Best practices for landing page design.
What are the best practices for designing landing pages that convert?
When it comes to building landing pages, design is everything.
Your design will make it easy for people to understand your landing page, and convert it.
Once your visitors arrive at your landing page it should be clear to what you’re selling in five seconds or less.
A study across a university shows that you have 5 seconds or less to impress and engage visitors to your landing page before they leave.
Most people believe that aesthetics are the easy part of creating a landing page and reality a poorly designed page has been known to kill conversion rates.
So let me give you the best practices.
#1: explain your offer.
Use the Context of use, images, and videos to explain your offer.
A good-quality image or video can show the benefits of your offering.
The images and videos should have a direct purpose on your page rather than just filling space.
It lets potential leads place themselves in the actual situation of your product or services.
For example, if a hotel resort shows images and videos of white sand beaches and clear ocean water, that’s going to be way more powerful than something written about it.
It let the visitor imagine themselves relaxing on the beach sipping on a pina colada.
#2: display happy people.
Display pictures of happy people to make your page welcoming to your visitors.
Images of people can make your page more warm and personal, plus these images are the most appealing and welcoming and will make your potential leads more comfortable on your page.
Actually, one study showed that having a picture of a smiling person on a specific landing page increases conversion rates by 102.5 percent.
People act out their feelings and we can use emotions to make potential leads feel a certain way. Displaying a smiling face puts them in a positive mood which has a positive impact on the conversion.
#3: use contrasting colors.
Highlighting the most important space with contrasting colors and white space.
An example of contrasting color is having a bright orange button on a dark background and has humans we’re naturally attracted to the severe difference.
You can use this in your design to highlight the sections of your page that you want to be seen.
The header leads capture form in the call to action ( CTA ) should be the most prominent form on your landing page.
With contrasting colors, it’s easier for potential leads to digest the information and convert.
One big mistake marketers make is packing way too many elements on one page. Please don’t do that.
#4: noticeable CTA button.
Make sure to design and make an obvious call to action button.
Obviously, your CTA button is ultimately the most important feature of your landing page.
Your entire goal is to get people to see that button so they take action on your page.
The effectiveness and your CTA button can be instantly changed with an eye-catching design or a great place on your page.
Here’s a couple of CTA button tips: Bold the font and make the button actually quite large.
Generally, you want to place your CTA button above the folds that mean if someone comes to your page they’ll see it right away and don’t have to scroll down.
The more specific and clear you are with your button, the higher conversion rates will be.
#5: make the benefits clear.
Making your benefits clear is important. Your potential leads need to know what your product or services offering meets their needs.
What exactly are they going to get from this relationship?
Present your benefit in a clear and simple way that makes them curious for more information.
It’s best to present these benefits in a list or small blurb.
This will allows your potential leads to easily skim through it and see if it’s the right product for them.
#6: one action to convert.
Make sure to provide your potential leads with one single action to take.
When creating a landing page the goal is to provide potential leads with an easy path to conversion.
So we need to provide users with only one action that they can take; this means removing any navigation bars, footers, or outside links that drive attention away from your CTA.
Having multiple things on your page for leads to click on is a huge distraction from your CTA and your main goal. Because having many things on your page is going to distract your visitor from the main goal. It’s not good for you.
Be sure to get rid of the other distractions and keep them focused.
#7: use bold headings.
You want to be using bold headings. So it makes it for potential leads to skim.
A heading and subheading are crucial to your landing page as they hook in potential leads.
To explain additional benefits or selling points use hold headings to attract their attention.
Break information down into small digestible segments.
With small sections and large headings, it will be easier for people to skim the information and really digest what you’re saying.
Toward the bottom of the page, you should also have a bold statement that reaffirms your value proposition.
The final declaration should include a call to action. This is your last chance to convince potential leads that they need your offer.
So make it clear, simple, so people can actually skim it and understand what your offer is.
#8: use a short form to reduce the bounce rate.
You want to create a short capture form to prevent a high bounce rate.
When a visitor visits your page there is nothing more frustration ore daunting than a huge over-complicated form.
When thinking of designing a capture form think simple, you want to make easy for people to enter on your entry form.
If not, then they’ll be sure to jump off your page before converting.
A recent study by Hubspot showed that if you reduce the form fields from 4 to 3 it improves the conversion rates. Very sweet right?
They also found a negative correlation between the number of drop-down menus and conversion rates: you want to avoid too many drop-down menus.
When creating a sign-up form, keep your main objective in mind.
Make sure to only ask potential leads for information that’s necessary to achieve those objectives.
Because, the more fields you ask people to fill out, the more drop off you’re going to see.
Well that’s is it.
The design of your page is as important if not more important then the actual content on your page itself.
Potential leads need to be able to easily read that information and understand the message that you’re trying to convey.
I hope you enjoy this blog post. Let us know what you think in the comments and don’t forget to check back next week for even more great blog topics coming your way.
