Landing Page

Designing a landing page, writing a copy that converts, creating a prototype and design, a perfect landing page formula, and tips on how to increase conversions

To introduce the audience to the product and communicate its benefits, you can use the landing page. It is a modern and effective tool to attract traffic and convert it into sales. In this chapter, you'll discover how to create a robust landing page.

IN THIS CHAPTER YOU WILL DISCOVER:

What's a Landing Page And Why You Need It • Steps To Design a Landing Page • Landing Page Functional Elements • A Perfect Landing Page Formula • What Conversion Depends On And How To Increase It • List Of Services To Help You Design Landing Pages

What Is a Landing Page, How It Appeared, And Why You Need It

A landing page is a one-page website that presents a product or service. The main objective of a landing page is to convince the visitor to complete a target action.

Target action is the main action that the user should complete on the landing page. An example of the target action is clicking the "Buy" or "Sign up" button.

A landing page always has one specific goal

We'll refer to the product or service in the general sense as a product

How The Landing Page Format Appeared

As search advertising has become more expensive and competition has increased, people began to think about how to increase efficiency. They noticed that sometimes instead of sharing a link to the website's Home Page, it works better to provide a direct link to an inner page, such as a catalog, a list of works, or a specific service.

However, if the visitor leapfrogs the Home Page, they are likely to omit some important information that can influence the buying decision—for example, awards, recommendation letters, or the latest blog posts. Besides, if you let a visitor browse the website, each click statistically decreases the percentage of visitors significantly.

So, people understood that they need to get rid of extra clicks and give all important information on one and the same page. You don't need to direct the audience to the website if you can direct them to a specific page—you already know what a search query is and can answer all the questions on this page so that the visitor places the order.

That's how the landing page appeared: Query segmentation plus the strategy to answer all the questions that a visitor can have—and this should be possible on one and the same page.

General web design evolution has also influenced the emerging format. Web designers have learned how to work well with information and to present it awesomely. This separate area of knowledge has developed into a knowledge cloud of digital storytelling, and the landing page format is a part of this cloud as one of the commercial applications.

Over some time different mechanics of building websites and landing pages have combined, and now lots of main and internal website pages look similar to landing pages. This is due to storytelling and improving methods of user research, such as the method of creating buyer personas and identifying what they need.

There are lots of low-quality, obtrusive landing pages created with no real understanding of the subject, and they have compromised this format significantly. However, you can't say that it doesn't work anymore. The landing pages that are ineffective are those that have been misdesigned.

Why You Need a Landing Page

A landing page is designed specifically to convert traffic into sales, that is, to convert visitors into buyers. A specific landing page responds to a specific search query and describes a specific product in detail, simultaneously convincing people to buy it.

Yes, it sounds cool, but you already have a website to sell, why do you also need to build a landing page? Actually, you need it as it's not effective in attracting traffic, the home page conversion is too low, and it's too expensive to advertise all the website pages.

You need a landing page if you want to focus all the visitor attention on a specific product, that is, to advertise a specific product.

Remember the rule: One landing page should advertise only one product, otherwise the visitor's attention gets scattered and the landing page won't be any different from a usual website.

Tom Pick

Digital Marketing Consultant,
Webbiquity LLC

A landing page for a paid campaign—in comparison to general website pages that are primarily designed to communicate information—is designed to get the visitor to take a very specific action: Download an ebook, register for a webinar, schedule a demo, buy a specific item, or whatever that purpose may be. Yes, it still imparts some information, but the purpose isn’t to communicate—it is to persuade the visitor to do something very specific.

That also means that landing pages are designed differently from regular web pages. When someone reaches your site by clicking a link in a news article, finding your site in an organic search, or perhaps clicking a link sent to them by a friend or colleague, you can’t possibly know in advance exactly why they are visiting your site. So you give them access to everything, your full menu of pages. They can explore your website on their own terms.

