How to Create a Landing Page?

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Landing pages are a crucial part of any e-commerce business. Having a beautifully designed landing page is one of the best ways to present your visitors with new products, services, and features. 

Even companies that don’t use digital channels to sell are well aware of the impact that landing pages make in their brand awareness campaigns. 

A landing page is a specialized brand website created for the advertising purpose. For example, visitors find their way to your landing page by clicking on the campaign created on social networks, Google or any other advertising platform. 

In this article, we’ll explain the term of a landing page, its elements and give you a quick guide for creating one.

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What Is a Landing Page?

In terms of digital marketing, a landing page is an independent web page, designed especially for the purposes of a marketing or advertising campaign. Landing pages usually have a single focus objective that could range from sales, product promotion, lead generation or simply brand awareness. Those objectives are most commonly communicated through CTA’s. As simple as it sounds, it is the best way to boost conversion rates and lower the cost of acquiring new customers.

Most of the landing pages are designed to acquire new leads. In those terms, the landing page holds a sign-up form for visitors to leave their personal or business information  (e-mail, phone number, personal information) and get contacted by the company. 

When brands are creating sales landing pages that present a product or a set of products, the most vital webpage parts are CTA’s and shopping cart experience.

The strategic advantage of landing pages is that marketers can create different variations for different target audiences. Moreover, digital marketing managers can evaluate the activity produced by the related URL’s to determine how well their advertising strategies are performing.  

Picture 1. Landing page

Landing Page and Home Page – The Difference

Purpose

The first and biggest difference between a homepage and a landing page is a purpose. A landing page has a different purpose than the homepage, thus consequently a different audience. A landing page is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a “webpage” someone “lands” at after clicking on one of the advertisements. Its primary objective is to obtain leads and conversions. 

The homepage, however, doesn’t necessarily have to be a conversion tool. It is page customers see after getting to a specific website. It carries all relevant information about a company or a product for customers. The homepage is a starting point of a website, and if build correctly, it gives an intuitive insight into the company’s field of practice and its products and services.

Links

On a standard homepage, there is normally some kind of navigation bar near the top in the header. There might also be some more in your footer such as social media links. All of these links are there to help your visitors to get to where they need to go.

On the contrary, your landing page, shouldn’t have any external or internal links. Maintaining your potential customers’ attention on landing page until they decide to convert is your main goal. Thus try to avoid any potential distractions.

Content

While homepages have all kinds of content, landing pages have specific offers, products or services that you want to promote. Landing pages allow you to see which ads and search terms brought visitors to your site, so consequently landing page should be specific to those searches or advertisements.

Take bicycles for example. If a customer searches for “bicycles” and opens your ad, instead of taking them to your home site where you are showing off the many types of bicycles you have to offer, you should point out ads to a landing page with specific bicycles. Why are your products better than the other ones, what extra value do you give to your customers with the product you’re selling.

CTA – Call to Action

One of the most significant distinctions separating a homepage from a landing page is that a landing page is conversion-oriented. Thus, landing pages should have some sort of Call-to-Action that will encourage your potential customers to convert.

It can be anything from a form to a phone number. CTA needs to be transparent and honest. Having a defined offer correlated with the CTA helps you increase conversions. In contrast to the landing page, your homepage doesn’t need to have a strong CTA because it’s often used as a resource.

Picture 2. Difference between the Landing page and a Homepage

Landing Page Elements

Call-to-action buttons

As we mentioned above, they are a powerful tool for conversions. Call to action buttons are one of the most important things post-click landing pages have. There should be no confusion as to where prospects need to click to redeem your offer. That is why you should pay attention to their position and appearance.

By putting your CTA button too early on the page, you have the risk of losing conversions. When you place the CTA after you’ve introduced and explained your offer, it’s more likely that visitors will already be convinced to convert. Also, make your CTA enough big to be noticeable.

Your CTA button needs to contrast well with the rest of the page. That doesn’t necessarily mean bright colors. You can use a hue, tint, shade, and tone that stands out from the rest of your page and draws maximum attention.

CTA copy can be a deciding factor in winning or losing a conversion. Stay away from boring and overused copy, like “Submit,” “Subscribe,” “Sign up,” or “Download.” Instead, be specific and use personalized, compelling words to increase conversions. Also, you can use the most convincing word “free”.

Compelling headline

Every story starts with a headline, and every good story needs a good headline. The same goes for your online website. The headline is the first thing that visitors see when they land on your page. That is why it should be attractively and compelling. Competitivity will encourage your visitors to stick around long enough to consider your offer. 

Characteristics of a good headline are clarity, relevancy, and empathy. First, clarity means that there is no need to questions what is your offer about. Second, relevancy fulfills your ad’s promise. Your product should provide everything that you have promised it to provide. Third, empathy should address visitors’ problems in an emphatic way. It should also be sure to find a solution to that problem.

For instance, a good headline is –  “How to” – and then offering a specific solution. Another alternative is to ask a question and answer it in subheadline or main copy. You can also use your unique value proposition to show why your product is better than others. Except headline, subheadlines help support and reinforce the claim made in the primary headline. The headline may not get directly to the point as best it could, but it teases the visitor enough to read the subheadline.

Sufficient white space

White space is the empty area on your post-click landing page. It helps to draw attention to specific elements on your page. It doesn’t have to be white per se, as long as it fulfills its purpose. White space is a relevant design technique because it assists in building a visual hierarchy. Also, it reduces page clutter while improving readability and comprehension.

