How to Design a Landing Page

Top tips to make your landing page effective

Modern Internet marketing employs many tricks and methods to improve sales efficiency. There are several ways to draw attention to your company online, attract new users, and advertise your product or service. Landing page is the ideal solution for such needs. You can achieve excellent results in several directions at once using this simple website. How? The answer you can find in our article, where we described the most useful tips on how to create an effective landing page.

What is a landing page

Before proceeding directly to the tips on how to design a landing page that converts, let’s find out what the landing page is and why your business needs it.

Landing page is a one-page site. Usually they are created to promote either commodities or services. Landing pages can have different calls to action (CTAs) depending on their goals. This can be a subscription to an email newsletter, purchase of goods, a callback request, free consultation, and more. This web resource contains the same elements as a regular site, but it’s designed with a single focus and has no navigation through the site. Landing pages are one of the most powerful tools to convert potential customers.

Landing page design process has its peculiarities as it serves quite a different purpose than an information website. The psychology of visitors should be taken into account during its development. Such kinds of websites shouldn’t let users leave until the moment of conversion (purchase, signup, registration, subscription, etc.), because you only have one chance to make a great first impression. According to statistics, the first 10 seconds of the page visit are critical for a user’s decision to stay or leave.

Why landing pages are important and how they work

What is the importance of a landing page, and is it worth your time and money? Let’s find out!

In today’s world, most companies attract new customers online. It is almost impossible to find a business without a website or app. While other web pages typically have many links and categories to explore, a landing page aims at narrowing down the user’s focus to one single action while they browse. The purpose of this site is to generate leads and convert them into subscribers and buyers. That’s how a clear, logical funnel is built.

Users usually get to a landing page via advertisement, links on social networks, or newsletters. If a product or service meets their expectations, all the information is structured and correctly presented, then a client is likely to do exactly what is expected from him. They order goods, subscribe to the newsletter, or leave their data (email, phone number, etc.). That’s how a proper landing page should work.

Landing page is an essential tool for those who:

• wants to present a specific product/service;
• tests a business idea;
• wants to attract an audience to some events;
• etc.

Landing page is a very effective and modern tool with which you can demonstrate your services and products in a catchy, unique way.

To create a landing page that will bring your business a lot of leads, you need to describe your values, goals, and mission there. Provide potential customers with all the necessary information and smoothly prepare them to complete the actions you need.

Landing page goals

After we figured out what landing pages exactly are and how they work, we can move on to the topic of how to design an effective landing page.

The first thing you need to start with is in-depth competitor research. You can look at different landing page examples in general and then landing pages of your direct and indirect competitors. The next step is to determine what they have in common and what is different. Pay attention to the design of the landing pages you like, their colors, fonts, and icons. You can use these elements in your project — every detail matters.

It is also essential to determine the target audience you want to attract with your landing page. This landing page will solve the problems of a certain category of people. Preparing your landing page, define one main goal it should serve. Just choose what it would be and use it as the main call to action CTA on your page. The CTA depends on what product or service you have. If the sales process involves a long conversion of leads, then do not immediately offer visitors to buy a product, it is better to offer advice or call back (they must fill out a form for this). This button is the action you want your visitors to undertake. The main task of the landing page is to focus visitors’ attention on the action you need them to do, provide them with all necessary information and proofs. Make sure that your offer is simple and clear.

Top tips on how to design a landing page

When the goals of your landing page are clear, you can move forward and start thinking about how to design a great landing page.

Web design plays a significant role in creating any website. Good quality design is the key to the success of an online marketing campaign. If your page is not captivating, too long or old-fashioned, people may simply bounce away, as the landing page failed to grab their attention. It is very important to make sure your landing design is attractive, visually aesthetic, and fashionable.

To help you create a highly attractive landing page exactly for your target audience, we put together eight proven ideas on how to design a great landing page.

1) Create a catchy headline

The first and most important thing that users see on any site is the headline. Whether it’s a landing page or any other kind of a website, working out the headline carefully is worth the result. To attract readers attention, a web page headline should be clear, concise, and provide all the benefits of your product or service. Headline is usually a well-thought-out unique value proposition (UVP) of your products or services.

An excellent selling headline should:

• Convey your unique value proposition to the users;
• Distinguish your brand from the competitors;
• Describe the benefits of purchasing your product, service, or taking a partnership offer.

2) Add Call To Action buttons

Call to action buttons are very important if you want to attract potential clients. The main thing in landing page design is to use clear call to action buttons that show the benefit a visitor gets if he or she pushes them. These buttons should encourage website visitors to register, buy your goods, order your service, request access, or take any other actions depending on the goal of your landing page. The best place to set a CTA button is at the top of a landing page so that your landing page visitors don’t have to scroll down to reach it.

Another opinion is to use a floating CTA button, which will always stay visible wherever users scroll.

Use bright CTA buttons to ensure these elements stand out from the rest of the page. If the stylistics of your web page allows, use animated CTA buttons that attract more attention than the usual ones. Thus, you can diversify the design of your landing page and add a good impression of your branding.

It’s also important to make sure that the content on your landing page reflects what you promised in your call to action, and vice versa.

3) Highlight Your Benefits

If you want to design an effective landing page, you need to place the main advantages of your offer on it. This will significantly increase your landing page performance. Indeed, people often buy and consume with their eyes. Highlight 5 ‒ 7 main advantages of your product or service and briefly describe them.

