A Guide To Designing A Landing Page That Converts
Your website might look great, but its key function is to convert to sales, and if it doesn’t do this, then you might need to have a re-think
Landing pages are an important part of increasing conversion rates on your website, and for the most part, potential customers ‘land’ on these pages when they click through from an advert, email link, social media post, etc.
Each page must serve its own purpose, to act as a gateway for the rest of your website and, ultimately, to convert to a sale.
If you’re unsure how to design your landing pages for the best results, look no further.
In this guide, we’ll look at how you (or your web designer) might create engaging landing pages that convert to sales.
Let’s dive in.
Consider a landing page builder
Firstly, you need to think about the logistics behind creating these pages.
This won’t really apply if you’re working with a web designer or you have the design skills to create your pages from scratch. However, if you’re still new to this world and plan on building your landing pages yourself, you might wish to use a good page builder to help you along the way.
Which page builder you choose will depend on your level of skills and overall goals. There are some tools that include preloaded landing page templates which will make it much easier to create great landing pages. Others offer drag and drop functionality and other helpful features.
So before you become completely overwhelmed at the prospect of designing new pages, know that there are lots of great tools out there that can make this much easier.
Understand the key components
A strong landing page needs to contain certain elements in order to be successful and lead to higher conversion rates. Knowing what to include can make your pages much more effective. Some of the key features that every good landing page should have include:
- A headline (and possibly optional sub-headings)
- A brief description of what you’re selling or offering
- Your value proposition
- Supporting images or videos
- Supporting elements of proof, for example, testimonials
- A call to action button to take visitors to the next stage
We will look at these important elements in more detail as we move through the guide.
Showcase your Value Proposition
For anyone who may be unfamiliar with the term, Value Proposition is a snappy statement that lets readers know why they should choose your product or service specifically. Essentially, it communicates the biggest benefit of making a purchase with your business.
Adding a clear Value Proposition to your landing pages can be the quickest way to convince the reader to buy something from you. This could be done through bullet points listing the key benefits or a short quote or testimonial.
Whatever the case, you must emphasise what is in it for the customer and make it quick and easy to read. More on this next.
Make all content scannable
You only have around 8 seconds to grab your audience’s attention, which means big blocks of text just aren’t going to cut it. Instead, all content on your landing pages needs to be easy to scan through and quick to digest.
This means using short and snappy sentences and only including the most important and relevant information. Of course, this doesn’t mean your content should be abrupt or boring. You need to make the content as exciting and engaging as possible if you want to convince the reader to make a purchase.
Keep the landing page simple
Although it might seem like there are lots of elements to think about, none of these should be too big or overwhelming. Your landing page needs to grab the viewer’s attention and let them know in an instant why they should buy from your business.
As such, you want to keep the design, content and imagery as simple as possible. You still need to make sure the page is on-brand, but don’t go over the top with visuals or text, as this can be overwhelming to the viewer.
Instead, it’s best to keep it clean, with only essential content and images or videos on the page.
Remove any unnecessary navigation elements
You want your page to be straightforward and to give the viewer all the information they need quickly. If you include any additional navigation elements on the page, this can be off-putting and time-consuming.
If you start requiring that the user click off here and there, they are more likely to abandon the page altogether. As such, the only navigation you really want is the final call to action (more on this next), taking the viewer through to the next stage of the sales process or to complete the desired action.
Include a strong CTA
No landing page is complete without a call to action telling the visitor what they need to do next. This typically comes in the form of a button, for example, a ‘buy now’ button, and it needs to be in the right place on your page.
It’s also worth noting that you can use multiple CTAs on one page if this will make it more effective. This could mean placing one at the top and one at the bottom to ensure the viewer doesn’t miss it.
You can play around with this to find the perfect spot using A/B testing.
A/B test your landing pages
Finally, if you’re serious about getting results from your landing pages, it can be a good idea to create more than one design and test these against one another to see which converts the most. This is called A/B testing.
You should test out the different versions of your pages on potential customers and then look at metrics, heat maps, scroll maps, etc., to see if you’re getting the desired results and which designs lead to the most conversions.
You can then roll out the most effective landing page design for the best results.
