Have you ever thought about the mass amounts of web traffic that click on one of your PPC ads, view the landing page, then quickly click away before you could even realize how much money was just wasted? With average conversion rates hovering somewhere in the 3% to 5% range, a lot of your advertising dollars are not yielding a return. Every click is valuable, and increasing your conversion rates by only a few percentage points can translate into incredible things for the return on your campaigns. To help you capture more conversions here are 5 tips for creating better performing landing pages.
1. Use Directional Cues
Directional cues on landing pages are like road maps for our eyes. They can direct our focus to important info on the page, and more importantly the conversion point (lead form, buy now button, etc). Often times marketers place so much content, images, and widgets on a landing page that it can be easy for the design to lose visual focus on the conversion point. Using directional cues helps point a visitor’s attention where you want it to go. Many times this comes in the form of arrows (or hands such as in the example below) pointing towards the conversion point.
2. Place The Conversion Point Above The Fold of The Page
Once a visitor has clicked on your ad, and has come to your page, you’ve got very little time to capture & pique their attention. With only a couple seconds to do this before they’ll lose interest and click away, it’s very important to place the most important/eye catching info along with conversion point above the fold on the page. If visitors have to scroll down on your page to see the lead form or download button, then it’s possible they may not see it at all.
3. Include Ad Message Continuity
The idea here is simple. If you’re advertising a free software trial in your PPC ad, then the messaging on the landing page should very clearly reinforce the free trial software offer. That’s likely a large reason they clicked on your ad in the first place. If a visitor hits your landing page and expects a different experience than what you’re providing them on the page, then it’s very likely they’ll lose interest and hit the back button. The example below does a great job of clearly reinforcing the value proposition from their PPC ad.
4. Clearly Tell Visitors What You Want Them To Do
You can build a landing page with incredible graphics, helpful info, and a sleek design, but if they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do when they’re on the page, then you’ve likely wasted your advertising dollars to get them there. If you want visitors to pick up the phone and give you a call, then including large “Call Now” text at the top of the page will help ensure they know how to get in touch with you. If you want them to sign up for a free trial as in the example below, then placing text at the top of the form both reinforces the value of why they should convert, and also clearly instructs the visitor on what to do next. Landing pages that communicate clearly, and specifically what they want visitors to do are the ones with the highest conversion rates.
5. Test!
And finally, testing your landing pages is the only way to discover how to create the best landing page for your audience. The testing opportunities are limitless. You could implement an A/B test to determine whether a multi-page website, or a single page experience converts better. Or, you could go more granular and test variations of headlines, different types of imagery, form layouts, and so much more. There are also software packages that can help save you a lot of time with the testing process. Simply doing a search for “landing page testing software” will yield you lots of options.
An internet marketing initiative consists of many different components, which are all critical to a successful and effective campaign. For example: using the best keywords to describe your products and/or services, creating compelling and creative ad copy which stands out, and ultimately, selecting the most appropriate landing page to send a searcher to. Seems simple enough, right?
In most cases, many of my clients prefer to send all of their visitors to the home page of their site. This is not the best solution in terms of conversions, and here is why. For an Ecommerce site, you want to make it as easy as possible for someone to take advantage of your products/services. If your site is for lead generation purposes, you also want to make it simple for the intended action item (request more information, download a whitepaper, sign up for a newsletter, etc.) to take place. By sending visitors to the home page, you are “sort of assuming” that they will get to the page you want them to visit. So now you might be asking yourself, what is the best solution?
“In online marketing, a landing page is a specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking an advertisement. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by the conversion rate (CR) of visitors into actions.”
Upon clicking your ad, the objective is to have the visitor do something or what people refer to as a “call to action”. If the visitor takes the desired action, you just had a conversion.
The landing page has to be sticky enough to convince a visitor to stay and fill the contact form or act according to what the advertiser wants. Seize the moment!
Remember the back button exists and it’s always a possibility for them to go back and click on another result.
Everything has to make sense. In other words, the landing page should match both the keyword typed in as well as the creative copy in the ad.
An important factor to consider is that people have a tendency to skim through a page without reading it in its entirety, so the call to action has to be obvious and clearly within exact parameters of what the searcher is looking for.
Don’t allow any distractions! Distractions kill conversions. Landing pages that are too busy or contain too much information may cause a distraction and get the visitor to think about something else.
Your efforts placed in pay-per-click are as good as the conversions achieved. So, your landing page is a critical component of your success.
Turn your visitors to conversions and have a happy landing!
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