Core web vitals are going to play a comprehensive role in the SERP results. So optimization of your landing page is a very crucial part of the SEO game. I have written this essential guide to help you optimize your landing pages. This will increase your ROI, and decrease the bounce rate of your customers. Let us dive into steps to improve landing page speed.
Trust & Security
With the increase in online marketing spam, you have to create the trust of your customers on your landing pages to pull your business up. Here are some points to increase the trust level of customers on your landing pages.
Show phone number
Showing phone numbers on your website increases your credibility. People think that you are a legal entity. And at the line to answer their queries will be a real person.
Remove barriers
If your site offers something free in exchange for a subscription and some personal details, you must offer something precious. This will increase the interest of your users that you offer something valuable to them. People like the “Try before you purchase” option. You need not worry about sharing a little upfront if you have a great product.
Consistency in Branding
While the banner on your website, your landing page, and your destination site are not consistent, you will lose business. Your landing page comes in the middle of the acquisition process and it should be in the real sense of branding values. If you are displaying too many ads and not providing value to customers on a landing page, the customer will leave. At the same time, the color palette and typography of the landing page should not differ from other pages of your site. You have to increase the confidence of the customer that he is at the right place to make a purchase.
Gimmicky sales tactics
The Internet is full of crap. You should offer some value to your customers and should not use gimmicky sales tactics to attract customers. You should follow the rule of authenticity. People love to buy from those sites that tell the truth.
Popups
You may be using popups to attract customers to click on them to increase your sales or subscriptions, you may increase sales or subscribers for the time being. But in the long run, you will lose customers. Never use JavaScript that asks a customer, “Do you want to leave this page”. This will annoy a customer. So it is better to avoid such tactics on landing pages.
Use verifiable facts
In this era of online research and shopping, always use verifiable facts about your products. If something is not true, don’t say it because customers will easily catch you.
Endorsements
Use endorsement by well-known businesses or people by creating affiliates for your business. It will increase your credibility.
Terms & conditions
Try to explain the terms and conditions of your page in Layman’s terms. Don’t make it too much complex for a common customer to understand.
Testimonials
Testimonials increase the trust level of your customers on your landing page and services. But don’t use fake testimonials. If you don’t have any testimonials yet, increase the feedback mechanism to allow your customers to provide their valuable feedback.
Perform A/B Testing on LP
Perform A/B Testing on your landing pages to measure the conversion. If fewer testimonials work better, then you should not go for more testimonials on your website.
Logos and brand certificates
Brand certificates & logos increase the trust level of customers. But be aware that you can use only relevant and well-known brands in your alignment strategy.
Design of LP
Your story will be more believable if your look is expensive. Money talks. But don’t fully rely on it, you still need the right CTA and LP.
Exaggeration
Don’t exaggerate in your landing page optimization. Over-exaggeration often increases the bounce rate of your customers.
Privacy
Your landing page should have a link to the privacy statement page. It overcomes the fear of customers of email use. If you write, “We do not sell your email address”. This will increase the subscription rate of your subscribers or customers.
SEO of Landing Page
SEO is a critical aspect of digital business these days. It is especially important for lead generation e-commerce sales etc.
More landing pages on your website than your expectations
There may be more landing pages on your website than you expect. As the organic search is increasing day by day, the need to optimize every page on your website is increasing. You have to optimize the web pages of your website for a set of keywords for that particular web page.
Text headlines
If you want to increase the organic traffic on your website, you have to think out of the box. It is better to place a text headline as H1 as compared to a statement in the image. You have to pick your priority and make the decision accordingly.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are easier to rank in SERPs as compared to short keywords. So it’s better to focus on long-tail keywords in the optimization of your landing pages.
Optimization of HTML
A single landing page on your website will rank higher as the optimization of HTML for that particular landing page is easy as compared to the optimization of multiple landing pages.
Create backlinks from Valuable resources
Your landing pages that perform well gain more traffic. You have to create more backlinks with those pages that are performing well in your marketing campaign.
PPC costs reduction
If the content on your landing page matches the link title of your AdWords campaign, it gives Google a signal of relevancy to your intentions and ultimately lowers the costs of your PPC campaign.
