What are landing pages anyway?

Think of them as store fronts or window displays or even front covers of a magazine. They are the first thing that your customers will see. If you believe that first impressions last, then your landing page should make a pretty good one.

In a more technical sense, a landing page is a web page that welcomes customers upon clicking an advertisement, search result, social media campaign or email campaign. It could also come from an offline advertising campaigns such as TV or radio ads.

So how do we make a landing page that works? There is no exact formula on how to make the perfect one but here are some tips to make your landing page as effective as you can:

1. Brevity. Make it as brief and as concise as you can. Most people don’t like reading a lot of text so the faster you get straight to the point, the faster you get your audience’s attention and the longer they stay on your site – long enough to spark their interest.
2. Catchy Headline. The headline is the ‘landing page’ of the landing page so you must write a persuasive headline that catches people’s attention but at the same time it must say exactly what your ad or article is about. You have to assure your visitor that they are on the right page.
3. Accuracy of Content. The objective of a landing page is not just to attract visitors, but to attract qualified visitors – visitors who are looking for exactly what your landing page has to offer, and visitors who are willing to buy whatever it is you’re selling. If your content misleads people, you will have a lot of site visitors but very few will be converted to sales.
4. Clear Call to Action. Make the path to purchase as uncluttered as you can. Put in a call to action that is very specific (Get Me My Free Book Now as opposed to Sign Up, or Download Book Now-Free rather than Subscribe). Make the buttons simple – but make them stand out and put it in a strategic position where it can be seen without having to scroll down the page.
5. Simplicity. Remove distractions such as numerous links and long words. Just because you can use flashy colours and images and videos, it doesn’t mean you should. Besides, these extra elements contribute to longer loading time and might cause your visitors to just leave before your page even finishes loading. Don’t ask for too much information in the forms (this will scare some people away – especially if it involves credit card information!)