10 Things About Landing Page Optimization That No One Told You About

Landing Page Optimization Definition

Quite often marketers associate the term landing page with paid campaign.
So what about for those websites which ranking on Google Organic and visitor are pouring? or any of website’s internal page rank’s on Google Organic 1st page, will it not be considered as a landing page?
Hence in very simple words landing page is the 1st page where you make the visitors arrive or interact to take the desired actions as per your business goal.

• Your website can be the landing page,
• Specific standalone page with no main connection to your site
• A specific microsite to drive the conversion
• A specific internal page in your website

Before we proceed on how you can fit your website landing page into your marketing activities, here are the 3 Keys factors on which your entire marketing activities to stand upon for which you need a
landing page optimization.

1. Acquisition

2. Conversion

3. Retention

Acquisition of visitors

The acquisition is a phase where you pull the traffic to your website or get the people to your business. Now if we divide the acquisition phase we find 2 halves, online acquisition & offline acquisition.

Online Acquisition Channels: – In online acquisition phase the digital marketers takes the following key routes to pull the traffic.

• Search engine optimization (Seo campaigns)
• Banner ads or textual ads
• Pay per click Ads (PPC)
• Affiliates
• Blogs
• Social Networking
• Collaborative authoring websites: It includes news, discussion forums, customer reviews on other sites, where your visitors, webmaster says about your website
• Email marketing
• Online video advertisement

Offline Acquisition Channels: For offline acquisition, the following are the key channels for pulling the traffic:

• TV advertising
• Radio advertising
• Print magazine
• Media Coverage
• Industry trade shows
• Event participation
• Referral from client
• Coverage from influencer in the industry
• Outdoor/Billboard advertising
• Direct marketing and catalogs, flyers

Here the visitor’s directly browsing website URL in the web browser to visit the website. This means that people specifically looking after getting aware of your brand. Hence from offline acquisition medium single visitor can come to your website by getting influenced by these channels but it is very difficult to attribute which offline channel is assisting the conversion.

Conversion phase of customer: – What will motivate people to ACT

Take an example of an offline medium, suppose you have opened a restaurant where you have welcomed the visitors or traffic to visit. Now after visiting your restaurant, the visitor finds that everything is cluttered or there are no chairs to sit, so what will be the instant reaction? They will leave….
Similarly, for your virtual business or a website, visitors need to be persuaded to take the action. Hence before designing the landing page, you have to brainstorm about the following.

• Understanding your Audience
• Try to find out what your target customers are thinking
• How can you make more grabbing the customer attention
• What type of device your customers are using to reach your brand/product/services
• Are you rightly hitting the pain points of your customer
• What will actually convert the visitors to take the action?

Now let’s dive into the factors for creating better landing pages.

Landing Page Optimization Best Practices – Identify what Users Want.

• Keep the headline short, sweet and simple not more than 20 words
• The headline to explain your product /services in very brief
• Keep the single focussed message

2. Stop screaming to your customers with an array of choices!

What will you if your friend mom invites you at their home and start yelling. You would obviously leave the home right at that moment. Similarly for your website:

• Stop using too much flashy, gaudy color elements.
• Kick out the unnecessary choices
• Ruthlessly slaughter the big paragraph of text. People do not read the content they scan it: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/

3. Do you know what your visitor wants? Identify the needs

As already mentioned before that for whom you are building the landing page. What is the immediate need of your customer? Accordingly arrange the information hierarchy. Do not let the visitors think what they exactly have to do:- http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/10-usability-lessons-from-steve-krugs-dont-make-me-think/

Let’s take a landing page optimization example of a trip advisor, the target groups are invited to the following set of choices.

4. Make the visitors feel safe

You never know who exactly your visitor right now spending sessions on your website on real time. What exactly is his/her mindset? Your website is a virtual representative of you and hence it needs, to be honest, and transparent. Make the visitors feel safe that you are trusted

• Incorporate the 3 party media endorsement
• Integrate accreditation logo that your business is trusted one
• Embed your popular clients whom you have worked
• Put the Local business address
• Customer care level to be emphasized – chat support, point of contact
• Payment secured
• Provide guarantee to reduce the risk and explain the terms and condition in a consolidated way
• Case studies. See how Chrysalis Dental Centres in Toronto have showcased their case studies to gain the customer trust and confidence in the landing page to optimize the conversion.
  

5. Value Proposition – What is there for me

How your products or service can benefit the users that have to be clearly focused. Here is an example of abcpest.com Control Company in Sanfransico shows at the beginning what is there for its user while optimizing their landing page.

• Local technicians
• Humane & Eco-friendly (identifying) the pain point
• Affordable Pricing
• Types of pest they eliminate in form of visual element

6. Smart Locations for CTAs and Best Practices

Quite often webmaster ask where to call to action on the website, here are the few best practices of CTA

• Include at a top-fold where you are creating attention with strong messaging. Here is a great example of www.petsmart.com

• Include at a footer where your visitors have already crossed the decision phase and entering in Action phase as per the logical flow of (AIDA – Attention, interest, desire, action)
• Position your CTA button beside Guarantee
• Color to be visually appealing for CTA buttons. Here are few best practices of using color for your website which affects the conversion rate: http://mandmwebsolutions.com/blog/how-colours-can-affect-the-conversion-rate-of-your-web-design/
• Use strong verbs and language in your CTA button

7. Make load time lightning fast

8. Carousels and sliders

9. Using plenty of White Space

10. Include Social Proof

To create a high-quality landing page it needs continuous research and A/B testing which landing page is performing better. Nothing is one time or static. Visitors demand continues to change and hence it is always necessary to improve the lifecycle of your product and services. However, with these 10 landing page optimization formulas as discussed can help you to capture more targeted leads.