7 Essential Elements for a Clear Landing Page

Digital Marketing / July 24, 2014

Part 2/3 — Landing Pages

The heart & soul of your AdWords campaign.

Now that you get how important making your customer experience seamless is, below are 7 essential elements of a successful landing page.

This is what’s going to get Bob and his friends to buy your stuff.

Disclaimer: this is not a complete list of what you need in your landing page. However, this is a great foundation that will make you ready for optimizations and split testing.

1. An awesome headline

This is THE opportunity to grab your visitors’ attention, let them know what the page is about and give them that one good reason to stay.
Can’t do that? They’ll leave as fast as their browser allows.

Remember to be clear in your headline. Trying to be clever might get a few people to smirk, but most people won’t bother trying to understand it.

2. What’s in it for me?

Your potential customers are all about the ‘what’s in it for me’, and they should be. After all, it’s their money in play.

Times have changed. Henry Ford’s famous quote about his early cars, “They can have it in any color they like as long as it’s black” doesn’t work anymore.
It’s not about your product. It’s about your customers. This should resonate throughout your whole marketing strategy.

So the next time you’re writing copy for your product, ask yourself as if you were the customer – what’s in it for me?

3. Visually appealing images

This is a no-brainer. People like nice things.

An image is worth a thousand words, right? Well, if that image is lame, then you can guess what those thousand words are.

Stay away from stock images. People in suits doing ‘business’ and shaking hands? …that’s a big no-no.

Below are some useful resources for free, high-quality images and icons.

⦁ Unsplash – free (do whatever you want) hi-resolution photos.
⦁ Little Visuals – 7 hi-res images zipped up in your inbox every 7 days.
⦁ IcoMoon – custom icon fonts

4. Credibility

People are skeptical, they’re skeptical because they’ve been lied to – companies have boasted about their products, expectations have never been met, your customers have likely been victim of fraud.
Today’s reality is, you need to convince them that your business is honest and your product is as advertised.

So what’s the best way of doing that?

⦁ Add honest testimonials – phony testimonials can be smelled from miles away.
⦁ Get social proof – are thousands of people using your product? Show it.
⦁ Borrow credibility – display those big brands and names that have something to do with your product.
⦁ Never set expectations that you can’t deliver.

5. Flow

You don’t need to have Nas’ timeless rapping flow. You just need to follow the thought sequence of your typical visitor. As simple as that.

Did he get to your landing page through an ad? Did that ad have an offering? It’d be a good idea to start by showing that exact offering on the landing page.

What’s the next thing the visitor wants? Maybe to know what differentiates you from competition. Or maybe it’s to be reassured that your company is trusted and legit.

The options are plenty and the only way to know is to thoroughly study your target customers – talk to them, run surveys, look through the analytics of your website. Find the pattern behind their thoughts and use it to structure your landing page’s flow.

6. Relevant fill-up form

You shouldn’t think about making your form as short as possible. You need to think about making it relevant.

What is your goal? To get newsletter signups? Then why should you ask your visitor for a phone number?
On the contrary, if you’re looking for clients that need appliance repair, you won’t get far by asking for their e-mail address only.

Figure out your goals, and what information you need to accomplish them. Not less, not more.

7. Give fewer choices, you’ll get more conversions.

Ever heard of the “Paradox of Choice”? Psychologist Barry Schwartz explains how too much choice actually has the reverse effect of what was intended. People take less action. Not more.

Focus on one product, service or offer at a time. People clicked on your AdWords ad for one reason. Give them that exact reason.

On the same note, keep your call to actions consistent and clear. Have a single and specific offering throughout the page.

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To conclude, while landing pages are a lot of work, they’re totally worth it.

If you follow the essentials in this post, you’re already one step ahead of most of your competition.

But don’t get too excited. You’re not any close to being done.

While you may be happy with your new page, it’s critical that you optimize it and split test constantly. Our last post in the series will cover what you need to know about split testing your landing page and conversion rate optimization.

What other elements do you make sure to have in your landing page?

Sources:
ConversionXL
Quicksprout
TED
Unbounce