A guide to landing pages

You’ve probably heard the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Even with that warning, you likely place a good amount of weight on first impressions. When you see a dog you think looks scary, you’re probably scared (as most people would be).

Because of this, I think it’s better to focus on the saying, “You can only make one first impression.” This is especially true for yourself, but it’s equally important for your product and the ways you communicate it to potential customers.

You need to quickly and successfully present your offering, get the lead hooked, and deliver all the important information in hopes of getting a conversion. Your product’s/service’s “cover” is your website and more specifically your “landing page” which should make a great first impression and secure the transformation of a lead into a client.

But what makes for a great landing page? To learn that and much more, continue reading!

What is a landing page?

A landing page is simply a web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a lead is sent after they click on a link from an email, an advert, or another source. Unlike a typical web page, a landing page is focused on getting the user to interact with a call to action (CTA) on that page that converts visitors into leads or customers.

How are landing pages used?

A landing page might be a crucial part of a marketing campaign or an MVP test in the following ways:

• Conversion focus — Its very purpose is to convert site visitors into users/sales/future leads, which is the endgame for any marketing effort
• Measuring effectiveness — Landing pages allow marketers to track the success of an advertisement or campaign by observing the number of visits and interactions with the CTA
• Content exposure — Unlike a small advertisement, a landing page can spread its wings and provide all the information and marketing fireworks possible to achieve the CTA goal
• Lead capture — By including forms, landing pages can capture the contact details of visitors, which can be used for future marketing efforts. This is also important for MVPs built around a landing page to determine the level of interest for the product or feature promoted on the landing page

Key elements of an effective landing page

An effective landing page usually follows a formula that’s been tried and tested millions of times already by different products and services. The ingredients of this formula include the following elements. To better illustrate what I mean, I will use the example of this Lord of the Rings Kickstarter campaign that functions as a landing page.

Compelling headline

This is your eye-catcher and the first thing the lead will see. It needs to be interesting enough to incentivize the visitor to stay on the page and explore the full value proposition:

Resonating copy

On the page, the text needs to highlight the lead’s problem that the product/service is fixing. The user needs to be assured of the quality and given enough reasons to invest in the presented offer:

Call-to-action (CTA)/lead capture form

A button or a form that’ll allow the user to “commit” by either buying a product or sharing contact details:

Social proof

Testimonials, reviews, or logos of well-known clients can build trust and credibility. While in our example, reviews and clients are missing, as it’s looking to fund a product, at least the creator page adds an element of social proof to the campaign:

Professional visuals

Images or videos of high quality that reinforce the headline, copy, and social proof:

SEO elements

Proper use of keywords, meta tags, and descriptions can help the landing page rank higher in search engine results.

Benefits of using landing pages

Using landing pages is a long-standing practice used in marketing for several good reasons:

Enhanced lead generation

Landing pages are optimized, easy to optimize value proposition pitch. There should be no additional pages or things to distract the lead, only condensed reasons on why the person should use the call to action.

Higher conversion rates

Focusing your value proposition focus will naturally guide the user journey to the intended call to action. When you do this, it’s far more likely to achieve the goal that the lead was sent to the landing page for in the first place.

Improved brand awareness

It’s easy to make a landing page beautiful and functional on every device and promote the brand behind the page and intended action. A great landing page will stick with the user and even if the conversion doesn’t happen, there’s a chance that a different page for another product with the same brand will do so in the future.

Effective data collection

Landing pages should follow a specific UX flow to the CTA and thus, it’s easy to create tracking to verify the effectiveness of this funnel. Also, as it’s just a single page, the number of data points is limited and easy to verify on a technical level.

Freedom of expression

Unlike ads on popular ad platforms, your own landing page doesn’t need to follow a predefined template with limited characters. You can build it as you wish and focus on the selling points you believe will resonate well with your leads.

Enhanced credibility and trust

Testimonials, endorsements, and security badges on landing pages became an element that builds trust and credibility with your leads. While social proof isn’t a concept limited to landing pages, it can help to strengthen the effectiveness of them.

Types of landing pages

While all landing pages focus on getting the lead to interact with the CTA, there are two common types of landing pages.

Lead-generation landing pages

Those pages are designed to collect user data, such as name and email address. The main purpose is to build a database of leads to convert into customers in the future. Thus, the CTA is a contact form with as few fields as possible. Use cases include:

• Product MVP — You can pitch a product you want to create and want to research the interest levels
• Ebook or white paper download — A landing page can offer a free, valuable resource that’s unlocked once contact details are shared. Those contact details will be later used for marketing a different product
• Webinar registration — In this case, the leads are invited for a free webinar, which ultimately promotes a service or a product

Click-through landing pages

Click-through landing pages are used in e-commerce either as a simple shop with the landing page as the product/service main page or as an intermediate page between a short ad and the actual shop. The use cases include:

• Product shop — The most natural use case based on the text above, but it’s better to pay attention to the second typical usage
• Affiliate sales page — A page that highlights a product and redirects (as CTA) to the product’s actual purchase page. The owner of the landing page, the affiliate, gets a cut of the sales

Best practices for creating landing pages

Here are some expert principles to follow to make your landing page successful:

• Less is more — Keep the design simple and focused. Don’t bother with any unnecessary elements that don’t increase the likeliness of the lead interacting with the CTA
• Razzle-dazzle them — Make sure your call-to-action (CTA) button stands out by using contrasting colors and sticks out from the rest of the page. This is a visual cue indicating the importance of the button
• Don’t ask (too many) questions — You may be tempted to add many fields to the lead to capture more details about your leads. Don’t. The fewer the fields, the more likely the form will be completed
• Leverage A/B testing — Create two versions of your landing page with one varying element, such as the headline, CTA, or images. Measure which version provides better conversion and use that one
• Make it lightning fast — Nobody has time to wait for your page to load. You can either present your value proposition here and now or you are risking losing the lead before you have a chance to speak
• “Don’t you guys have phones?” — Well, everybody does nowadays; make sure your page looks great on a smartphone

However, the most important advice would be to monitor your landing page using analytics and see what works and what doesn’t. If you can’t do A/B testing, still ask around for feedback to learn what images/text can be improved.

I did that for months on my landing page before I settled on the current design. The only reason I stopped is that I reached Pareto levels of success and I decided my focus should be placed elsewhere.

Landing page providers

Here are three highly regarded landing page providers that you might consider, as recommended by Forbes:

1. ClickFunnels — Best known for driving leads, ClickFunnels offers a variety of funnel options and is particularly suited for businesses focused on lead generation
2. Wix — A great choice for beginners, Wix provides an intuitive drag-and-drop editor and a wide range of templates to create professional-looking landing pages
3. Weebly — Known for its affordable plans, Weebly is another user-friendly option that allows for the easy creation of effective landing pages without needing a big budget

Final thoughts

Now, while a landing page is called a single page in this article, this doesn’t need to be the case. Very often, the homepage will act as a landing page and different subsections will be added in a way not to distract needlessly from the main marketing message of the home/landing page.

You could say that a landing page is the modern equivalent of flyers, but not limited to their static, limited form. Still, all in all, it’s just an advertisement and to make sure your landing page works, you need a great product or service to be in its spotlight.

Featured image source: IconScout