5 Crucial Steps to a Powerful Landing Page

• Advertising, Internet Marketing, Uncategorized
• 1 Comment
• May 14th

A landing page is a page that displays specific content based on how the user is referred. For example, if you ran a newspaper campaign about a new product, you would direct them to a “landing page” that promoted that product specifically. Here are 5 crucial steps to getting the most value possible out of landing pages.

1. Start with a strategic goal

Every decision in business starts with a goal, a purpose for doing what you’re about to do. You’re about the do some landing page design. What’s your goal?

• Capture leads
• Capture subscribers
• Product sells

You also need a measurable number to determine your success.

• Capture 20 leads
• Grow subscriber count by 10%
• Sell remaining stock of clearance inventory

Another thing to consider when setting landing page goals is whether or not the landing page is tied to a bigger campaign. If so, you should have an idea of who’s coming to your site and why, and your landing page should be tailored to their needs. If not, think of your ideal customer and tailor your landing page to them.

2. Custom URL

Things are much easier when you have a custom URL for the landing page. If not, you’ll be fishing around in analytics and shooting in the dark, which always ends in a foot getting shot. Here’s some tips for choosing a custom URL:

• Choose something short, simple, and memorable so people can easily type it in without confusing words or characters and remember it if they need to return.
• If it’s tied to a greater campaign, use the theme of the campaign or a campaign keyword to promote search engine traffic
• If you can afford it, create virtually segmented URLs that can track per customer demographics, geographics, or even by person. Ask your web developer about “.htaccess hacking” to create virtual URLs.

3. Linear design

Creating a linear landing page is essential to keep your visitors on the right track to conversion. Internet users have a very short attention span and are easily distracted. Once their eyes start in a line, they like to maintain that visual momentum. Here are some tips for creating a linear landing page:

• Use a one-column design.
• Don’t try to cross-sell unless that’s the purpose of the landing page.
• Speak clearly, specifically, and only to the goal in hand. Fluff copy = friction
• Don’t use your typical menu navigation, go right into the landing copy.

4. Strong call to action

The call to action is what says to the user: “This is what you’re supposed to do next.” Think about your goal now? What is the simplest thing for the user to do that helps you reach your goal? Here are some tips for a strong call to action:

• Use contrast and what I hear my clients call “pop” on the call to action. Since users scan web pages (they don’t read them!), take caution that they don’t scan right over your call to action because it blends in with the copy. You want their eyes to come at a screeching halt.
• Make it big (not obnoxiously so) so users have a big click area, and not so they notice it (you should be using color, position, and contrast for that).
• Make it clear in the call to action what they are doing and what will happen next. Users are scared unpredictability, as are humans in most circumstances.

5. Minimal obligation

Don’t make your users sign over their lives to convert. Start with what you ABSOLUTELY need and stop there. Don’t take it any further. Each element of obligation you add to the conversion process adds conversion abandonment. Remember, something as simple as a click is an obligation on the Web.

So that’s that

Let’s simplify what you’ve just read in once sentence: Your landing page should do absolutely nothing other than achieve a specific goal. It’s not just good for your users, it’s good for your business.

To learn more about conversion optimization, I suggest reading Marketing Experiments.com.

About the author

Brian Cray is an Internet strategist with a passion for creating harmony between the user’s experience and the brand’s objectives. He’s also an author of an upcoming web development book, one of Twitter’s top users (@briancray), and a nature-loving outdoorsman. Enjoy his blog for similar posts or to learn more about him.