How to Create a Good Landing Page

Verna Mason March 30, 2016 6 Comments

How to Create a Good Landing Page

The main purpose of a landing page is to compel the reader to take some form of action, to visit a merchant’s page, or to sign up for a report or newsletter.  Ideally, you would want readers to take this action as quickly as possible.

A landing page is the first page visitors will see when they click on a particular ad or link.  The landing page can be a sales page of a home page on a website.  It is a very important aspect of marketing when it comes to making money through sales of products and services.

Many people do not know how to create a good one that will convince potential customers to buy products or services advertised.  .

 

Before Creating the Landing Page

If you’re searching for ideas on how to begin creating your landing page, the information below is a great place to start. Knowing what goes into a good landing page where users convert will help your business build a good online presence and also make it even better by aiming at improving just a single page.

Before you begin the actual creation of your landing page there are some other important steps that you need to determine first.

Identify Your Target Audience

Make sure the landing page speaks to a specific audience. Understand the problem, the need and want that your target audience has. You need to write the copy with a specific/defined person in mind.

If you drive online traffic to the landing page by means of advertising and run several different ads, build many different landing pages. These pages can mostly be the same, though with a different headline and tweaks inside the copy.

Define Your MWA (Most Wanted Action)

MWA is the one action visitors should take on the-landing page. What this is will depend purely on your product and strategy. On the whole, if your product is a bit costly and complicated, it’s better to just get their email address and to begin forming a relationship with them via e-mail.

If you’re selling low cost and/or more clear-cut products such as baby products or e-books, it’ll make more sense to aim directly for the sale. In case your product is software program, I recommend that you offer a free trial version.

Define Your Message

Now that you know the audience, the problem they face and the solution you can provide, craft that into an easy-to-understand message. There isn’t any way to prove for sure in advance what is going work, so create a couple of hypothesis’s and split-test them.

Design Your Landing Page

You’ve got your MWA in place, you’ve a well defined target audience and a hypothesis as to what offer will appeal to them. So, how do you design a good landing page that will motivate them to take action?

Elements of a Good Landing Page

The foremost thing that you must do is to make a list of all-the elements you require on your landing page.

What Essentials You Should Include

• Your company logo
• A headline which speaks to the target audience
• A concise explanation of your offer should be placed above the fold (the portion of the screen which can be viewed without the average user needing to scroll down)
• A detailed explanation of your offer below the fold when needed (depends upon the complexity of your product and offer)
• An image of the product or service being offered
• A simple form, ideally with only 1 to 3 fields (usually just name and email). Remember, the more data fields you ask the visitor to complete, the more resistance you’ll create and consequently the less people will fill the form out.
• A purchase button or sign up button depending with your predefined MWA response link to your privacy policy (in order to keep people on the-landing page, this should not load a new page but it needs to open up in a pop up window).

Techniques to Build a Landing Page

 

There are essential items that should be part of the page.  A good page should be clear and to the point.  It is common to come across pages where people tell a lot of stories before finally coming to the main point.  They forget that internet users have a short span of attention; therefore, they hardly have time to read all of the stories.  It should be written in a clear and concise way that people will understand.

• Use of bullet points – As with writing regular content, convincing points should listed in bullet points. Use bullet points so as to drive the main points home.
• Call to Action (CTA) – After a visitor reads the headline, it’s crucial that they recognize what to do next. There should be a strong, irresistible call to action to guide them to the next action.  Your CTA should stand out from the rest of the landing page and leave no doubt about its purpose.  Aside from the landing page design, a crucial feature for your CTA is what it says – copy-writing, particularly for conversion can be challenging.
• Use of Specific Language – Use language that people love to see, such as “free”, “50% discount”, “Buy One Get One (BOGO)”.

Take Advantage of Trust Signals/Elements

A good landing page makes abundant use-of trust signals, which-indicate to visitors that their brand and offer are trustworthy. Trust elements can take several different forms:

• Testimonials and Reviews – These are a classic form of trust elements, capitalizing on ‘word of mouth’ so as to re-assure visitors with endorsements from past customers. Make them authentic and you can use video if possible. And don’t be afraid to request your customers if they would be willing to help. This gives potential customers an opportunity to hear from customers who have used your product or service before.  It will enable visitors to build trust in the product/service.
• Trust badges/ guarantee seals — You can show the logos of high profile customers or media placements/press mentions.
• Third-party trust and security certifications — VeriSign, Better Business Bureau etc.
• “Like” counters — These push a more subtle form of endorsement via “Likes” and +1’s from diverse social media sites.
• Awards – Again, this will help build trust in you as a marketer and it will help to reassure that your website is authentic.
• Company Logos – This helps to build your brand and gives visitors a sense of security. It is especially good if the authority site is popular and genuine.

Convert Visitors into Customers

 

You will need to get visitors to act once they arrive at your landing page.  Visitors are frequently trying to resolve a problem or they may just be doing some research.  You would like them to follow through with the requested call for action.