Things to know before the development of the Landing Page
A campaign manager provides the best information to web designers & developers to create a perfect landing page. Following are the genuine needs of a business to create a landing page.
Business Objectives
The first and most important part of the creation of a landing page is to know the business objectives. What problems are you going to solve through the creation of your landing pages?
Audience
Knowing your audience allows you to create a perfectly optimized landing page. You should know the type of audience; and the questions they may have while visiting your site.
Entry Points
You have to take into consideration all the entry points of your landing page optimization. These entry points may be email, organic, PPC, social media, etc. There should be consistency in your campaign. If the logo and banners used on your landing page do not match your campaign, visitors to your site will leave early.
Creative Brief
Documenting a creative brief on paper is a really good idea before you start creating your landing pages. This helps you to achieve your goals. Your business and user goals must be defined in an implementable idea.
Things to do before going live, the landing page
You should plan the process of your marketing campaign before the development of your landing page and going live. Prepare a checklist for your do’s and don’ts. This is a great way to ensure the process of development of your landing pages.
Domain name availability
This is the first important step before you go live. You should try to have a branded name because it influences the design direction.
Repeat your successes
Repeat your success stories in your new campaigns. Also, learn from the previous mistakes.
Competitive analysis
Have a close look at the activities of the competitors. If you find some inspiration from their content, it gives you some ideas.
The 5-second rule
Before going live, test your landing page with a 5-second rule. Ask your subject to sit in front of a computer screen. Show them the landing page for 5 seconds, then hide it and ask them to give their feedback for a particular landing page. If they answer unclear about it; you have to make the necessary changes as per their feedback.
On-page printing of landing page
Print on paper the landing page and hang it on the wall of your office at a place where your friends or colleagues can see it. Then engage them in an open discussion about the design and objectives of your landing page.
Conduct Postmortem
After the evaluation session, conduct a postmortem of feedback provided by your colleagues or friends. This will help you to determine the success or failure of the efforts for the creation of a landing page.
Testing of Landing Pages
Don’t always rely on personal opinions about your landing page.
A/B test
This allows you to produce alternate designs for your landing page optimization. Having an A/B test is always a critical step in the measurement of your landing page success.
Test the photography
Many campaigns are done according to the specific demographic of the users. So you should provide different images to the response of the users.
Text
Try a variety of text in your main message and run a test for each. You can perform this by changing the size and color of the text.
Color of the CTA Button
Choose the appropriate color for the CTA button. Don’t use red color as it has a negative impact. Many marketers suggest a big orange color on the CTA button.
Refine your landing page constantly
With time, new ideas come. Test them immediately. Never stop at the first A/B test. It’s better to practice to improve your landing page.
Don’t be self-satisfied
Don’t assume that you know everything about your landing pages. Always be a better practitioner towards A/B tests, validation, and experimentation of different techniques.
Forms on Landing Pages
Forms on the landing pages are used to reduce the bounce rate of your visitors. Here are some tips to improve the experience of visitors on your landing page optimization.
Removal of unnecessary fields
You have to make your customer feel easier while filling out any subscription form. Remove all unnecessary fields on the subscription form which are not required.
Draw the attention of the customer to the form
If you need any visitors on your website to fill a form and it’s your primary goal then you have to direct them visually to that form. So they know what they are supposed to do.
Whitespace
Try to make your forms inviting, clean, and simple. You can do it by putting in decent margins of space. You should not crowd your forms.
Usage of oversized buttons
Never be afraid of using big shiny buttons on your forms that stand out. Don’t go for an ordinary grey button with an ordinary size. You should create eye-catching buttons to stop your visitors from going home.
Easy to read
Use a font that anyone can easily read. This will make your visitors feel friendlier and happier while staying on your forms.
Why a customer fills out a form
The rewards and benefits mentioned on your form should be in a very clear position. This makes your visitors constantly remember why they are bothering for.
Optimization of CTA
The CTA button on your landing page is the primary conversion button on your landing page. Some common CTA’s may be; “purchase product, subscribe newsletter, download e-book, watch a demo, request information, etc”.
