The Importance of Landing Pages
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Well-designed landing pages perform a key part of the buying process. Without them, a user will have found your advert and clicked the link or swiped up, only to then abandon their potential sale because the page they arrived on isn’t built in a way that encourages them to make that sale or submit that enquiry.
A good landing page can be the difference between a sale and not. And despite the introduction of Performance Max and other advanced PPC features, good-quality landing pages are still as important as ever.
Here, we’re going to be examining what landing pages are and then go through five of the most important features of them. Have all those, and your landing pages are sure to provide you with success.
At Embryo, our dedicated design team work alongside our PPC and paid social departments to create bespoke, on-brand landing pages that turn visitors into buyers and leads. To hear more about that and our process, get in touch via the Contact Us button below.
What Is a Landing Page?
A landing page is simply the website page you send traffic to from paid advertising, it’s the designated URL attached to all your adverts. We will be discussing the difference between an unoptimised landing page and one designed to generate lead-generation success.
Landing pages aren’t like regular web pages, they are specifically designed for campaigns whereas your typical site page is there to explain a product or service and will retain its relevancy for months and years. Essentially, users ‘land’ on them after clicking on an advert they’ve seen on Google or across their social media platforms. Most of the time, landing pages are designed to generate leads for business by exchanging information with key decision-makers in return for a piece of content, typically. Sometimes, the landing page encourages users to buy a product outright.
A good landing page should only ever focus on one conversion – purchase, sign up, enquire etc – and have one call to action. Any more and you risk overwhelming the user.
Having campaign-specific pages on your site such as these, ones which aren’t visible from the main navigation can help you achieve short-term lead gen goals if, and only if, they are well designed, optimised, and used in the right way.
All the features of a landing page could be written on a billboard, there are that many. But, to get you started we’ve gone through and detailed the top five features that you absolutely must have if you’re to get the results you’re after from your next campaign.
The Five Essential Features Needed for a Good Landing Page
Below are the five most important features that any successful landing page should have, as we said, there are plenty of others but these five represent a good starting point. Having built landing pages for dozens of businesses we’re confident that these five features will help you create a successful landing page that sells your products and/or capture the right leads.
1. First, Separate PPC and SEO
Before you start to build your page it’s important to understand its purpose. These types of pages are not designed to rank for anything, most of the time the pages are non-indexed which means we’re telling Google that we don’t want this page to rank for any key terms. Understanding this means you can spend your time focusing on the page layout and the short, sharp content that is going to convince the user to hand over their details or pay for a product.
A good landing page is about capturing information or selling products as a result of a specific marketing campaign. Knowing that these pages aren’t for SEO purposes means you don’t have to follow the tried and true principles that we’ll use in an organic campaign and instead look at the user experience, design, and where to place forms and purchase buttons. Most importantly, you can spend time creating a page that speaks to the specific audience that you’re targeting.
2. Put Everything That Matters Above the Fold
Based on data from user experience studies, 57% of users only view content that is above the fold. Above the fold refers to all the content that is immediately visible to a user before they start scrolling.
This stat means that, without question, the thing you want people to action should be immediately visible to them when they land on your page, be it a form or product. Whatever your main objective with your landing page is, it must be instantly viewable and clearly defined to the user. If you want enquiries the user doesn’t want to have to hunt around to contact you on your website.
With this key design feature, it’s important to take into consideration devices. Narrower screens might not display the same amount of info as wider devices so always test your pages on multiple devices before starting your campaigns.
3. Prioritise Unique, Digestible Selling Points over Longer Forms of Content
With this point, think about the user journey. If a customer has taken the time to digest your advert, click the link or swipe up on the advert then there is a good chance they are already on nodding terms with your product or service. As a result, you don’t need to bombard them with loads of content about it, all you do is run the risk of boring them and not aiding them to complete your desired goal.
The information should be limited to one to two lines, and should clearly detail why you are above your competitors or have the product/service the user needs. Ideally, we recommend having 3-5 key bullet points, above the fold, next to the form or product, that are easily digestible
4. Avoid Asking For Irrelevant Information
In the main, people don’t mind parting with information if they feel they are getting something in return – a product, an ebook, or a piece of content. However, if they feel like the information they are giving over isn’t relevant then you can expect them to be abandoning that landing page pretty quickly.
Asking too much information early on can greatly deter users from inquiring, especially location information early into a form journey. So, be sure to prioritise acquiring information that is only relevant to what they’re signing up for or purchasing – name, email address, and the business they work for, are all things that are relevant to B2B lead gen campaigns as it allows sales teams to follow up and develop relationships with interested parties.
Only ask for exactly what information you need from a lead to maximise the chance of someone inquiring.
5. Build Subconscious Trust
Users aren’t spending a long time on your landing page – whether they convert or not. This is why having thousands of words of content on there isn’t particularly effective. What is effective is having reviews, testimonials, awards, and accreditations immediately visible on your landing page. Both consciously and subconsciously users are going to trust a brand which has a certain amount of positive Trustpilot reviews or is a member of an accredited organisation in a specific industry.
Master These Five Elements and You’re Landing Pages Will Provide You with Sales and High-Quality Leads
Landing pages are the final piece of the jigsaw of any successful marketing campaign. As a result, they need to be near-perfect, otherwise, you’ve wasted time and money creating all the other steps of your campaign only for the final piece to let the whole process down.
We take landing pages extremely seriously here at Embryo and have a track record of creating optimised pages which attract users and convince them to complete the action the business requires.
To learn more about how to do this get in touch with us by phone at 0161 327 2635 or email [email protected]. Alternatively, just hit the contact button below.
