Knowing the components of an effective landing page

A landing page is designed to convert. Period. Building landing pages that convert means including the following:

• A unique offer: This is the most important contributor to increased conversion because it’s the essence of why your visitor is on the landing page in the first place. Try to avoid offers that mimic other standard offers in your industry. Make yours stand out.
• A directive headline: Use a benefit statement to clearly state what the visitor should do to convert.
• Focused copy with benefits summarized in a bulleted list
• Simple form fields: Ask for only as much information as is warranted by the perceived value of the person downloading. Asking for too much information too early reduces conversion. Use auto-fill type, smart forms that remember prior form fields, drop-downs, and simple bubble choices if it makes it easier for the user to complete the form.
• A graphic representation of the offer: This may be a photo, a graphic representation of the downloadable, or a picture of the author or sales rep (depending on the offer).
• Little-to-no site navigation: Too many choices lead to nonconversions. The desired action is conversion. Make that the clear choice by eliminating your navigation menus from your landing page design.
• A simple proof point, such as a customer testimonial, customer reviews, or compelling statistic that reinforces the value of your deliverable
• A post-conversion “Thank You” email with an immediate reengagement opportunity

The landing page building and testing company, Unbounce, creates effective landing pages for themselves (as you would expect). Figure 21-2 shows the middle-of-the-funnel landing page to download an e-book. It features a simple headline, an illustration of the book, and concise form fields. It also has a unified brand-consistent look.

Similarly Unbounce’s bottom-of-the-funnel landing page (see Figure 21-3) encourages a 30-day free trial. Several components make this a good landing page, including value creation via descending price points and a comparative features chart, additional side benefits, and clear suggestion to click for a 30-day free trial.

I consider shopping cart pages, purchase pages, and encouragement pages to be landing pages. Figure 21-4 displays Unbounce’s purchase page linked to the 30-day free trial CTA button. Note the simplicity of the form and the testimonial references off to the side. What a great way to lessen buyer’s remorse while creating higher confidence and, most probably, higher conversions.

Building a better landing page

According to Marketing Sherpa (www.marketingsherpa.com), about 75 percent of companies have trouble optimizing their landing page copy. Let me bring some clarity to the issue of building and optimizing better landing pages.

Reinforce the desired action

Using well-known company logos with testimonial statements reinforces the visitor’s engagement as a positive action. As shown in Figure 21-5, Basecamp does a good job with this concept. Basecamp’s encouragement landing page has a headline that tells users how many other people just completed the same form fields the visitor is about to complete. There’s perceived safety in numbers, so this headline reassures users that filling out the form is a safe choice. This landing page also features clean graphic design.

Build landing pages for deeper engagement

Shutterstock provides stock photography online. They have very cleverly turned their home page into a deep engagement page by creating a one field form that is essentially a search bar for the image you desire. (See Figure 21-6.) With a library of over 50 million stock photo images and 50,000 more images added daily, they’re probably going to have an image that matches your search. Shutterstock also reverses the shopping process by introducing price only after you’ve found what you desire. Brilliant!

Build mobile-friendly landing pages

As mobile Internet access continues to skyrocket, your landing pages must be responsive. Building mobile-friendly landing pages with simple graphics and big, easy-to-click CTAs facilitates conversion from any device. In the case of Uber, the industry-disrupting ride-on-demand driving service, many of their new customers will convert from mobile. Think about it, when you need a ride, you use your mobile phone. Uber’s sign-up conversion page is basically just a form (see Figure 21-7). No bells. No whistles. Just a quick way to convert at a time when the new customer needs quick access and action. By using this simple form, Uber is using mobile landing pages to serve their customers’ needs. Your prospects may not need the simplicity of Uber’s landing page, but you should build and test your landing pages to display for optimal mobile conversion.

Build with bold, directive graphics

WebDAM’s landing page (see Figure 21-8) to download their guide on choosing digital asset management (DAM) software succeeds graphically. The contemporary color choices of blue and orange work in highlighting the two most important graphics on the page, which are a graphic representation of the downloadable book and the CTA button that clearly states, “Download Guide.” The form fields clearly state the information needed, and each field is supported by a graphic representation — very cool. The CTA is clear and the privacy statement builds confidence for visitors to exchange their data. But, the best graphical element is actually the arrow-shaped form, subtly designed to suggest the download to the visitor. Well done!

Testing your landing pages

Rarely do you hit a conversion home run when building your first landing pages. In fact, it usually pays to A/B test your landing pages. In A/B landing page testing, you’re testing two versions of a particular landing page with “A” being the original landing page and “B” being the new landing page. Test by sending roughly half of your visitors to the “A” page and the other half to the “B” page. By monitoring which landing page performs better for conversions over time, you can significantly increase this conversion input, achieving positive results on down the Customer Conversion Chain.

Here are some things to remember when testing your landing pages:

• Test one thing only: Only change one component at a time. So on each version of your landing page, change only the Headline, the form, or the benefit statements, not all three. The exception to this is when you’re testing for page layout as a conversion fact. If you’re A/B testing the overall graphic design, keep all the components, but arrange them differently or use a different color scheme.
• Test the highest trafficked landing pages
• Test regularly
• Test with intent of specific conversion improvement

WordStream (www.wordstream.com) performed a study for companies with 1,000 or more landing pages, and discovered that 80 percent of website traffic goes to only 10 percent of the landing pages. (See Figure 21-9.) Unless you’re testing some drastic landing page changes, why test on the 90 percent of landing pages that have the least impact on your conversion rate? Focus instead on landing pages garnering the most traffic, and your conversion rate changes will be more pronounced.

Some marketing automation software platforms make building landing pages easy. Optimizely (www.optimizely.com) and Unbounce (www.unbounce.com) are some tools for building multiple variations of a landing page. Here are some other testing tools for the non-enterprise organization:

• Convert (www.convert.com): Offers A/B and multivariate testing for agencies and experts.
• Google Analytics Experiment (https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/1745146): Enables A/B testing integrated with your Google AdWords PPC.
• Marketizator (http://www.marketizator.com): Offers testing that connects with Google Experiments by creating an event.
• Monetate (www.monetate.com): Includes a robust set of tools, including A/B testing.
• Nelio A/B Testing (www.wp-abtesting.com): Offers WordPress A/B testing for landing pages and much more.

Replicating successful landing pages

Discovering what works at each point of the Customer Conversion Chain is part of the fun of being an inbound marketer. Most websites have enough traffic; it’s their conversion rate that is under-performing. Your landing page may be the most important link to conversion success because it’s the direct catalyst for engagement and encouragement. Because of this, discovering which landing pages convert the best may be the quickest way for you to increase sales.

By testing one landing page in a chosen inbound campaign at a time, you discover which page derives a better response. After you’ve confirmed the conversion rate by allowing it to play out over time, it’s time to apply your knowledge to other landing pages. Simply create a variation of the most successful landing page, as defined by conversion rate, and create a similar version for a landing page in another campaign. Create an A/B test for the redesigned landing page against the original landing page to determine whether the new page increases your conversion rate for that campaign, too. When you see a pattern, you can leverage your success by replicating the successful conversion pages for all your landing pages, resulting in an increase of your overall website conversion rate. You have now created scalable, measurable success with some seriously positive implications for your inbound marketing campaign.