Landing Pages: The First Impression
First impressions are an important aspect in life, you only receive one first impression, and obviously you want to make it a positive one. Landing pages are the first impression of a web page, and they are a critical part of your online marketing presence.
A landing page as defined by Unbounce, is the page created specifically for a marketing campaign, it is where the user “lands” after clicking on Google Adwords, or through a similar situation. The page has a single objective known as the Call to Action, or CTA for short. A landing page is not to be confused with the home page. The home page offers more links and information, while the landing page has one very specific and clear goal, and usually offers one link. There has a been a correlation of having fewer links and having higher conversion rates when looking at paid advertising. .
There are two different types of landing pages
- A Lead Generation landing page, this uses a web form for the call to action, the reasoning behind this is to collect data, like names and email addresses for future leads. A lead generation landing page is mainly used for business to business marketing.
- Click-Through landing page is a page with a simple button as the call to action, typically used for e-commerce.
Once you have decided what type of landing page your business needs, it best to know what to do and what not to do when customizing the land page. Neil Patel, writes some great tips and tricks for landing pages on his blog.
First of all, DO keep the landing page simple. The page should have its specific goal, the Call to Action, and exclude any extra information, this could distract your visitors. It has been proven to decrease converting. With being simple, make sure your landing page is clear and concise to the point, the page is not meant to show off your brand’s creativity, but to be clear and persuasive for the call to action. Apart of this relates to the attention ratio, meaning the number of items you can do on a given page to the number of items you want your users to do. A good attention ratio should be 1:1, the landing page should only offer what you want your customers to do, everything else is a distraction from the goal.
If your landing page is asking for customer information through a form, remember to only ask for the most vital information, usually this is the user’s email. DON’T ask for more information, it will decrease the chances that the user will follow through till the end, and will mostly likely abandon the landing page all together.
DO provide motivation for your customers to take action. The two ways to easily influence a customer’s decision is to either provide an incentive for them to complete an action, or make that action as easy as possible for them to complete. This is way it is so important for the landing page to be simple and concise.
DO pay attention to the fold on the landing page. The fold on a web page is the section of the page that is visible without having to scroll further. The Call to Action should be located at the top of the page, this will increases its visible to their users on the landing page.
Lastly, of course DO use A/B testing to ensure that your landing page is having high conversion rates. The conversion rate is the most important result of the landing page, you want to convert as many users into leads, and leads into customers as possible, and the landing page is the first page your customer may see.
A huge part of the landing page is the actual design of the page. The page should be optimized in every way to increase the conversion rate, this is possible because of UX and UI. UX stands for User Experience Design, while UI stands for User Interface Design. User Experience Design (UX) as defined by the Interaction Design Foundation as the “the process of creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.” Essentially, UX is creating an effective and useful design to make it as easy as possible for the user. On the other hand, the Interaction Design Foundation said UI is the “process of making interfaces in software or computerized devices with a focus on looks or style. Designers aim to create designs users will find easy to use and pleasurable. UI design typically refers to graphical user interfaces but also includes others, such as voice-controlled ones.” UI is very similar to UX, but has an increased focused on the computerized and software side of the web page, UI is a compliment to UX. It is important for T-Shaped Marketers to be knowledgeable in the UX/UI field because the design of a page with its ease of use is a critical function for the conversion rate. If a page is too difficult to use, or too information heavy, a user will click off the page, and that chance of converting is soon eliminated.