Creating Engaging Landing Pages

Posted 08.10.2024

By Pete Bingham

Landing pages are the first point of contact for visitors coming from social media posts, PPC campaigns, email marketing, and more. Since you should have already set expectations from the source platform, it’s crucial that your landing pages quickly and clearly guide visitors toward the desired outcome.

 

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a standalone web page designed with a single focused objective in mind – whether that’s capturing leads, promoting a product or service, or driving sales. Unlike other pages on your site, which usually have multiple goals and links, a landing page is usually dedicated to one particular campaign or offer, ensuring that visitors have a clear path to follow.

Airbnb landing page

 

Why Use Landing Pages?

Landing pages are great for achieving specific goals in your marketing campaigns. They’re sole purpose is to streamline your visitors’ experiences towards a set goal.

 

  • Capture Leads: By offering valuable content or incentives in exchange for visitors’ contact information.
  • Promote Products or Services: Highlighting specific features and benefits to drive interest and sales.
  • Drive Conversions: Focusing on a single call to action (CTA) to guide visitors toward completing a desired action.

 

Do landing pages increase conversions?

A well-designed and well-written landing page should increase conversions by eliminating distractions, providing clear and concise information and navigation to users, and using compelling CTAs that persuade visitors to take action.

In order to maximise conversions, the content and design of your landing pages needs to cater to your specific audience and play to your objectives’ strengths – therefore the anatomy, or composition, of your landing page is crucial.

 

The Anatomy of a Great Landing Page

Creating an effective landing page involves several key components:

Remove navigation and other distractions: A great tip before you jump into the content or structure of your landing page is to remove (or not include) your main site navigation. By minimising distractions on your landing page, you should be able to focus your visitors’ attention to your key objective without tempting visitors to leave too soon.

A landing page with the header and footer area removed. Here, highlighted in red

Make sure your messaging matches the intent: Simply put, if your visitors are arriving at your landing page from an ad, they’ll expect the landing page to deliver the expectations set by their click, e.g. a “Get 50% off our kettles” advert should lead to a 50% off kettles landing page.

Keep the main action above the fold: Your headline, sales proposition, form / call to action – everything your visitors need to make a decision as concisely as possible – needs to appear on their screen before they scroll.

This landing page example from Zumba features everything the visitor needs to convert above the fold

Show your products in action: Show, don’t tell, your products or services in use, with images or videos to help visitors visualise your offering without the need for additional copy. Ideally this should sit alongside your main action in the hero area.

Use visual cues to help navigation: A landing page needs to be short, sweet and to the point. Everything on the page should serve an actionable purpose, not just a decorative one – using arrows, animations, buttons and images to keep users engaged, clicking or scrolling.

Include social proof: Sorry copywriters, but there’s a good chance your audience will probably trust reviews and testimonials far more than even your best written marketing copy. Including your best reviews alongside the names, profiles, and other details of your satisfied customers adds a tonne of credibility and authenticity to your page.

Hello Fresh uses UGC to show actual subscribers enjoying their service

 

What makes a great landing page?

We’ve taken a look at what needs to appear on your landing pages in terms of structure and content, but what is it that makes a landing page great?

Keep it snappy: Not only does your content need to get to the point quickly, so too does your page loading speed. If your page takes too long to load, customers are likely to give up and head elsewhere. Talk to your web developers about making your landing pages as quick and lightweight as possible.

Use compelling copy: Attention-grabbing copy requires a good copywriter familiar with your products or services and your audience. As this is a landing page, don’t worry too much about keywords and SEO, and concentrate on creating short, easy-to-read, copy.

Reduce friction: Keep your page simple, avoid long forms (or make them multi-step forms), make your CTAs stand out and ensure your page guides visitors along an intuitive path to conversion.

Show your personality: People connect with people, not businesses. Infuse your content with personality to make it relatable and engaging and try to keep the tone light and personable.

Say “thank you”: Always say thank you at the end of any action. Not only does it leave a lasting positive impression, it also gives you another chance to re-engage your users. You could use the opportunity to ask them to fill out a survey, join your newsletter or follow you on social media.

 

Designing a great landing page

A great landing page requires all of the elements we’ve mentioned so far in our article, but if you pair it with a poor design, your content is going to be severely watered down.

Of course, hiring a professional web designer is the best way to amplify your messaging, as they can help you make the most out of your landing page. If this is not an option, here are some key points to consider.

 

Visual hierarchy: Designers organise content to guide your visitors through the page. Use headings, subheadings, images and CTAs strategically to highlight key points and lead visitors towards the CTA.

Consistency: Maintain consistency with your brand’s identity and messaging throughout the page, don’t go off-brand. This helps build trust and ensures a cohesive experience.

Keep it simple: Your landing page should have a singular goal. Too much clutter, or trying to add too much content will distract visitors and dilute the focus. A clean, streamlined design helps guide visitors smoothly towards the desired action.

Use good imagery: A great image tells a story, and demonstrates your product or service effectively. The right images (or video) will also help persuade your visitors to act on the call to action.

Design for different devices: Responsive design by no means a new idea and people will access your landing pages from a variety of devices, platforms and sources. Ensure that, wherever your visitors are coming from, they can access the best intended experience.

Spongebob web design for parkacre

 

What happens after users convert?

Great job! Your visitors have bought your product, or enquired about your service. The landing page has done its job… but that doesn’t mean the process is finished. If anything we’re just getting started.

Nurturing: As mentioned previously, a thank you message can help kick off further engagement with your visitors and allow follow up communication later down the line. Encourage them to join newsletters, or follow you on social media so your brand is kept at their eye level elsewhere on the internet.

Analyse and iterate: Use data from your campaigns to analyse the performance and effectiveness of your landing pages and make informed decisions. You could even set up A/B testing to explore and Implement changes to improve performance.

Customer Feedback: Gather feedback from users to understand their experience and identify areas for improvement. Surveys, reviews, or direct outreach can provide insights into what worked well and what didn’t.

 

Landing Pages That Drive Conversions

Creating effective landing pages is all about strategically guiding your visitors towards a specific action with clarity and purpose. From ensuring a focused goal and compelling content to maintaining a streamlined design and optimising for performance, each component plays a crucial role in the success of your landing pages.

Ensure that your page is quick to load, visually engaging, and designed to guide visitors toward your call to action.

And remember that once users have converted, the journey doesn’t just end there. Engage with them through thank-you messages, analyse performance data, and gather feedback to refine your approach. By continuously improving and adapting, you can maximise the effectiveness of your landing pages and build stronger connections with your audience.

If you need a landing page built that captures leads, promotes your products, or drives conversions, please get in touch with our web design experts.

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