Increasing ROI is a goal every business owner has, and in order to accomplish this shared goal, there are several strategies to use. The main one I want to focus on with this article is a change that can be made to your website. Most of the time companies direct their audience to their homepage. There is no problem with doing this in general terms, but sending everyone directly to your homepage (including those viewing your ads, social media and e-mail) can be a huge mistake. That is when landing pages come into play. According to Hubspot, “a landing page is a website page that allows you to capture a visitor’s information through a lead form.” It may be easier to understand through an example. If you send an e-mail about a shoe sale you are having on your website, you would want to add a link to access the sale. You wouldn’t want to put a link to your homepage because people would have to figure out where the sale items were. Instead, you would design a specific landing page just for this purpose to point customers in the right direction. Landing pages can be used for many other reasons besides a sale, and can be a great way to turn visitors into customers.
The reason that landing pages are so critical is because they prompt the visitor to act. When someone goes to your homepage, there are numerous things to click on and an endless combination of things they could do, but a landing page is more direct. If I click on an ad offering half-price kitchenware at Target, I don’t want to be sent to the main page of Target’s website, I want to be directed specifically to the kitchenware section. That way I easily find what I want and can purchase the item I was looking for. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking a link and not being able to find what you wanted. No one wants to be frustrated and that is why so many visitors end up leaving a page instead of making a purchase.
There are some things to keep in mind when designing effective landing pages. Review these tips below.
Be Direct
Don’t clutter your landing pages, put as little as possible to accomplish your goal. Get rid of unnecessary links and eliminate the extensive navigation you would have on your homepage. Make it as short as possible while still including all the important information. The point of a landing page is to target someone to carry out a specific action, so don’t distract them. The same goes for your text. Get straight to the point when stating your call-to-action. Leave the long paragraphs for story time and keep it simple.
Be Enticing
Promoting a special offer lures people in and makes them more willing to share their contact information. If the offer isn’t valuable enough to viewers it isn’t going to be effective. Demonstrate through your landing page how enticing this deal really is and people will act. Images and great design can also captivate your audience. An attractive landing page makes a better statement than a boring or ugly landing page does.
Be Share-worthy
Add social media buttons and ways for people to share this content. Many times people want to send offers to their friends or print information. Make these buttons available to increase your success rate.
Be Analytic
Test your landing pages periodically. Make changes to see how your results vary. This can include changing images, call-to-actions, text, and overall design. You could set up two different landing pages for the same purpose and test to see which one performs better. There is always ways to improve and the only way to find out how is to test.
Below is an example of a good and bad landing page
If you would like us to design a landing page or anything else for your website we would love to help. Visit Cimettadesign.com for more information.