4) Structure your landing page

Another very important aspect of a good landing page design is a proper site structure. Organize your landing page information in a way that is easy to scan. A regular user doesn’t have time to read long, monotonous text. Use icons, bullet or numbered lists ‒ everything that helps to split the content into logical sections. Write laconic descriptions. Don’t forget about illustrations, videos, and other easily consumable content elements that drive traffic and sales.

By the way, one of the easiest ways to make your landing page unique is to use your own images, illustrations, and videos. You can choose one style or filter and apply them to all LP. If you take stock images for your landing page, you risk creating a website that is similar to someone else’s.

But don’t overdo illustrations and visual content. It is vital to maintain a balance between text and graphics. Don’t use too many images, so your visitors aren’t distracted from the target action and they don’t spray their attention to details.

5) Add social proofs

Any reader that visits your landing page has doubts and concerns about the quality of your goods or services. To dispel these concerns, you need to add so-called social proofs. These can be reviews, quality certificates, logos of famous customers you’ve been cooperating with, and many others elements. It would be better if you use several of them on your LP.

A person is more likely to make a target action if he or she is provided with real case studies and positive customer reviews. People take into account the opinions and experiences of others when they make decisions. Such trustworthy elements show potential customers that you are honest with them. Using social proof elements, you will not only be able to demonstrate (or improve) your reputation but also increase the effectiveness of your landing page.

6) Ensure fast loading

According to statistics, 44% of consumers will switch devices if it takes too long to load a page. Such metrics as conversion rate and bounce rate directly depend on the performance of your landing page. Your landing page may be flawlessly designed, but if it takes more than 3 seconds to load, customers most likely will not wait and close it before the page is loaded. Try not to overload your landing page with unnecessary elements that slow it down. Everything you add should have a specific goal. Images are very important for your LP optimization. Make sure that all of them meet Google’s Page Speed Rules and recommendations.

7) Use countdown timers

A timer can be very handy for your landing page design. This element encourages users to take action faster. This technique is called scarcity. It’s a sort of inducement when there are only two products left in stock, for instance. So timers create the so-called urgency effect, which motivates users to choose and decide faster than they usually do.

8) Add lead-forms

Lead form is a way to collect contact information of a potential customer. This form is one of the essential elements of conversion. It’s worth considering several important details in creating the lead form in order to make it work correctly:

• Place the form at the top of the page so that the visitor doesn’t need to scroll down.
• Don’t request too much information. Your goal is to collect enough or even minimal amounts of information to establish two-way contact with a potential client.
• Select the length of the lead form specifically for your landing page needs. A short lead form will have a better conversion rate. However, a lot of visitors who fill short forms are more likely to be out of your target audience. On the contrary, long forms can give you better quality leads and lower conversion rates, Visitors who fill out long forms provide you with more details about themselves and the kind of product/service they are looking for.
• Notify visitors about your Landing Privacy Policy to ensure that it’s safe to share their personal data with you.

There is also such a thing as a lead magnet. This is a delicate way to draw a customer into a sales funnel. A lead magnet is a simple way to start communication with a customer if he or she is at the very top of the sales funnel.

People are not very willing to give their contacts for no reason. Who loves spam? But if you offer some kind of a book, checklist, or instructional video for free, then people will be more willing to leave their contacts.

However you need to remember that such a magnet must somehow be connected with the main product or service that you have (for example, a five percent discount on the first purchase of the product, or the first free lesson of your online course).

Regardless of whether you apply all our advice in your project or not, you should always test your product before launching it, as it is an integral part of the design process.

Usability testing of a landing page

It’s not enough to make a good-looking landing page design. Landing pages are created to convert visitors. But what if it doesn’t? In this case, testing of your landing page has to become your priority. You need to find out how difficult it is for visitors to use your LP, and how much time they need to obtain the necessary information, and find a way to place their order through testing.

For such pages, A / B testing or multivariate testing is best suited.

A / B testing (or “split testing”) is testing of two or more pages that differ in only one element ‒ for example, color and position of a button. These pages are shown to different people to find out what version of the page converts better.

For testing, you need to have a sufficient supply of time and a sufficient number of visits to evaluate the result. We don’t recommend making conclusions until the experiment lasts for at least three weeks.

Multivariate testing is a comprehensive testing of two or more page variations that are fundamentally different.

What exactly do you need to test? It depends on the desired traffic and your final goals. Using this type of testing, you can check how often visitors click a button, watch a video, or submit a lead form. Besides, you can see how users got on your page and what device they used. If you think that multivariate testing is exactly what you need, you can use the Hotjar or Google Analytics tools to see if your landing page performs well.

To test the landing page of our clients, we change the color of the buttons, swap photos of people on the page, place and remove reviews, and do much more. Then we analyze the conversion rate and make changes to the page that increase the return on its use.

For our clients, we select and configure a goal by which we will measure effectiveness. For that, we:

• Create page options.
• Configure and run the experiment

You can repeat these steps until you reach the desired limit of the conversion rate.

Summary

In this post, we’ve shed some light on the most powerful design tips to create your landing page. We hope they helped you understand what the purpose of a landing page is and why a landing page is so important for your business.

Of course, creating a landing yourself is very difficult, and it requires assistance from professionals. That is why our Gapsy Studio will be happy to help you create an aesthetically attractive, fashionable, unforgettable, and catchy landing page, and not only 🙂

Originally published at gapsystudio.com