Whether it’s an informational page about your product or a career section for prospective employees, a good landing page has the potential to generate a lot of growth for your business. In order to do that, though, it must have a clear, concise message and a compelling call to action that encourages visitors to take the next step in their journey.
A landing page also needs to be visually appealing and well-designed. If it’s not, that great call to action might never even be seen or acknowledged.
So what’s involved in creating a successful landing page? To find out, we asked a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members the following question:
Q. Landing pages can make or break a company’s web presence. What page design element is crucial to remember?
1. The “three second” test
One of the most important elements of great landing page design is the three-second test: Can your visitor figure out what value they are going to get in return for filling out your form in three seconds or less? Use headlines, subheads, short sentences, and bullet points to help them skim your page quickly before they move on to your form. —Stephen Beach, Craft Impact Marketing
2. Question, answer, evidence, and action
To borrow from Orbit Media, the flow for every great landing page goes question, answer, evidence, and action. Do you solve a problem clearly and specifically, with adequate coverage of searchable problems across all marketing? That’s step one. From there, practically any landing page can be improved with more testimonials, case studies, and video (evidence) before a big, fat call to action. —Corey Northcutt, Northcutt Enterprise SEO
3. Clear initial message
There is nothing more important than the initial message of your landing page. It is what you need to focus on when A/B testing, and it’s the first thing you need to get right. —Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
4. User experience
Once you get users onto your landing page, ensure that the user experience is smooth. I cannot stress this enough when it comes to optimizing your conversion rate. Test every single thing on your page, especially your forms. Forms should have a reasonable amount of fields with a direct call to action. You’ve already got people to the page—make their experience flawless to seal the deal. —Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS
5. Responsiveness and guidance
A landing page must be responsive so it can be viewed perfectly across multiple devices and browsers. The landing page must also guide the user into a funnel and a specific call to action. Tell users what to do on the page and provide all necessary key information for them to make a decision. That’s how you get your conversion rates to improve. —Michael Hsu, DeepSky
6. Simple works
A lot of marketers can get carried away with designing landing pages. They want to make them bright and engaging, but oftentimes the design is too busy, making it difficult for the reader to take action. Keep the design simple with two to three bold colors, and create a legible call to action. Stay away from the fancy fonts. Simple works. —Codie Sanchez, www.CodieSanchez.com
7. Customer benefits
The biggest mistake companies make on landing pages and with their copy is focusing on features they think are important, rather than the benefits that are most important and valuable to the customer. The best, highest converting landing pages always clearly communicate the tangible benefits and results that the customer can expect from opting in or buying the product. —Justin Faerman, Conscious Lifestyle Magazine
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8. Explanatory video
There are several components that can make a landing page stand out. One crucial piece is an explanatory video. Video has become a mainstream method for brands to engage with prospects, but on a more personal level. I would also recommend including the business owner in the video, in order to create a better connection with audiences. —Jean Ginzburg, JeanGinzburg.com
9. Answer your customers’ questions
Make it easy for your online visitors to get their questions answered immediately without having to send an email or talk to a chatbot. Spend a little extra time testing and developing your landing page instead of treating it as a throwaway page, and make sure it’s helpful, comprehensive, and clear. —Roger Lee, Human Interest
10. Repeat links
Repeating links is a small tip that can be a big help in boosting engagement or sales. If your landing page has a great deal of copy that requires the reader to scroll down, be sure to place the link or button you want them to press in multiple spots on the page. This way, the reader won’t need to scroll back up to the top in order to click it. This convenience will help close sales and generate subscribers. —Bryce Welker, Crush The PM Exam
11. Polite pop-ups
Every website owner knows that pop-ups work at getting more emails and leads. However, there’s nothing more annoying than arriving at a landing page only to be bombarded by pop-ups. Instead, implement “polite” pop-ups such as exit-intent ones, which only show up right before the user is about to leave the site. —Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
12. Multiple calls to action
Conventional best practice says for landing pages to have one simple call to action, but the problem is today’s customers want to interact on their own terms. Some will call, others will fill out a form, some want an instant answer via web chat, others only want to browse a brochure and leave no info. A simple form and single CTA might capture email, but it may also turn off buyers at different stages. —Dan Golden, BFO (Be Found Online)
13. Contact forms
I can’t even tell you how many websites I’ve been to where I want to contact the webmaster, but I couldn’t find their contact information or their contact form was broken. Not having a simple way for customers to contact you could be impacting your sales in a big way. —Jared Atchison, WPForms
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