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Landing Pages 2.0 2019
We’ve published multiple website design blogs on landing pages from the “rule of thirds” to landing pages 101. Now it’s time to create a more comprehensive blog post that pulls it all together with a video coming soon from Olivia … I promise!
Today we will break all major components of a great landing page:
- The call to action (CTA)
- Credibility media
- Forms
- The rule of thirds
- Turbulence reduction
- Giving visitors what they want
FORWARD
Make Or Break Your Digital Marketing
While I think you already get the idea I’m going to go ahead an hammer away a little more at the purpose and importance of a landing page.
Importance
Let me save time and typing on my 1989 IBM Model M keyboard (hooked up to a super computer of course) and give you some stats:
Google Ads
- Without a landing page: Conversion Rate: 1% – You lose money
- With a landing page: Conversion Rate: 10-50% – You make money
General Site Visitors
- Without a landing page: Capture Rate: 1%
- With a landing page: Capture Rate: 20-60%
By conversion rate I’m referring to the percent of site visitors that actually take action by either calling you or filling out a form turning them from a visitor into a true prospect. Capture rate is the same thing just with non-ppc (pay per click) terminology.
Purpose
A landing page is a direct message to your site visitor on what you can deliver to them with an easy path to get there:
- Communicate what the site is about
- Cut all the logic and target emotional triggers of your site visitors
- Give them value in return – information and/or other stuff like pricing, scheduling, etc …
- Load fast – real fast on all platforms including mobile
- Reduced strip down message that represents your entire website
THE DESIGN
No Turbulence
Turbulence could also be referred to as busy, ransom note, or confusing. The general guidelines for creating clean landing page are:
- Word count should be no more than 600 words (usually more but it’s not written in stone and depends on your target audience)
- Ditch the slide shows and other amateur gimmicks
- Keep images to one clean image that is low on complexity
- Don’t use multiple fonts and try and stick with highly readable fonts such as Arial
- For the mobile version consider cutting the word count and an even simpler image (or no image at all)
The Rule Of Thirds
While the rule of thirds historically has been used in art and photography it is very applicable to great landing page design.
The rule of thirds isn’t supposed to be 100% applied in exact quadrants when designing your landing page. Instead use it as a tool tweaking and generally placing important images/objects appropriately:
- Upper Left-hand side or Right hand side – key image that represents the message you are trying to get across to your site visitor
- Upper-lower left side or right hand side (usually opposite side of form) – Key message to site visitor like: No Credit Check, Instant Approval..etc
- Middle-lower left-hand side or right hand side – form used to get information and give prospect back value (price quote/etc)
The rule of thirds should behave as a guiding principle when putting together your design. You might choose to adjust components higher or lower than the grid intersections but in general near where they are supposed to be.
KEY COMPONENTS
Call To Action
The call to action (CTA) prompts / gives incentive for the site visitor to take action of some sort:
- Fill out form
- Call
- Buy/Shop
- Register
- More…
The CTA is NOT filling out a contact us form or some generic name/phone/email “more information” form request. Contact Us will not bring in prospects.
The Form
Most site visitors do not want to call or even chat. If they are triggered to take action from your landing page they do want more information typically. The key is the form offers value back to them. A form requesting more information with a description of the request is useless and a sign of a bad website/landing page. The form should offer some combination of the following:
- Instant price or quote
- Schedule
- Free evaluation and/or quality ebook or article sent back to them after filling out form
- As the above listed indicates – instant gratification
Don’t expect a generic form that is part of some sort of crappy build your own website will cut it. You’ll need a real website and form – if you’re planning on a DYI site then stop wasting your time reading this article because you’re website is already a failure.
Above The Fold
Your landing page is … just that – the first thing a site visitor that searches for you should see. Landing pages are designed to load fast and deliver everything the site visitor needs to be emotionally triggered to make a decision without scrolling down or going to another page.
Historically the general rule of thumb for landing pages was the page would not let the visitor go to any other part of your site (so they didn’t get distracted). They provided the emotional reason to buy with a tiny bit of logic to back the visitors emotional decision. Times have changed as all modern landing pages are integrated into the website (usually the home page but not necessarily) and give the visitor the ability to scroll through the rest of your site to get more information if they need it to back their decision.
Load Time > 3.1 seconds mobile 2.1 seconds desktop
All landing pages should load fast. By loading I’m referring to the Real Use Monitoring (RUM) Index. RUM is the perceived loading time of the website as in when it first populates the critical components above the fold such as title/images/form.
For every second a landing page takes to load you lose about 22% of your visitors (or more depending on which study you subscribe to). It’s 2019 as I write this so don’t pay for a slow loading website. If your design company hands you a slug kick it back until it loads in the blink of an eye.
Conclusion
The bottom line is a landing page should give the site visitor what they want and answer the questions they have. The questions are:
- “What is this site about?” They should know instantly it’s the cleaning service they have been looking for…for example…
- “Can I get the information I’m looking for?” Pricing/etc
- “Can I trust you?” If you have credibility proof such as BBB membership, guarantees, etc then make sure they know that.
Landing pages are serious business. No landing page or bad landing page? Fix it. If you plan on cutting corners on this then it’s time to shut your doors because this isn’t a DYI guide – it’s a guide on how to evaluate a pro when finding the right company to help you win online. Good luck and do it right.