Essential landing page elements are powerful components of a business’s digital marketing strategy created specifically to generate leads for your business. They are most often used to achieve digital product goals, like online course enrollment, free trial sign-ups, app downloads, etc.
Since landing pages generate leads, the amount of your customers is directly related to the landing page conversions. According to Wordstream, the average conversion rate for landing pages in all industries is 2.35%. The top 25% are converting at 5.31%. And the top 10% at 11.45% or higher.
If you are striving to improve conversion rates and the user experience, you may need to tweak and optimize specific components of your landing page.
In this post, you will find some tips on landing page optimization. We also outline you the essential landing page elements you should pay particular attention to in order to achieve better results.
What is a landing page?
As mentioned earlier, a landing page is a website page that serves a specific goal: to turn visitors into leads. It includes lead forms that request visitors’ contact information in exchange for an offer or incentive.
A landing page eliminates distractions like navigation, links, etc., ensuring you have the visitor’s full attention.
People frequently misunderstand the difference between a landing page and a homepage or other pages that a visitor finds through a search engine.
The difference is in how the users get to the page and why it was created.
Landing pages are frequently found organically by using keywords and highly-ranked search results. Homepages are commonly found by word of mouth or social media.
Each page has a particular function, for example, informing visitors or serving as a portal to the rest of the site (like the homepage).
A landing page is typically advertised using Google Adwords or similar services, and its sole purpose is conversions. Although landing page design is less complicated than eCommerce ux design, it still requires close attention.
See also: What are the Key Components of a Landing Page Design?
Benefits of an effective landing page
In contrast to company websites, landing pages offer unique advantages that make them an efficient business tool.
Supports your business objectives directly
Landing pages immediately help your company’s objectives, such as marketing a new product, attracting new clients, or increasing sales. These pages can encourage users to perform specific activities like joining your mailing list, giving their contact information, subscribing to a newsletter, making a purchase, or requesting a consultation.
Landing pages produce information and insights
You can observe which channels generate the most leads, which topics and products are most popular, or which campaigns have the best results when you link a landing page to a particular campaign, content, activity, or source.
Your understanding of the target audience and campaign strategies can be improved with these insights, which will also increase overall efficiency.
Additionally, if your landing page has a form, you can use the data it collects to find out more about the issues the users face or other necessary information.
Acquiring SEO ranking
Landing pages are meant to focus on a particular set of search phrases. Additionally, they are marketed through Google Adwords and other forms of paid advertising.
All these improve the landing page’s rating and put your service, campaign, or sale in front of consumers looking for related information.
Streamline the purchase process
A high-converting landing page only serves as a gateway to a more effective direction of visitors down the funnel. They immediately find your CTA on the landing page and proceed to subscribe, sign up, buy, or join rather than stumbling upon it somewhere on your homepage.
See also: 10 Landing Page Design to Boost Your Sales, DIY Tips
Essential landing page elements
There’s no single formula for a successful landing page. It should be created according to your needs.
You can’t imitate what one brand is doing and expect to receive the same results since your product, activity, industry, target market, audience, brand messaging, and voice are unique.
However, some crucial elements are essential for a landing page performance and can be found on all the top-performing ones.
Unique selling proposition
A unique selling proposition (USP) identifies why you are the business of clients’ dreams and establishes clear expectations for them. Instead of fancy features, focus on the unique brand offer to the buyer.
The USP should concisely describe who you are and how your product will benefit customers.
You should make your point at once before the visitor moves forward.
There are several options for where you can place the USP:
- The headline;
- The subheadline;
- The closing argument.
The secret to a strong USP is to simplify the offering and highlight the particular advantage clients would receive from picking your service or product.
Hero shot
The hero image is the first primary photo or graphic you see at the top of a webpage or email. Its purpose is to lure visitors in right away and demonstrate the topic of your website or landing page and its content.
A hero image aids website visitors in understanding the offer better. Before utilizing an image on your landing page, consider what you want to tell your potential customers about the product and what reaction you expect.
Make sure that the hero shot encourages customers to focus and visualize using your goods.
Try to minimize the file size without sacrificing quality to ensure your hero shot loads quickly, so visitors won’t have to wait too long for the hero image to load.
See also: Best Website Design Trends for an Impressive User Experience
Headline and subheadline
Everything starts with a headline. It grabs attention and gives some understanding of the product. It’s what encourages a visitor to stick around and find out more about what you have to offer.
Here are some tips on creating a converting headline:
- The headline needs to catch the reader’s eye;
- The reader should find the information about the purpose of the product or service in the headline;
- It needs to be short. Never use more than 20 words; ideally, no more than 10.
Also, keep in mind that you don’t need to include much detail in the copy if your headline matches an illustration that describes the goods or services.
Here are some factors to consider while creating a subheadline:
- The compelling subheadline is typically placed right beneath the main title;
- It should be persuasive;
- The sub-headline can be a little more in-depth and specific than the headline.
While the headline entices users to look, the subheadline should convince them to stay. These two pieces of copy work together to give a landing page its power.
Features and benefits
A strong headline and hero image capture your customer’s attention, and any unaddressed queries are clarified in the features section.
It’s best to phrase your features when introducing them to highlight the value they provide.
Remember that while the benefits define the value you are offering, the features explain what your product or service does. Make sure your customers can find an answer to the “How will this product or service assist me?” question.