To achieve the goal of your landing page, you should make clear for visitors the action you want them to take and how to get there. Avoid too much information on the page. There should be an amount of negative space to make it clear. Because you want to hold the user on a specified journey, it’s also best to banish exit links and limit navigation. This will guide the user to your call-to-action.

Effective copy

A persuasive copy is crucial because this is one of the primary methods to get your point. It shows the benefits of your product and your UVP. Among which the following should be considered. Furthermore, the amount of copy is important. Too much could make visitors feel overwhelmed and leave the page without reading any of it. Too little could seem uneasy about whether to pursue your offer.

Another thing that matters is writing style. The most noteworthy point here is to make your copy customer-centric so that it speaks directly to your visitors. Using words like “you” and “your” instead of words like “we,” and “us,” is a great way to show focus on the solution to their problems.

Since most online readers only scan web pages, formatting can be very useful. Using various formatting techniques, like bullet points, numerals, lists, and bold copy point out the most important bits of information.

SEO optimization

SEO is a process to make your website and landing pages more visible in the organic results of search engines. It helps search engines better understand the purpose of your page. However, it is often mixed with Search Engine Marketing. As a result of understanding your page is ranking it higher and the result of that is more traffic. Finally, more traffic means an easier approach to customers and more conversions.

Related: 5 Reasons Why WordPress Is The Best Platform for SEO

There are four steps to optimize your page. Those are keyword analysis, landing page optimization, link building, and result in analysis. A keyword analysis starts with researching your industry, competitors and potential customers. You do it by creating a list of keywords based on how people search for your product. Group the keywords by your website categories and for landing pages focus on one group of keywords. Compare that keywords with competitors rank for each keyword.

SEO landing page optimization means to integrate this keyword in your headlines and subheadlines. Keywords should likewise be incorporated in body text, image text, and metadata such as title, description, and URL. Besides, a very important thing is backlinks. Backlinks are like votes for your website – the more high-quality websites link to your landing page the better results.

For earning backlinks you can use contacts you have. Just ask them for the link where it is appropriate. Another way to get them is to find a high-quality that might find your content useful. You can also share your content in forums and blogs together with sources of your competitors. Last but not least thing about SEO is to track organic traffic and click-through rates. You can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Picture 3. Make your website visible

Engaging visuals

Interesting pictures and videos can make the content better and you offer more exciting. Images and icons on your landing page could be interactive, tell a story, or give directional cues towards your call-to-action.

Landing page images shouldn’t just look pretty. They should also be suitable, and support the conversion process. Images on post-click landing pages can be used to accomplish a number of tasks. Some of them are to showcase products or product features and introducing employees or highlight customers. Also, they could have human appeal and evoke emotion or tell a story about the brand.

Videos can be even more effective than pictures. Having a landing page video can increase conversions by 80%, and 96% of consumers find videos helpful when making online buying decisions. Also, 58% of those consumers consider brands that produce videos more trustworthy than those without. Videos should be strategically placed on the page with a good thumbnail. Be sure to keep your videos short, as users are then more likely to watch the whole video.

Mobile friendly

Today, mobile optimization is table stakes for any website or page, and that applies to your landing page, too. More than 60% of B2B consumers say mobile played a significant role in a recent purchase. Beneath that, 50% of B2B queries are made on smartphones. That number is predicted to grow to 70% by 2020. Remember that creating it to be responsive and optimized for mobile is crucial.

How To Create A Landing Page

Decide on a design

As there are many different designs and templates available online, it may be difficult to choose the right one. Don’t worry, many of them are just a variation of a basic three types:

• The Lead Generation Page: Landing page created to generate warm leads
• The Opt-in Page: A page that offers a lead, frequently in exchange for an email address.
• The Webinar Signup Page: A page used for promotion and signups for the webinar.

At the end of the day, it all comes up to three things. A value proposition, CTA and some sort of visual media. To design a landing page, you can either copy someone else’s landing page with branding changes, or you can design your own, having in mind these three elements that we mentioned above.

Write the Copy

Often considered as one of the most difficult parts in developing an efficient landing page. Good copy grabs customers’ attention and keeps them alerted for your offers. Consequently, a bad copy will do exactly the opposite. Your potential customers have probably already encountered all kinds of different landing pages that were to “noisy”. Having that in mind, create an experience that will keep them interested and well informed.

Give Limited Options

Customers tend to have different points of view while making purchases, which is perfectly normal. Not all people are the same, and that’s alright. Some customers might have questions and need additional pieces of information. Provide more information by redirecting your landing page to your testimonials page. This way customer can rest assured that the product that’s being sold isn’t a hoax and provides the right value. There are numerous landing pages where the only option is the CTA, which doesn’t give customers a chance to learn more before deciding on a purchase.

Organic vs Paid Search Traffic

There is quite a huge difference between the kind of traffic that will land on your landing page. To better understand the way organic and paid search works, here’s a picture. 

Picture 4. Google search result page

Organic search results are shown in the fourth section. It presents content that is ranked based on their quality and relevance. That’s placed underneath paid contents because no one pays for that.

Opposing, paid search results to show you content that someone desired to rank better and make more visible on the first site of Google. Paid advertising, allows the page author to choose where he wants to direct the visitor.

Conclusion

We can say that landing pages are must-have in today’s businesses. Most of the businesses that provide services have landing pages where they present all their service. It’s good to funnel user to the service they tend to buy.

For constructing a profitable and successful landing page, there are some traits that should be met. There should be CTA’s and visuals like infographics and illustrations. Every offer should be stated, but also there cannot be offered that’s not in the same niche. A page should have catchy headings to attract visitors on the page and the layout should be modified for all devices.