Supercharge Your Website’s Landing Page

Your website may be getting relatively decent levels of overall traffic, but after further analysis of your site’s analytics you find that visitors aren’t doing what you want them to do. They’re loading the home page, and then nothing happens – many may even be leaving your site almost immediately.

Adding landing pages can help. Landing pages are key transition points along the customer journey, and they can make all the difference between a drive-by visitor who simply loads, looks, and leaves, and one who sticks around and builds a real relationship with both your online presence and your organization.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind for building effective landing pages:

Simplify navigation. A website that’s hard to navigate is one of the main reasons that people leave, so don’t make your users jump through hoops. Make it easier for them to find what they need by eliminating superfluous navigation through multiple screens and menus.

Reduce the load. It may be tempting to throw as many functional elements onto the landing page as possible. Resist the temptation. Instead, decide what absolutely must be included on the landing page based on your key business needs. Lower-priority requirements can be handled elsewhere on the site.

Get to the point. Keep your copy light, clean and uncluttered. Use shorter-form bulleted and numbered lists instead of long-form paragraphs. Avoid cramming content together and keep fonts large enough to read easily on a wide range of devices.

Be responsive. As more users connect to websites through tablets and smartphones, it’s critical for landing pages to adhere to responsive design principals. Responsive design allows websites to dynamically adapt to the unique needs of smaller-screened devices.

Maintain brand consistency. Landing pages must reflect the basics of your brand – images, colors and fonts, for starters – so that visitors easily recognize and respond as soon as everything loads up.

Monitor performance. According to CPC Strategy, 47% of site visitors expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. A landing page that loads slowly or inconsistently is a key reason for abandonment. Put yourself in the shoes of the typical visitor and try to load the page under different scenarios – devices, networks, use cases – to ensure load times are acceptably brief and unforeseen glitches aren’t sending visitors to the exits.

Consider the reward. New visitors to your landing page are choosing to invest their time in learning more about what your company offers. Think about what value you’d like to offer them in return. This could be a subscription, a coupon, a trial account, a valuable resource, useful information, or something similarly simple that validates their decision to come in the first place.

Balance your data collection. Information on those who visit your landing page is the holy grail for any company. Some landing pages include forms, or give users the option of navigating toward forms elsewhere on the site. However you structure your information-gathering, keep in mind that asking for too much, too soon can turn visitors off and prompt a quick exit. Give them sufficient time to absorb your message before you hit them up for more detailed information than a basic email address.

Include a call to action. Today’s website landing pages are far more dynamic than the static pages that once defined the web. Visitors expect to do something when they get there. The call to action (CTA) could be signing up for a newsletter, registering an account, downloading an app, or making a purchase. Make it clear what you want your visitors to do, and use verbal, action-oriented language to move them in that direction. 

Embed some video. According to data provided by Diode Digital, 60% of people will watch video content on a web page before reading the text. And once they’re hooked, video will keep them around longer; visitors will continue to navigate through a website for an additional two minutes after viewing a video.

The bottom line 

Landing pages are the web’s equivalent of where the rubber hits the road. Done right, they can welcome visitors in, educate them on your products and services, and give them the tools they need to engage with your brand.

Have you had success implementing some of these tips on your own websites? Let us know what worked for you in the comments below.