You could write a long copy detailing every feature, but you’ll lose your visitor’s interest quickly. It is preferable to write a concise overview of each (with an emphasis on value), followed by a few bullet points for clarity.
See also: The 5 Most Important Website Design Elements
Visuals
When building landing pages that convert, emphasize showing rather than telling. In addition to the hero shot, other photos demonstrate context and draw the audience’s attention. They should be of excellent quality and pertinent to the offer.
Use photos that show your products in action.
Take pictures of it from various perspectives. If your product is digital, consider using screenshots demonstrating its capabilities, for instance.
And if you provide services of some kind and can show your work and its results with screenshots or pictures, don’t hesitate to add those. And don’t forget to edit the visuals before uploading.
Videos
According to a Wyzowl report, 73% of customers prefer to watch a video to reading about a product. Therefore, if you want to create landing pages that convert, you must add videos.
On your landing page, you may utilize it in a variety of ways. For instance, use an animation tool to create a backdrop clip that highlights a headline, button, form, or text, or swap out your hero image for a video.
There are several crucial guidelines to bear in mind when including videos on your landing page:
- Keep it brief;
- Make sure the most critical message comes at the beginning;
- Avoid auto-playing or play it with the sound off;
- Reduce video loading time;
- Make videos search-engine friendly. Include captions with primary keywords and the appropriate metadata for indexing your clip.
Alternatively, provide videos as supplementary materials or pop-up windows appearing when a thumbnail, button, or link is clicked. Additionally, you can employ different kinds of videos, such as explainer, demo, commercial, or testimonial videos.
Social proof
Social proof is the usage of social signals to show that other people have purchased, consumed, read, or engaged with what you are selling.
Individuals are more inclined to convert if they observe that others have done so and are glad they did.
Among the types of social proof you can offer when creating landing pages are:
- Customer feedback;
- Testimonials from experts;
- Awards;
- Count of customers who has purchased the product.
The data are accurate. According to research from BrightLocal, a typical customer reads at least ten reviews before making a purchase, frequently devoting about 14 minutes to the process.
See also: 3 Effective Ways to Boost Website Traffic
CTA
Your landing page’s objective is to achieve a conversion target. The main instrument that turns your goal into a reality is a call to action (CTA).
CTAs are typically shown as a separate button on a click-through page or as a section of a lead generation form.
A strong CTA clarifies what the visitor will get in return for clicking it.
The landing pages often display multiple buttons, each with a different CTA.
And however having several conversion goals is a failing strategy, you can employ various CTAs as long as they all work toward the same objective.
A consumer shouldn’t have to search for the next step in the process. “Call now,” “Make an order,” and other prominent calls to action make it clear to visitors what to do to proceed.
To prevent it from merging with other content, it’s also essential to make CTAs stand out in color and font.
Lead capture form
Even if consumers find your offer compelling and click on CTA, the success of the campaign will ultimately depend on how well your lead capture form performs.
Keep the form brief and to the point, if you want to increase conversions. Visitors would like to fill out forms quickly, and lengthy ones are among the main reasons they get abandoned. The visitor’s name and email address might usually be enough.
However, a longer form asking for additional information can be more helpful in understanding your prospects’ demands and budget and determining whether you’re the correct fit for them.
Contact information
Consider adding contact details to your landing page. You may include a physical address, an email, a phone number, or contact forms. You can use chatbots to provide users with the required data in real-time.
Including contact information on your landing page can partially allay users’ doubts about your credibility, reducing friction in the sales funnel.
Remove navigation elements
The best landing page layouts keep everything on a single page. You risk losing visitors if you make them click multiple times to access the necessary information.
All your pieces should follow a logical flow to keep visitors going toward your CTA and accomplish the task you set out for them. The structure may look something like that:
- Explanation
- Benefits
- Testimonials
- CTA
You don’t have to follow the structure. It’s acceptable to include section boundaries in your landing page design.
Implement A/B testing
To understand how your landing page performs, you need to track and analyze some metrics. Check how many conversions you get and where people go lost.
Heat maps, scroll maps, and user recording sessions can all be used to gather data and identify potential areas for improvement. Consider creating several design options and test them side by side to determine which one performs better.
Improve the page load speed
The users may not even notice the essential components of a landing page if it doesn’t load quickly. Even the best-designed landing page won’t be able to convert and sell if no one is there to see it.
According to Portent, website conversion rates drop by 4.42% with each additional second of load time. Users, particularly those using mobile devices, are getting impatient and expect online sites to load quickly. A speedy landing page load results in a smooth user experience.
Final word
Use the advice and tips from this post, work on optimizing your essential landing page elements, and you’ll be able to provide visitors with a better experience and encourage conversions.
Additionally, keep in mind that optimizing essential landing page elements are a constant process. Your landing page cannot be optimized once and left alone, nor can you expect it always to work well.
The secret to maintaining the most excellent results is continuously checking your page, utilizing the appropriate tools to identify what is working, and improving upon what is not.
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Kate Parish is a chief marketing officer at Onilab. She has almost a decade of experience in the company and is still enthusiastic about every aspect of digital marketing. Kate sees the marketing mission as ensuring sustainable business growth. For this purpose, she helps companies and readers create efficient campaigns, solve common problems, and enhance crucial website metrics, such as conversions, bounce rates, and others.