But with a landing page, again, you want the visitor to take a specific action based on the ad they clicked. It will contain elements such as a persuasive copy, social proof, and a form so they can complete the action or purchase the item. It will NOT contain all of your general website navigation, as you don’t want your landing page visitors to wander off looking at other pages on your site. You may or may not give them the option to click over to your homepage somewhere in your copy, but any navigational options will be extremely limited so that you drive them to take the desired action.

Unlike the case with general website traffic, you paid to bring this visitor to your landing page for a specific reason, to take a specific action. So, all of the content on your paid campaign landing page will be oriented to accomplish that goal.

Remember that key performance metric of your landing page is conversion.

Let's make a calculation. If the conversion rate of your landing page is 4%, and it gives you 2 leads of $16 per day, you'll earn 365 × 2 × 16 = $11 680 in a year. And if you can increase conversion to 8%—this is quite a good result—then you'll earn $23 360. So it's worth your effort.

That's why you should always remember that the main objective of the landing page is converting visitors into buyers. You can easily achieve this with the help of the landing page as the visitors need to complete just one specific target action, and before doing it they can get full information on the product and its benefits, so this simplifies their buying decision.

The landing page allows the visitor to understand information easier because you answer all their questions logically by using text and pictures. It's also impossible to get confused on the landing page and ignore why you're there.

It's very important to consider the leads' and audience quality together with conversion. You can get a lower conversion with an audience of better quality, but more leads paid or average check increased. For the conversion to be high, the landing page should be created for what the buyer persona wants.

But what should you do if you have several personas? If they are similar to each other, you need to create a collective image and design a landing page for it. And if these personas want things that differ significantly, you need to create a separate landing page for each persona.

So let's imagine you have a small fitness club in a residential district and want to sell lots of membership cards. To do this, you need two landing pages as you have at least two typical buyer personas: A young woman who wants to get slim and a retired lady who wants to have a good leisure time and get healthier. These personas want quite different things: The younger woman needs active programs and various gym equipment and the older lady will be interested in pilates and yoga classes and opportunities to socialize.

Besides, they need different conditions and benefits—the young woman is at work all day, so she can attend only the evening ones. Therefore, she needs an evening membership, even if it can be expensive. The older lady has free time to attend classes in the afternoon, but the price will be a significant factor for her.

Remember that coming to your landing page a visitor should feel that this offer has been created specifically for their needs.

You need to promote different landing pages using different channels—use those channels where the target audience is. Of course, it's a good thing to build a landing page designed for the needs of a specific persona, but it's not always possible, for the traffic can come to you from different traffic sources that have different target audiences. In this case, design the landing page considering what the key representatives of these audiences want.

Michelle Wrede

Marketing Manager at Trustpilot, LinkedIn

Landing pages are a great tool to conduct product hypothesis testing because you can easily check the interest in a product before the actual development of the product. Therefore you can ensure that you have less risk when developing the actual product afterwards.

To test the interest in a product you can send a landing page as a pop-up on your website or in an email and have people register if they want to be informed when the product is developed. The number of registrants can give an indication of the interest in the product.

It's also important to understand what phase of the problem awareness the coming visitor is currently going through. With this, you can build a correct strategy for the landing page, as some people are looking for a solution to the problem, and others have found it and are ready to make a purchase. This means that they need different information and different sales arguments.

The awareness ladder is a series of steps describing people's awareness of the problem and the solution to it. This concept has been developed by marketer Ben Hunt.

Steps Of Awareness Ladder

No problem. The visitor has no problem or is unaware of it and doesn't consider it a problem. For example, a person is getting bald, but doesn't consider it a problem and doesn't try to solve it. At this step you can't sell a solution to this person—at first, you need to explain that a problem exists.

There is a problem, but there are no solutions. The visitor is aware of the problem but doesn't know that there are solutions to it. For example, many people don't know that baldness can be treated. If your visitors are at this step, you need to tell them that there is a solution to their problem.