There are five things that always exist on a successful landing
page:
1)
Headline
2)
Demonstration (if you don’t have pictures or descriptions on what the visitor
has to do on the page, they will leave)
3)
Value – there has to be a reason why they should choose you instead of your
competitors
4)
Support
5)
Action – tell people what they need to do. There has to be a single call to
action on your landing page – if you expect someone to do four different
things, they’ll do none
Every
time you give someone an excuse to leave your page (like a social sign in),
you’re giving them the opportunity to leave and never come back.
You
have to think about why the visitor wants to interact with your content. Nobody
cares about features – if you’re creating the right emotional feel for a
product, you’re going to have higher conversion rates.
Things that can help your landing page:
- Bullets
- Graphics
- Emphasis
(italic, bold, underline)
- Images
Many
of your customers don’t think about your product in the same way you do, this
is why testing is so important. Always try to find out what a potential customer
would want to invest in emotionally when creating a landing page.
Test your content
If
you’re selling a luxury item, you’re probably going to need to provide more
content. If you’re just asking someone for an e-mail address, keep the content
short. The important thing is that you test the content to see what works for
you. Don’t argue with people about changing the headlines or other content –
just change it, test it and use the one that performs the best.
Creating a great landing page: The Process
Phase
1
- Brainstorm
content
- Design
and write
- Create
more content than you need
- Create
control page
- Create
variations
- Test
Phase
2
- Analyze
your results
- Choose
new control
- Revise
variations
- Test
again
Phase
3
- Headline
- Call
to action
- Large
images
- Length
of content
Your
headline needs to take the visitor from “I think this is the right place” to “I
know this is the right place”. Once they realize they’ve come to the right
place, they have patience.
Images
Sometimes
a picture of a woman works really well and sometimes a picture of a man will
work. You need to test the images and choose the one that conveys the right
emotion for whatever you are selling.
If
you use a picture of a person on your landing page, make sure the person faces
the action on the page. If they’re looking at you, you start thinking about the
person in the image instead of the content on the page.
Buttons
One
of the last things you need to be testing is the buttons on the landing
page. Your headline and images are more important.
Ways of expressing value
It’s
a requirement that you communicate value. After the website visitor realizes
they’re in the right place, you need to make sure they know that what they’re
about to buy or sign up for is valuable.
Forms
Don’t
create long forms that ask a visitor to give you their name, phone number,
e-mail etc. Don’t use the word “submit” on your buttons. People don’t want to
“submit”, they want to “buy”.
Content critique
People
don’t care about you and your company; they want to know what you can do for
them.
Written by: Francois Muscat , WSI consultant
