Anyone can create a landing page; it’s easy.
But if you’ve browsed the Internet for any amount of time, odds are you’ve come across numerous landing pages that barely hold your attention for 10 seconds.
Now, you sure don’t want your page to be like that — scaring people off once they land on it. You want to build a web page that holds your audience’s attention longer than their average attention span of 15 seconds.
(By the way, we know that by now, you’ve gone beyond asking questions like “What is a landing page?” So we’ll just use this guide to help you create one that converts.)
Here are seven steps to set up a landing page that holds visitors’ attention and converts them.
1. Choose your landing page builder carefully
Creating effective landing pages used to require companies to hire professional UX and graphic designers capable of creating custom designs from scratch.
Today, however, there are numerous, cost-effective solutions readily accessible. There’s no shortage of landing page builders on the web today. But this also creates a problem: choosing the right landing page creator may be a bottleneck for you – due to the plethora of brands competing for your attention.
Still, it’s not that difficult. If we’re being honest here, any landing page creator with the following core capabilities is good enough to create a well-designed landing page that converts:
Must-have functionalities:
- Drag-and-drop editor: Also referred to as “what you see is what you get” or WYSIWYG capabilities. This means you can design your landing pages without touching the code.
- A/B testing capabilities: This allows you to display different versions of your landing page to different visitors (or the same visitors) enabling you to evaluate the most effective copy/design.
- Analytics dashboards: A few of the metrics you’ll want to track include landing page views, sessions by source, average time on page, bounce rate, and conversions. You can also use Google Analytics to track these metrics — it works, too.
- An extensive collection of fully-customizable templates: This is helpful, because landing page templates enable you to hit the ground running with your creative processes — especially when they’re fully customizable.
For instance, here are some of the landing page templates in GetResponse:
- WordPress landing page: If you plan to set up your landing page on WordPress, you need a tool that lets you do this easily.
- Customizable domain integration: Your landing page creation should support custom domain names (e.g., YourWebsiteName.com rather than YourCompany.LandingPageTool.com) as visitors aren’t as likely to trust a page with a random URL. (Although, if you’re using a free landing page builder, you might have to settle with YourCompany.LandingPageTool.com)
- Integrations: You need a landing page builder that plays nice with other tools you’ll employ to streamline your conversion process.
- Responsive design: This ensures the landing page renders correctly regardless of screen size.
By the way, GetResponse’s landing software provides these functionalities. Get a free trial here.
2. Decide what user experience should look like
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when creating your landing page is ignoring user experience (UX) principles.
Aside from the fact that usability is a search engine ranking factor, a great UX will help you cement trust with visitors, which in turn will increase conversions.
We can’t address UX design in its entirety here as it’s a broad field, but these three tips below will help you design a page that’ll make visitors enjoy their time perusing the offer(s) – and more importantly, improve your conversion rates:
- Be concise. Make the main benefit of your offer (product/service/anything) clear in your headline. This is important, because you only have 15 seconds to pique the interest of your visitor and keep their attention long enough for them to sign up for your offer.
- Provide an inside look at what you are offering. If you’re selling a product, name its specific functionalities with screenshots or item photos.
- Use trust symbols. Displaying client logos, testimonials, and press mentions are all effective ways to boost credibility and stand out from the competition.
Want to learn how to build high-converting landing pages and grow your business faster? Sign up for our free Essential Landing Page Course today.
Brand consistency is a huge part of UX
When designing a new landing page, especially if you’re doing it for the first time, you may be tempted to get overly creative and design it using all the colors, widgets, and fonts.
Don’t do it. You’ll likely end up making a squeeze page with inconsistent branding.
For example, imagine this scenario: you click an ad on Facebook and land on a page with a light-blue background. It has a pretty interesting offer so you scroll about 60% down the page, reading every word and nodding in agreement with everything in it.
Eventually, you reach a call to action (CTA) button to sign up for the offer. Still excited, you click-through the button.
But all of a sudden, you’re now on another page with a yellow background.
Everything looks different, confusing — since the previous page had a light-blue background. You’re not sure which brand you’re dealing with anymore. Doubts, questions, and scepticism start racing through your mind.
This is what brand inconsistency does. So you don’t want a landing page like this. Businesses say the biggest negative effect of inconsistent branding (off-brand content) like this is that it leads to customer confusion – and rightly so. – Read more
