Even the best designed web site is not going to convert as well as it could because it’s targeted to a broad audience who may only generally be interested in your product. Your visitors are going to come from different channels. Some will come from online or social channels, some may come from a direct mail piece or mass media campaign.
Landing pages help you take advantage of these different sources of traffic by allowing you to direct each channel to a special pages that has a specially crafted message that’s targeted to your audience.
Regard less of whether it’s your home page or a landing page, here are the things that each should have:
Solutions-Based Headline
Each visitor to your website is looking for something and on average, you have less than 8 seconds to keep them. Don’t waste their time with a headline about you. Offer them a solution to their problem.
Here’s an example of a couple of headlines.
- Consulting Co Offers Complete SEO Services For Every Business – It’s About You
- Grow Your Online Sales by 25% or More By Doing Just Three Simple Things – It’s About Them
Descriptive Sub-Headline
A great headline isn’t enough. You should also create a sub-heading to provide a some additional detail. You sub-line should be both short and descriptive. Try to limit it to a sentence in length.
Here’s a sample sub-head for our headline above:
- Find out how using the right Keywords, Content and Link Strategies can drastically improve your sales by improving your search engine rankings.
Back Up Your Claim With Your Content
Use the headline and sub-head to direct people to your content. Then use your content to get into the details of the offer or your capabilities. Again, when you’re writing your content, think about it from the perspective of the customer.
Add Customer Testimonials and Case Studies
Testimonials can add credibility to your company. They should help to back up the claims that you’re making. Make sure that the testimonials include pictures, names and specific results.
Case studies also help to back-up your claim. The key to a creating successful case study is providing as many specifics as possible. By showing everything you did to help solve another customer’s problem, it will establish you as being more credible to potential customers.
Successful case studies should include:
- A description of the problem
- The implemented solution
- The end results
- A customer testimonial
- A call to action
Call To Action
You have a great headline, sub-head and content but still drop the ball if you don’t ask for the sale or direct the customer to take the next step. A call to action can be as simple as a button with some text, but the key is having them in multiple places. In addition to multiple locations, you should also test using different colors, words and styles. A rounded button, square button, simple text link and all caps are just a few of the elements that you could test.
Establish Trust & Credibility
If you sell online, you should definitely include some security credentials and/or trusted badges to provide an additional level of comfort to your visitors. You should make sure include these credentials all the way through the purchase funnel.
Even if you don’t sell on your website, having trusted 3rd party validation on your site will improve your overall website retention and visitor conversion rates.
Test Everything
Even if you create a landing page that successful converts visitors into taking action, it’s essential that you also develop a plan to test the various elements and see which one coverts the best.