launched the endangered species logo. Show them that your brand genuinely cares about their well-being, the well-being of our planet, and the issues that matter to them the most. You are probably thinking about how you do this in a landing page copy. You don’t have to write a whole paragraph about it. Instead, you can drop a line or two at the most – about your company’s recent initiative that was customer-centric.
8. Set Expectations after CTA is completed
Tell your visitors before and after the conversion what they can expect as a next step. If your sales team is going to get in touch with them, let them know. Unsolicited outbound sales calls can damage your brand is not an ethical practice and at best, won’t lead to conversions and you’ll end up wasting your sales team’s time. Make sure your outbound calls are based on the visitors’ requests. This can be a secondary CTA post the 1st conversion. I.e. After they fill out a form with main personal info, you can prompt them with a 2nd landing page that explains the benefits of talking to an expert. Another way of doing this is through a conversationalist marketing tool embedded on your landing page. Drift is one of the most popular tools but there are several other tools out there. For e-commerce, using a Facebook Messenger chatbot will help you move the needle and maximise conversions.
