5 Fundamental Principles To Building High Converting Landing Pages

Are you looking to create a high converting landing page for your business? If so, there are a few fundamental principles you need to keep in mind.

In this post, we’ll highlight five of the most important ones. By following these tips, you can create a landing page that will help you achieve your marketing goals.

A landing page is a very focused webpage for your business, published on the internet displaying an offer you can make to your target audience with a single conversion goal in mind.

It is a great way to capture your potential customer’s attention and an indispensable part of lead generation marketing. It is the heart and soul of inbound marketing and is critical for generating leads successfully.

However, most landing pages don’t increase conversion rates because they lack the correct foundational strategy and don’t provide enough incentive for today’s consumers to take action.

If you plan on building a landing page for your business (and you should be!), you can follow some straightforward guidelines here to ensure success.

So… What is a Landing Page? 🤔❓

A landing page is created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where visitors land after they click on a link in an email or ads from search engines, social media platforms or similar places on the web. Unlike other web pages that offer numerous options, landing pages are designed with a single focus, known as a call to action (CTA). A landing page should be a campaign-specific page with a single call to action and no website navigation.

As landing pages play a vital role in your marketing campaigns, you want to generate most of the traffic to this page and maximise conversions. Therefore, this article focuses on four primary principles that have effectively delivered positive results over time.

#1 – Deliver The Right Message! 📢 🚨

Delivering the right message is not just about writing a compelling headline and a copy, along with a well-placed CTA. It includes a thorough understanding of your target customers’ needs and ends with delivering an honest, compelling message. The right message should be clear and concise, as well as relevant to your target audience. 

Your marketing campaign should give out a straightforward and engaging message to inspire your visitors to take action. Therefore, how you deliver the message on your landing page is vital for conversion. 

One of the first and most straightforward landing pages is to match your ad’s message. There’s a reason why your audiences click the links of your ads. Keeping your message consistent assures your visitors that they have arrived at the desired destination. It also makes sure you’re not wasting money on people who click your ad and bounce away out of confusion.  Unclear and fluff messages can lead to a higher bounce rate.

Apart from consistency in message, the right message on your landing page is the combination of:   

• Headline – There are numerous ways you can come up with a great headline for your landing page. A catchy headline represents the idea behind your product and encourages visitors to stay on the page. Experimentation also plays a vital role in keeping up with market trends. Some good headlines begin with numbers, some highlight value, some pique curiosity, and some add powerful words and adjectives.
• Copy – The copy should communicate your offer to the audience. An exact and appealing copy will influence the visitor to take action. Complicated and gimmicky phrases might sound smart, but they will barely deliver the message accurately. Collaborate with different minds and work according to feedback and suggestions to create a suitable copy for your landing page. Additionally, if you are confident about your product/service results, it’s always good to include them in your message. Choosing the right words (such as promise or guarantee) can also make a considerable difference in conversion performance. 
• Call To Action (CTA) – The CTA button on your landing page should stand out in the copy as well as in terms of design. It is also a good rule of thumb to use contrasting colours or minimal elements surrounding the button. After all, it’s the button that gets you conversions and increased interactions. The way it’s written, designed, and placed are crucial considerations. You also don’t need to settle for boring standard CTA buttons, such as click here or shop now. You can write better by articulating what your audiences will be receiving in exchange for their click. For example, a better form of  CTA would be ‘Claim your 20% discount now’.

If you offer a lead magnet through your landing page to collect visitor information, provide special attention to the lead capture form. It should include information such as what is your offer and how can it help your visitors. As Adespresso shares, “brevity and directness of a well-written CTA will drive the attention on what’s important and remove any distractions”.

#2 – Use Great Design And Quality Graphics

A recent survey from Adobe uncovered that two-thirds of people would instead read something beautifully designed than something plain if provided fifteen minutes to consume content. Hence, good design is vital for conversion.  

A landing page is a campaign-focused page and can be moulded according to the business’s needs. Therefore, its design should be dictated by its goal, which mostly is conversion. Whether your landing page intends to collect information or make sales, the design and graphics should support the cause.