Your content should address visitors’ concerns, answer their unasked questions, and give them a compelling reason to act.  Whatever their reason is for being there, you want them to put aside any objections and love your product/service enough to induce them into acting immediately.  Let’s take a look at how you can make that happen.

• Relevant and Short Copy — Make your landing page clear, relevant, concise. Be sure to keep a clean landing page with-obvious, natural navigation with no distractions (like pop-ups). Good landing pages offer all the-necessary information to encourage visitors to convert, and nothing extra. Do not put too much text on it, as visitors have to be able to read it fast.
• Use Page Headlines and Ad Copy to Broadcast Unique Value Proposition — Since they’re the first things a visitor will read, headlines shouldn’t bore or confuse, but persuade a visitor to take a closer glance. Good landing page designs should have a strong offer and be able to explain why your offer is valuable in very clear and concise terms.  The headline and sub-headings present a key opportunity for promoting the value of your offer.  Also, for a good landing page design, the headline and ad wording should complement one another.
• Inject emotion into your copy – Don’t just tell a visitor about what will happen if they take the requested action, but create an emotional desire for them to do so. People purchase based on emotion.  Then they justify their actions with logic.

• Make your copy easy to scan – Remember that visitors scan rather than read, so make your copy easily scannable and engaging. Use bullets or highlight selected key words.  Using sub-headings will help.  Always put the most important information at the beginning, just in case visitors don’t get through to the end.
• Make sure you address the questions – Your visitors were seeking to solve a problem or seeking research on an issue. Ensure that you provide the answers to the questions that you perceive your audience needs resolved.
• Develop an emotional response – Your copy should create an image of what is possible in the minds of your visitors to let them know what could happen if they take the requested action. This helps to develop an emotional response to encourage visitors to respond to the call for action.
• Call to Action – Tell visitors what they should do, such as register, sign up, opt-in, or buy a product/service. Make it as easy as possible for them to fulfill the requested action.
• Testimonials – Testimonials help visitors to envision how taking the requested action will resolve their problem and what it will feel like afterwards. Knowing in advance what can be expected, reduces any fear that they may have about following through on the call to action.
• Auto-Responder Emails – Follow up! You can automate the process to let visitors know that their call to action has been received and you intend to follow through with their request.
• Use Images/Videos That Relate to Copy — A good landing page will maintain a clean and attractive visual impression whilst still offering visitors the information they may desire in a non intrusive way. A good landing page design uses imagery to draw viewers in.  Also, whether it’s an online business or a cheap vegetable chopper, showing your product or service in use will get you more sales, guaranteed.  Implementing product images and videos of user testimonials in a landing page can produce a positive effect on visitors, and give shoppers that extra push to look further into your product.

Go Easy On the Links

Links that connect the user to a bunch of other websites or web-pages will distract them and impact negatively on conversions. Using many links may work well on a regular home page, but on a landing page, straightforwardness is the key.

Maintain your brand

Never make your landing page appear different from your overall brand and website. Maintain the same colors, font – the general look and feel of your main website. This will help enforce the brand awareness.

Test!

Testing is the final hallmark of good landing page. Once everything is up and running, ensure that you test the effectiveness of your landing page based on your predetermined most wanted response.

A good landing page simply can’t be created without thorough testing. You should always create at least two alternative versions of your landing page, test them, evaluate and improve. Testing and tracking the results is essential for seeing what your page is doing right, and what it’s doing wrong.  So test, test, and test some more! Also, optimize your landing page for conversions over time.

Optimize Page Load Speed

Good landing pages also load fast. Visitors just don’t have the patience and tolerance with slow pages. You can use Google Page Speed Insights in order to measure the loading speed of your landing page.  It’ll also give you recommendations on how to improve page speed.

Conclusion

 

A good landing page fulfills the visitors’ expectations upon arrival and compels them to take the requested action.  Landing pages are not difficult to construct, but with a few helpful hints, they can be very successful in increasing product sales.

A good landing page doesn’t provide many click-out options, either. It aims to show a webpage visitor the highlights of whatever is being advertised. It is one of the most effective techniques to turn an audience into high-value leads.

The headline, sales form and images are all aimed at enticing visitors to take immediate action. Through the use of landing pages, you can turn a product, service or affiliate offer into a smart opportunity once you target your demographic audience.

At the same time, a landing page is extremely effective because it acts as a pre-sales page before a visitor takes a desired action. Your offer may be stellar, but without a good landing page, your online business may not be as good as it could be.

It is an added advantage to know how to create a good landing page and that your landing page layout is flawless. With a great looking landing page in place, the affiliate marketer will likely see higher conversions on the backend of the affiliate offer.

Remember, after you create your first landing page you have to continually test variations so as to improve your conversion metrics.

 

 

Please feel free to contact me if you need help with anything. Just make a comment below or you can always get in touch with me through wealthyaffiliate.com (here is a link to my profile).

 

Acknowledgement:  Plane Image Courtesy of James Barker at FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

 

 

 

Verna Mason
Founder

momstrustedaffiliate.com

email: verna@momstrustedaffiliate.com