Most marketers spend a huge amount of time trying to get people to come to their website. This is indeed an important part of the job, but it is not the be all and end all of marketing either. Once your lead arrives at your landing page, it is very important that you immediately grab their attention. If you don’t manage to do that, they won’t stick around. This is why it is vital that you spend a lot of time reviewing your landing page again and again, thereby ensuring that it remains current and interesting for your target market. So what are some of the dangers you are going to face on this landing page? What are the things that people don’t like, which means that you end up losing them?
1 – Headers That Don’t Make Sense
When you look at a website (other than your own), what grabs your attention straight away? Usually, these are the headers. They are written in a larger font, in bold, in a different color or anything else that is designed to immediately grab your attention. If these headers make sense, you are likely to read on, but if they are confusing, you will lose your leads.
“It has to stay consistent with the copy that initially brought the person to the page but also add enough value to make the next step worthwhile.”
Make sure your header comes across as urgent and important. Use keywords as well, as this is a basic element of search engine optimization. Your headers really are your first customer magnet, in a way.
2 – Your Page Title
A lot of people forget about the importance of the page title. This is something you really need to pay attention too. Again, think from the perspective of your customer. It is likely that they already have multiple tabs open on their browser by the time they click on your call to action. As such, you have to make sure that the title of your page is something that is eye catching to encourage them to move from their current tab to yours.
“Page titles are one of the most effective ways to indicate what the content on a given page is to search engines, and they’re also a key component to consider when following SEO best practices.”
Again, this is also a major element of the best SEO practices. The title should be short, contains keywords and has vertical pipes. It should not include your company name every time, however.
3 – Think of Conversion
A landing page is a place full of conversion options and you have to concentrate on this. There is such a thing as a secondary conversion opportunity and you have to take advantage of this.
“Common secondary conversion opportunities include the thank you page and confirmation e-mail.”
It is unlikely that you will get many conversions out of this. However, those whom you get are very important and much more likely to actually turn into sales afterwards. Do make sure, however, that it is clear the second conversion is not the primary purpose of your page. Again, think about your customer’s perspective. People tend to hate hard sales, but if you present it as an opt-in option, you give them the choice rather than forcing anything to them, which usually causes them to run in the opposite direction.
4 – Certification Logos
This is another very important element in terms of building trust among your customers. Logos are eye-catching, which once again means you have a bigger chance of grabbing your customer’s attention straightaway. In doing so, they will want to stay on your page and view more, because a certification logo immediately builds trust. Indeed, some experts are suggesting that people now immediately look for certification logos before anything else, because this tells them right away that the products and/or services offered are of high quality.
“However, it’s important to use relevant and well known brands in your alignment strategy. Saying you are part of the Viagra sellers alliance probably won’t help you convert women into paying customers for a trek in the Andes.”
This is really all about building trust. Besides certification logos, you can also include customer testimonials. However, keep them small and simple, rather than going through one huge “personal story” after the other. A simple little box with a customer comment that changes regularly is a much better tactic.
5 – Make It Look Good
Last but certainly not least, your site has to look good overall. There are many elements to having an aesthetically pleasing site, but you should start with the most basic. You have to use nice fonts, colors and backgrounds.
“Bad fonts, garish colors, cheap highlighting, and silly clip art do not make for better conversions in most cases. What they do is crush your credibility.”
You have to make sure that your site looks professional and that the colors and images you use have a relevance to what you sell. For instance, a company that sells bottled water could use colors such as white and different hues of blue. This immediately links the product to the design. This is also a fantastic way of building brand awareness and brand trust.
When it comes to building your landing page, you have to keep in mind that people have already seen it all. Nothing surprises or shocks anymore now that the entire world has gone online. This is why you have to pay a significant amount of attention to the design of your page, ensuring it is not just eye-catching, but also trustworthy. You have to always think from the perspective of your customer, put yourself in their shoes. When you shop online, what are some of the things that you look for? What are some of the things that immediately drive you away? Your customers are just like you, in that respect, so you have to make sure that your site stands out in some way. One final element of that is that you have to make sure that your customers can contact you very easily.