Have you ever sat in a sales pitch and known you would walk away without buying?
Sometimes, it’s an overeager attitude or a lack of proof that a product works. Sometimes, it’s confusing sales tactics or an unprofessional tone. No matter the cause, you may have eyed the door, hopefully waiting for your chance to get out.
A bad landing page is the same way: visitors find your pitch lacking and jump at the chance to run. And with all of your hopes pinned on conversions, it’s important to know how to create a landing page that works.
If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve got you covered. Try these nine key design tips to get users focused on your pitch instead of the nearest exit.
1. Start With a Single Goal
Here’s one of the most important landing page tips: the purpose of a landing page is to help conversions, which is much easier when you’re working on converting visitors according to a single goal. Whether you aim to build brand awareness by growing your subscriber list, generate leads by capturing contact info, or showcase a product for sale, your entire landing page should develop around a single goal.
This, in turn, makes it easier to convert more visitors. A landing page that requires only one decision is more likely to earn a conversion than a landing page that tries to tempt prospects with multiple options.
2. Make Your CTA Clear
Your CTA, or call to action, should be designed around your primary goal for your landing page. No matter what your hook is, the button should be impossible for visitors to miss, and the design of the page as a whole should make the button prominent.
Don’t forget to use bold colors, a substantial size (without getting too big), and a clickable appearance.
3. Aim for Concise Copy
If there’s one easy way to lose your audience, it’s with a long wall of text. Overwhelming visitors with too many details can make it difficult to focus on your call to action. Instead, you’ll want to streamline the copy—and thus the user experience—to create a concise and easy-to-follow message.
After all, your website needs to pass the “blink test”, a marketing term for the 3-5 seconds visitors take to judge your website and decide whether to stay. Make sure you’re sharing a simple message that establishes your goal right off the bat!
4. Position Important Content Above the Fold
In addition to a concise copy in general, you’ll also want to make sure all of the important information—including any required fields and the CTA button itself—are positioned at the top of the page. Because different devices will put the fold (meaning the part of the page that’s visible without scrolling) in different places, it’s safer to keep the critical details up top. This positioning also helps with the blink test mentioned above.
Of course, you can and should still include content above the fold, including some of the landing page design tips and tricks below. Just be sure to include additional CTA buttons below to help scrollers convert with ease.
5. Remove Navigation Bars and Internal Links
As stated above, the purpose of a landing page is to help conversions. As a result, it’s actually less helpful to let visitors navigate away, as you would on the other pages of your website.
That’s why one of the best landing page design tips is a subtle one: removing exit opportunities. Both navigation bars and internal links let visitors leave before reaching your conversion goal. Removing these distractions, then, can help them stay focused on your page’s content and design.
6. Don’t Require Users to Fill Out Too Many Fields
Again, the idea behind a landing page is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to convert. This means you’ll want to simplify the steps they need to take.
It’s tempting for marketers to ask for a great deal of information from prospective leads, but don’t forget that you earn those leads by hooking them on an end result—not by frustrating them with tedious fields to fill out before they can access that result. Worse, some prospects grow suspicious when brands seem to ask for too much personal information.
Narrow down the number of required fields as much as you can. Ideally, visitors should need to fill out five fields or fewer.
7. Increase Trust With Social Proof
Visitors are more likely to convert when they perceive a brand as authoritative. For this reason, it’s crucial to show signs of social proof on a landing page. After all, no matter how much authority your brand displays on your site, your landing page visitors won’t be able to use a navigation bar to check out the details!
There are a few easy ways to increase trust by showing authority. First, use a professional landing page design with good visual appeal overall. From there, showcase testimonials, pull in logos of your current customers, or display ratings and reviews.
8. Showcase Your Product in Action
It’s one thing to create the perfect copy to describe what visitors can get from your offer, but a picture is worth a thousand words. Extra animations, videos, and demos are worth even more!
Landing pages with before-and-after photo sets, video demonstrations, and animations of a product in action perform much better than those that rely on design and copy alone. Capture visitors’ attention and make their decision easier with the right visual tools!
9. Monitor and Improve
Even when you think you know how to design a good landing page, your finished product won’t be perfect right off the bat. That’s why it’s crucial to keep reviewing your performance metrics until you reach your ideal conversion rate.
This is easier said than done, of course, and it can require everything from copy optimization to A/B testing.
Enterprise digital teams can work to understand user behavior and identify anything with a negative impact on conversions. Small tweaks and improvements will help you decide what to prioritize and what to remove for better results.
Know How to Create a Landing Page That Converts
Now that you know how to create a landing page, it’s time to get out there and do it. Though the nuances and details can be tricky to navigate, only testing and analysis can help you improve the final product—and that can only happen once you’ve gotten started!
If you’re ready for more killer tips on website design and beyond, check out our other posts for insights.