EDITOR’S NOTE: Landing pages are a page that you can create for your website that serves the purpose of encouraging visitors to take a specific action, such as subscribing to an email newsletter or purchasing a product. If using landing pages on your website isn’t part of your marketing strategy yet, they should be! As the author of this blog post on Design Shack explains, landing pages are effective when they’re targeted and personalized. Keep your ideal customer in mind when designing your landing page. Include plenty of data and testimonials from real people. Make your landing pages a place for your marketing offers to live. If you have any questions about using landing pages on your website or want us to create them for you, reach out to us at Prebuilt Sites or The BBS Agency. We’d love to help you out!
You’ve come across them everywhere: Landing pages that take you to a website but aren’t the homepage.
It’s a great strategy that helps get visitors directly to the information they want to see from a marketing source – social media, advertising, etc. – and is generally designed for a specific goal.
If using landing pages isn’t already part of your website strategy, it’s time to consider them. Here, we’ll look at seven reasons you need to be using landing pages to help drive the right kind of conversions on your website.
1. Drive Conversions by Sending Visitors to the Right Place
Landing pages provide a level of specificity that helps people find what they are looking for. A good landing page has one specific thing for visitors to do – fill out a form, buy an item, watch a video, etc.
These pages are often shorter than many of the other pages on your website with a main image and text block, actionable elements, and supporting evidence. The page fits in the “shell” of your website, often with the same head and footer as other pages so that it looks consistent for users.
For the best chance at driving conversions, create super-specific messaging here that directly relates to the call to action. Don’t make users look too hard for information.
If the ad or social media post that leads users to the landing page highlights the purple widget your company sells, the landing page should be all about the purple widget, not a collection of everything you do. (That’s what the homepage is for.)
The key element of this landing page is it helps visitors get to the right place. Almost half of all materials link to a website homepage. (Think of how much digging you might have to do to find the exact thing that made you click a link.)
2. Collect Actionable Information
In addition to conversions, a landing page can help you collect usable and actionable data about website visitors. (Just make sure you have an analytics tracking tool assigned to the page.)
This data includes:
- Demographic information
- Referral sources
- Interest in offers
- Conversion rates (interest)
- Conversion information
You can use all of this information to help generate better future campaigns and make business decisions.
3. Design Pages for Action
Landing pages are designed for action, making them an ideal location for forms of quick sales.
The other key benefit is that if you have some data about your best audience segments or customers, you can design hyper-targeted campaigns that speak to these people specifically. This can greatly increase the overall number of conversions, as the “right people” visit the landing page.
Design the page with imagery, language, and an offer that speaks exactly to that target audience.
If you have multiple and varying audiences for the same product or service, create multiple landing pages with imagery and language or an offer that speaks to each one.
For example, if you own a gym, you may show images of women working out on one landing page and men on another. The ending offer to sign up may be the same.
4. They Feel Personalized
Because of the nature of digital targeting, a well-done landing page can feel personalized in a way that other pages of your website may not. You want users to feel like the page was made just for them.
Once you get users to the page, maintain the personalized feeling through design elements:
- Consider different button colors or a color palette that appeals to the audience
- Keep forms short and ask for as little information as possible
- Use a voice that speaks to this audience (even if it is a little different than other pages)
- Add a video or photos that connect directly with the user segment
Not convinced? HubSpot found that personalized calls to action convert 202% better than a basic CTA.
5. Focused Messaging
Focused messaging on a landing page often breaks down into a simple formula with four elements. This can be vitally important for websites or brands that offer similar products or services for different types of people or varying products and services.
These pages typically contain:
- A value proposition (with an image/video and text)
- A direct call to action (it’s often repeated on the page)
- Benefits to support the value proposition
- Social proof such as testimonials, reviews, or a “ticker” that shows sales, subscriptions, etc.
6. Understand What Visitors Want
Landing pages can be an invaluable source of business intelligence.
- Collect new leads
- Track recurring conversions and visitors
- Identify a more focused audience segment
- Better understand user behaviors and actions
- Create a more focused and targeted user persona of key converters
7. Provide a Place for Marketing Offers to “Live”
Landing pages are a way to help keep marketing efforts organized. Use them as a place for marketing offers to live.
As you build a collection of pages, you can use them over time with different campaigns to drive traffic for the business. (You can revise that holiday page each year and use the same landing page to drive traffic over time.)
These pages, quite simply, are collection tools to help you connect with key audiences in just the right way. Since the pages aren’t part of the main navigation, they are direct paths from other marketing activities to connect with your user base.
Conclusion
Landing pages work because they help website visitors find exactly what they came for.
If your homepage is the gateway to information or the products and services you sell, a landing page is a direct path to a specific thing or action. With attention spans getting shorter every day, landing pages are a way to capture people before they get bored.
There’s no specific number of landing pages a website needs to be successful. Just remember to keep each page focused and aligned to the content that gets users to it. This correlation will help generate more leads and get the right people interested in your website.
Originally posted on Design Shack.
