If you have been online for long, you are likely familiar with “landing pages”. A landing page is a web page that prompts a visitor to take a single specific action.  Such as subscribing to a newsletter, or signing up for a webinar. In this article, we’ll discuss how to make sure that more visitors take action on your landing pages.

Step 1 – Performance Optimisation

Performance is a topic that is too often neglected when discussing landing page optimisation. Most landing page tips focus on things that are only important AFTER the visitor has landed on the page. If a landing page takes to long to load, the on-page elements become irrelevant as few people ever see them. To avoid losing visitors before the page loads, make sure your landing page loads in less than 3 seconds. You can test landing page speeds by copy pasting the page URL into a free online tool such as GTMetrix.com.

Step 2 – Choose Your Colors

Color is one of the most important aspects of any web page.  After all, it is the first thing that a visitor will notice. Be sure to use no more than 2-3 colors on your landing pages: A background color, a headline and bold text color, and a standard text color.

Background Color

Think of the background as the canvas upon which you will “paint” all your landing page elements. The last thing that you want is obnoxious colors that outshine everything else on the page. Instead, use colors like white, and soft shades of blue, green, brown, or black.

Headlines, Bold Text, & Call To Action Color

Headlines, bold text and calls to action require a different approach. You want your headlines, bold text, & bullet points to jump off the page.  They should be the first thing that a visitor notices when they reach your landing page. Select a color that contrasts with your page background as much as possible.

Text Color

Your text should be easy to read, but you don’t want it competing with the other elements for attention. It’s usually a good idea to stick with some shade of grey for landing page text.  The lighter the background, the darker the grey, and Vica Versa.

Step 3 – Writing For Conversions

The copy (text) is arguably the most important element on your landing page. However, this will depend on where your visitors are coming from. Organic traffic from search engines will need a lot of detail.  A visitor who has clicked an ad will need less detail.  This is because the ad creative will have already provided much of the information. The following elements can all be labeled as “copy”.

Headlines

If used properly, headlines can convince a visitor to take action on their own. Every headline should do the following;

• Make it clear WHAT your offer is.
• Make it clear HOW your offer will benefit the visitor.

The headline should do this as quickly and clearly as possible. Take the headline of this article for example.

7 STEPS TO EFFECTIVE LANDING PAGE DESIGN

It’s been broken into two essential parts:

7 STEPS…

This first part tells you HOW it’s going to help you.  It’s going to give you 7 actionable steps that show you HOW to improve your landing page.

…TO EFFECTIVE LANDING PAGE DESIGN

This second part tells you WHAT you are going to get.  You get a more effective landing page. Keep the headline simple and benefit driven and you will see your conversions increase.

Bold Text & Bullet Points

Bold text and bullet points highlight the features and benefits of your offer.  They should be used sparingly throughout your text. These sections of text allow visitors to scan your page, without having to read every word.  Yet they still provide a thorough understanding of your offer and what you want the visitor to do.

Text

The bulk of your text will go into more detail than most visitors will ever read. Most people will only read the headline and scan the highlights.  That should be all they need to decide whether they want what you are offering. But for those people who want more information, you can go deeper into detail in the bulk of your text.

Step 4 – Proper Use Of Images or Video

Proper use of images is an important part of most landing pages, but images can be tricky… Often the image that you think will perform the best gives you the worst results. A commonly used image type that converts well is a personal image of you or your team wearing open, honest smiles. This attaches a face, or faces, to your brand that people then associate with your products.  It’s easier for people to trust a smiling face than an anonymous web page. 

If you decide to use a video on your landing page, the same principles apply as with images.  Video however can be much more powerful. I will not go into a great amount of detail on the use of video on landing pages.  There are entire YouTube channels and blogs dedicated to this already. If you are new to online marketing, I would recommend sticking with images.  Only move to videos once you are ready to invest the time and money to get it right.

Step 5 – The Basics Of Buttons

Call to action buttons are usually complicated by marketers.  In reality, they should be the simplest element on the page. A call to action button should:

• Contrast with all other page colors so that it pops off of the page,
• Have a clear call to action, (Ex. “Get Your FREE PDF Download Here”).
• Be featured above the fold* on the landing page, as well as near the middle and bottom.

By the time someone is looking at your call to action button they have already decided whether or not to click. Don’t overthink your buttons.  Just make sure they are visible, clear, and functional.

* “Above the fold” refers to the section visible on a web page before the visitor scrolls down.

Step 6 – Two Step Optin Forms

If your landing pages goal is to capture visitor information for follow up. The best way to do that is with a two step optin form.

This means that:

• The first step of the page provides the information and call to action.
• The second step is a popup optin form or payment processor.

Always use two step optin forms.  They are more effective than embedding your forms directly onto the landing page.  They allow you to get the user to say “Yes” before requesting any information, which is a powerful psychological trigger.

Step 7 – Above The Fold

Finally, you want to ensure that all of the elements mentioned above are located above the fold. This area should contain:

• A Headline,
• An Image or Video,
• Bullet Point Features and Benefits,
• A Call To Action Button which links to an appropriate form.

The area below the fold can contain more information for those who want it.

Landing Pages In A Nutshell

Landing pages do not need to be complicated. Unfortunately, there is a lot of software on the market offering landing page templates.  That means that to sell more templates, these software companies keep creating more.  The more there are, the more complicated they get.  

Keep it simple.

1. Focus on the benefits that your product or service will provide to the visitor.
2. Make it as easy as possible for them to get your product or service.

That’s it.