When you run an online campaign for your product or service offer, you are likely to want to bring interested visitors to your website.  But not just any part of your website, rather to a specific, consciously designed page that explains in more detail how your offer would benefit potential clients…and most importantly what they have to do, to get their hands on your product (e.g. get them to purchase).  This web page is called a landing page in the lingo of online marketing.

There are important elements to a successful (read: high conversion) landing page and how it is built up, and this post will aim to take you through those steps.

One of the reasons online marketing campaigns have become popular among marketers is the ability to measure how they perform.  If you are a marketing manager, you are likely to have thought of reaching certain goals that you would want to measure.  Similar to most sports activities, where you train to get better and better results that you measure in some way, online campaigns also have various measurable outcomes.  When we build a landing page for a specific campaign it will become the online platform where we expect those goals to be reached.

Goals can be:

• The building of your brand by way of creating brand awareness, buzz, the consumption of creative content, an infographic, a video or a game. These goals are measured by CPM, which is an acronym for Cost-Per-Thousand.
• Gathering data by way of an electronic database (EDM). You would want to measure this goal by CPC, which is Cost per Click. CPC is important because it determines the financial success of your paid search advertising campaigns when you use advertising platforms such as Google AdWords.
• Supporting your sales efforts: getting potential customers to ask for a quote by filling out a form or generating a lead through a short- or long form; or using a microsite in case of a bank. This is also CPC.
• Direct sales: selling directly through a web-shop; or applying any other direct sales technique (also CPC).

These all count as conversions that can be measured.

So let’s take a look at effective landing pages.

This infographic sums it up pretty well:

• Design: it has to look attractive, in line with your brand(ing) elements and exude confidence that the customer is being served by a professional and trusted partner (you!). Pay attention to the pointers below:
  • The headline grabs your attention, and the tagline adds more clarity to it.
  • There are proven results on the page that nudge the doubting customer to take action. There are testimonials on the page, adding social proof.
  • Use a directional cue pointing to a contrasting CTA
  • There are screenshots of the product to show visitors exactly how it works.
  • The background image has emotional appeal and is relevant to the product.
• Technology: it displays your content in the right (responsive) format and compatible with all browsers.
  • It has to load super quick to keep customers from leaving your page (avoid using large memory images that don’t load).
  • Use a demo video visitors can watch that explains the service;
  • Test your landing page on different browsers and on different screen formats for appearance
  • Avoid things that make your landing page load later or not at all (pop-ups for example)
• Measurability:
  • Professional marketers don’t get stuck at viewing only conversions and looking at bounce rates. They go on and want to measure how many visitors left your forms; how did the whole sales funnel look like; introduce attribution modeling to be able to evaluate your results, etc.
  • You may also want to use some A/B testing hypotheses to test which version of a landing page visitors like unbounce.com, Optimizely.com, VWO are just a few examples of affordable, simple to use and effective A/B testing tools on the market today.
  • For those that want to go even deeper, try using a heatmap or record your visitors via Hotjar or CrazyEgg.
• User experience (UX) = usability: this is a no-brainer after all - you want visitors to find your landing page super easy to use.
  • User experience is the joy (or horror) that visitors go through when they visit your site or landing page. You must make sure the experience of visitors is flawless and takes them through the whole viewing experience in a breeze.  Does everything work? Can all things be clicked on that (s)he believes can be clicked?
  • User Interface (UI): make sure the page your visitor looks at is easy to see through. How much time does it take for an average user to understand what they have to do? How many steps does it take for them to get from A to B?
• Content on your website should revolve around your product or service offering. On a landing page, very specifically (e.g. your product or service); on your website more broadly (e.g. the market and context your product or service is placed in/used in).  Make sure content is well structured and all necessary information is readily available.
  • Optimize your content based on the needs of your target audience and the type of media you are using.
  • If you use Google AdWords, pay attention to bounce rate, quality scores and the right keywords.
  • If you are sending eDM (electronic direct mail) letters, don’t forget that the bulk of information has already been shared in the letter, so you might want to take your user to a landing page which doesn’t repeat what has already been said in the letter to avoid frustration and thinking for the visitors that they are playing a role in 50 First Dates. You might want to take your user to a landing page which doesn’t repeat what has already been said in the letter to avoid frustration and thinking for the visitors that they are playing a role in 50 First Dates.
  • The most important points to keep in mind are:
    • What you are offering
    • Why your customer can’t live without it anymore
    • What (s)he needs to do to get your product/service
    • +1: handling of complaints

• Say ‘Thank you and see you later’: as in real life, pay attention to these small, basic phrases of etiquette, because they matter! Make sure your visitors feel good when departing from your landing page, because they are much more likely to recommend you later on. Be creative and build your brand!
• Follow-up: if a visitor did not convert into a customer during the first ‘trip’, worry not, you still have a second chance. They might not have been able to make the necessary decision and need more time.  You need to get data from them (secondary conversion).  Leadberry is one clever piece of software that you can connect with your Google Analytics account and it will figure out which visitor came from which company so your sales team can take action.  Without it, all you will see are IP network numbers and Internet service providers. With Leadberry, you can get actual contacts to a specific company and call them or link up with them on LinkedIn.

With primary conversion rate, we look for every action leading to the ultimate goal of the campaign.  The secondary conversion rates measure other actions which may / may not lead to final conversion, such as:

• Percentage of newsletter subscribers (comparing to the total visitors of subscription pop-up)
• Percentage of newsletter receivers who follow your Facebook or other social media page
• And remarketing is also an option.

To summarize, a great landing page is very similar to a great sales agent. It has an attractive design, it can be easily reached and it loads/arrives on-time; is prepared to answer all the possible questions of the user with solid logic; it has the right content on hand; the ‘meeting’ with the user leaves a positive first-impression and a logical path; it will get in touch with the customer one more time; and it says good-bye when the user wants to leave.