Did you know that businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages get 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages? Businesses surveyed saw a 55% increase in leads when they increased the number of landing pages from 10 to 15.
A landing page is a key component to any lead generation effort.
With 55% of the sales process over before a visitor even contacts you, you want to make sure that when your website has done its job of providing the right information and impression that you have landing pages in place to move that visitor into your sales funnel.
In this article, I’ll give you 6 keys to designing a successful landing page that will have you converting visitors to leads more effectively in no time.
1. What is a landing page?
A landing page is a stand alone web page—that functions to gather visitor information in exchange for a piece of relevant content. Content can come in the form of a whitepaper, webinar, video or ebook. Visitors and leads are key performance indicators (KPI) that help determine if your inbound marketing offers are effective or not. The goal of any landing page is to convert visitors to leads so that you can identify a potential problem they are trying to solve, while moving them down into your sales funnel where the end-result is a new customer or client.
2. Why landing pages work
Remember the last time you went to a restaurant where the menu was ten pages long—and it took you ten minutes to decide what you wanted to order? I think we can all relate… This is called “analysis paralysis.” Analysis paralysis is where a person has too many choices to make. Landing pages zero in on one or two actions you want your visitor to take. This cuts down on the time and thinking it requires to make a decision. The rule in website design “don’t make me think” applies here. The fewer choices a visitor has, the faster you can capitalize on getting their contact information.
3. Seven elements of an effective landing page
A landing page should consist of only a few elements (see right)
- Descriptive headline
- Brief paragraph of the offer
- Picture of the offer
- Bullet points on what they can expect to learn
- Urgency statement
- A short form-typically only 4-5 fields
- Submit button
- Social proof (testimonial)
By utilizing the above 7 elements you can more effectively convert your visitor into a lead.
4. Do’s and Don’ts
Don’t add navigation from your homepage
By adding navigation to your landing page you provide a distraction that could hinder conversation rates. Better to leave it off.
Don’t have more than 5 form fields
Studies have shown the more fields you have the less likely your visitor is to fill it out. Gather only the information you need for the first touch. There will be more opportunity to gather more information with the next offer.
Don’t design pages that load slow
Over 40% of visitors will abandon a page if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less. Make sure your pages load fast. Use this helpful tool to measure your load times: Web Page Test
Do add meta tags to optimize your pages
You want your landing pages to show up in search engines so it’s important to optimize them correctly. Use an appropriate <title> tag and <description> along with body copy and images.
Do add a thank you page
After your visitor has filled out the form, make sure to redirect them to a thank you page that reiterates the offer and give them back your website’s navigation. Ask them to share or follow.
Do send an email
Once a visitor fills out your form, make sure to send an email with a link to download the offer so you increase your visibility and you have a presence in their inbox to reference.
5. Test your landing pages
Typical industry conversion rates fluctuate somewhere between 1% – 5%. Top performing landing pages come in at 10% or higher. Every landing page should be maximized by A/B testing. To conduct an A/B test, create two versions of your landing page and then change the headline, copy, colors, image placement and form length. Track to see what page performs best. By tweaking a few elements, you can increase your conversion rate dramatically. You won’t know till you try!
6. Take your lead generation efforts to the next level
To take your lead generation and landing pages to the next level, I recommend marketing automation software to help you systematize, test and create landing pages—making it easier and saving you time. Companies that automate lead generation and management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months. (Source: Gartner Research)
By not utilizing marketing automation, you will spend a lot of time piecing together the various tools needed like email software, analytics, forms and a content management system to put together one landing page.
We use a tool called HubSpot, which is an all-in-one tool that helps us create, optimize and test landing pages quickly. It saves time, tracks our data and helps us prove ROI to our clients more effectively.
In conclusion, maximizing landing page performance is key to generating leads and filling the sales funnel with viable, qualified leads.
If you’re interested in learning more, download the resource below that discusses landing pages more in-depth and 29 other ways to generate leads online.