Make the goal of CTA clear
Make the goal of your CTA very clear to your visitors. For example, if you are offering an e-book, then instead of asking for “submit” or “subscribe”, your button should say, “Get your free e-book”.
The bait-and-switch rule
You have to deliver what you have promised. Never deliver something else. If your CTA button says, “Get free e-book” and when a visitor clicks on this button, you should lead him to download an e-book. Never take him to any other page rather than what you have promised in your CTA button. Taking him to any other page will be an unscrupulous tactic and your visitor will be annoyed.
Don’t over-sell
Don’t make feel your visitors that you are trying to over-sell. Claims like “Amazing! Awesome! Kick-Ass!” come in the definition of over-selling.
Position of CTA button
Having a long web page then you have to repeat the CTA button at the position of every page length to remind your visitors. This will provide your customers with a mechanism to act.
Personalize CTA
Selling services in which your desired action is that your visitors or customers call you? then you have to provide them with a toll-free number or geo-targeted local codes to ease them.
Utilization of safety net
Not every visitor will engage right away. He/She may need some extra information to answer their queries. For example, if you are selling something through your landing page optimization, then you should add a product brochure as a secondary CTA. This enhances the confidence of your visitors in your products.
Continuity
There should be continuity in your CTA button and the entire acquisition and conversion experience of the visitors to become your valuable customers.
Reduction of availability options
If you have only one message and action, then your page should have a CTA button in such a place that it attracts the attention of your visitors immediately. You should not place extra offers on your page in such a situation. If you have several messages on your landing page, then there should be a single goal to ensure that each area is consistent with its CTA button.
Don’t be aggressive
Don’t be aggressive in the language and tone of your CTA button. This will irritate your visitors and they will not be converted into customers.
Things NOT to do that can offend your customers
All of us may have some horrible online experiences. Follow these tips to avoid re-creating them for your customers.
Useful information for customers only
Always follow the rule of Steve Krug, a famous author of the book “Don’t Make Me Think”, which cuts your copy into 2 halves. Use one half and throw another half.
Speak the Truth to your customers
Deliver what you promise. Always speak the truth to your customers. Don’t lie to them.
Don’t include unnecessary forms
Trying to gather necessary data with a simple form, don’t be greedy to grab some extra data from the customers. Cut all the unnecessary forms that are not needed. This will make your customers happy about your services and products.
Turn down the music
If your landing page has the functionality of the music, you should give the option of slowing down the music. There should also be the option of a prominent mute button. Sometimes your customer may be in an office and if you don’t provide this option, it may disrupt the decorum of the office, and you will lose your customers.
Don’t get leads with the intention to spam
Your communication with your leads should be about your topic. Never send them irrelevant emails.
Don’t use photos found on the internet
Use your photos or images. Don’t use the photos to be found on the first page of SERPs. This will create a sense of generic and untrustworthiness.
Avoid Assumptions
Never underestimate your visitors. Put yourself in their shoes and try to anticipate their questions. Then try to answer accurately. If they find the right answer from you, they will not go anywhere else.
Opt-Out option
Make clear to your visitors during the process of subscription that they can opt out at any time, this will increase their confidence level in you that you will provide only relative information to their needs.
When to Use a Landing Page
You may not have the time and resources to use landing pages for every campaign. Here are some recommendations for when to use a landing page.
Every campaign
Although already mentioned, you may not have resources for creating a landing page for each campaign but you should try for it. Sending your customers to a landing page that is not relative to your campaign will make them annoyed, and they will leave your page quickly.
Multiple Traffic Sources
If your visitors are from multiple sources, you should create a landing page for every source. This will simplify your sales funnel process and will enable you more testing.
Special Promotions
While doing some special promotions, it is better to create standalone landing pages outside of your existing infrastructure.
Testing a new idea
When you or your CEO comes up with a new great idea that should be dealt with immediately, just go for the creation of a new landing page. By this, you can get instant feedback on its ridiculousness. It may work like a charm in which you are going to redesign the direction of your whole business.
Conclusion
Don’t be over-confident. If you lack inspiration, try rating your landing page with the conversion scorecard to give you a complete list of things to optimize on your landing page. Always remember that if you are properly optimizing your landing page, then someone else is optimizing his landing page to attract your customers.
