Marketers and Business Owners are becoming smarter.
Back in the day, we’d all jump for joy when we analyzed our campaign reports and saw that we received X amount of clicks.
300 clicks! Woo Hoo! Time to party!
That was it for us in terms of satisfaction. But as time progressed, frustration started to set in when business owners realized that those clicks didn’t convert to sales or new customers. Marketers (the good ones), discovered that generating website visits was only lap one of the relay race. Lap two dealt with getting the website visitor to convert.
Enter landing pages
Landing Pages have now become the entry point of choice to convert online leads. These pages are designed to provide quick, relevant information to the consumer and make it easy for a connection to be made. If designed correctly, you’ll be fielding leads left and right and rollin’ in the dough. If designed incorrectly, you’ll scare away customers and flush your hard-earned marketing dollars down the drain. We can’t let that happen now, can we?
So, after building a hefty amount of landing pages and analyzing hundreds of campaigns, we’d like to share a few tips on how to improve your landing pages to increase your number of conversions.
1. BE ABOVE THE FOLD
Above the fold in newspaper terms is the upper-half portion of the folded newspaper. Newspapers reserve this section for an important news story featuring an engaging headline to grab the reader’s attention.
Like a newspaper, the above the fold portion of your landing page needs to feature a compelling headline, engaging copy and contact information. It should be set up so users will immediately know what you sell, how awesome you are and how to contact you without even scrolling down the page. Here are a few elements that could be included above the fold to increase time-on-page and help generate conversions.
- Compelling Headline
- Engaging Text
- CTAs
- Contact Form
- Contact Info
Check out the above the fold screenshot for The Kennickell Group's landing page. You see contact information, CTAs, incentives, validators and the beginning of their core services. The above the fold space has truly been maximized and sets up Kennickell to convert customers.
2. BE QUICK AND TO THE POINT
A landing page should be similar to your two-minute sales pitch. It needs to be short, sweet and pack a punch. Remember, the main goal is for the consumer to contact you, not to get lost in your rendition of the Iliad & Odyssey. Keep your text short. If you’re listing multiple service lines or features on your landing page, allocate only one paragraph to each. If they want to know more about a specific service line, they can contact you directly.
Above is a screenshot from the features portion of a landing page from one of our storage unit customers. Notice that they’ve stuck to their 3 major features and kept it short and sweet, then closed it out with a CTA.
3. BUILD TRUST
How many times have you done business with a company that you don’t trust? Almost never, right? That’s why it’s crucial that you include multiple validators on your landing page.
Validator Examples
- Testimonials
- Case Studies
- Awards
- Review Site Scores (Yelp, Facebook, Google, Houzz, etc.)
- Guarantee Seals / Commitment To Customer Service
- Security Certification (Better Business Bureau)
Include as many validators as you need to make the user feel comfortable and confident about pulling the trigger and contacting you.
4. CHAT IT UP
The two most common lead drivers of a landing page is a contact form and phone number. If your landing page doesn’t have a phone number or contact form, stop reading this article, make those changes, and then go sit in time-out for 10 minutes (shame on you).
Most marketers stop at those two elements. That’s a mistake. There are several other lead drivers that I feel are more powerful, one of them being the ability to chat in real-time.
Live Chat
Smartphones have given us the luxury of acquiring information at a lightning-fast pace. We want our information NOW and we don’t want to work hard to find it.
Having a chat option on your landing page benefits both the consumer and the business. Consumers can have their questions answered in real-time without ever hopping on a phone call and businesses can determine if the lead is qualified with minimal effort.