Clean Design

With your landing page, you’re trying to convert your visitors, not impress them with your design skills. A clean, clutter-free design helps to prevent visitors from getting distracted. It also helps display the CTA correctly. Effective landing pages don’t have confusing navigations and complicated designs. With a clean design, you’ll be making a page that helps people take action. Also, design the landing page experience with a focus on both business goals and the target audience. 

Proper Use Of Colour And Graphics

It is a universal truth that a picture is worth a thousand words, and messages you write for your audiences are better received in the form of images and graphics. The way you adapt graphics and colours in your landing pages can transform their feel and presentation. And will undoubtedly impact the decision of your visitors.

Right Images and graphics can help increase the time duration your visitor will spend on your page. It will provide you with more time to deliver your message to your leads. Simultaneously, using the right colour can dictate a human mind’s decision process with its psychological effect. 

According to research from QuickSprout, 90% of product assessments are driven by the effect of colours. Colours undoubtedly affect conversions hugely!

 #3 – Keep Core Message & Elements Above The Fold

Visitors would immediately expect to see the information as they land on your page. If they can’t connect with the first sight message, they are likely to leave the page. 

The space above the fold is what your visitors see at their first sight of your landing page. Therefore, you must include everything you need there to convince your visitors to take action.

Therefore, a straightforward design with well-put elements such as a headline, a clear CTA button, and captivating graphics can grasp potential customers’ attention. As Forbes states, you have a limited amount of time to convince your visitors, so make sure you start thrilling them from the time they land on your landing page.

#4 – Accessibility And Page Load Speed

In a nutshell, user experience makes your visitors’ experience valuable and as meaningful as possible. It’s a crucial subject because providing your users with a relevant and pleasant experience affects the conversion rate. User experience is a broad topic as it covers all aspects, from visual design to interaction with the visitors. Yet, there are notably a few areas that don’t get much attention.

• Different users visit your landing page through various devices. It’s frustrating if your landing page fails to display your message correctly on all devices. It’s frustrating for you as well for not receiving the expected number of clicks.  On the other hand, it’s frustrating for your visitors, for the landing page will fail to deliver the message they were looking for. Though responsive web design is one of today’s top priorities, there should be a constant test and examination of your page’s structure on different devices with different resolutions to clear your message for all users. It’s crucial for conversion and brand image because a survey from Formstack suggests that 57% of internet users won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile.
• According to an Akamai Technologies survey, 47% of users expect a web page to load within two seconds. A fast-loading landing page is not only vital for user engagement but also for conversion. There are various ways and considerations you can follow to create a fast-loading landing page. 

#5 – Give Assurance & Social Proof

Before making a final purchase decision, people want to make sure they are making a decision they won’t regret in future. Assure them about your brand or product/service before they bounce away. You can do it in various ways. 

• Include your customers’ testimonials and reviews to impress new prospects. 
• Video content is a great way to clear the confusion. Most people prefer watching audio/visual content to reading a lengthy product description.
• If you are introducing new products or your business in itself is new, you’ll have a hard time getting reviews and testimonials. Therefore, you can provide free offers to your prospects and request them for a review/testimonial. If your product pleases them, they’ll happily provide you with positive reviews. 
• Additionally, let your visitors know that you provide a guarantee for your products and services. 

But Remember…Landing Pages Need To Be Regularly Tested

There can be more than one reason why your landing page is not performing the way you expect it to. Therefore, you’ll need to frequently test it, which is one way you can develop the best user experience. Most businesses create landing pages and leave them the way they are for an extended period. You don’t have to fix what’s not broken, but if your page is underperforming, you should analyse all the essential areas and keep improving them. 

Tools like Hotjar can help you understand how your users experience your page, where they are clicking the most, and what is invisible. Frequent testing and improvement will surely help you improve the outcome, creating a better experience for your visitors as well.       

At WEBO Digital, we believe great user experience combined with delivering the right message can make a successful landing page. A frequent test is still crucial to make sure your activities are providing you with the results you are looking for. Contact us for unique digital marketing ideas for your business.