In a given scenario, visitors to your website makes a critical decision upon knowing what you really have to offer. Do they go away or you lead them effectively to your landing page?
There are a number of factors that go into this decision, and the design of your landing page has a lot to do with it.
Sometimes called a “Lead Capture Page,” landing pages are used to convert visitors into leads by completing a transaction or by collecting contact information from them. Landing pages consist of:
- A headline and (optional) sub-headline
- A brief description of the offer/CTA
- At least one supporting image
- (Optional) supporting elements such as testimonials or security badges
- And most importantly, a form to capture information
Landing pages are necessary to implement. This direct your visitors to one particular offer without the distractions of everything else on your website. Visitors are on a landing page for one and only purpose: to complete the lead capture form.
There are no hard and fast “rules” when it comes to designing the perfect landing pages. But there are some important pointers to remember to have an effective landing page that focus the visitors attention, present a high degree of message, match and gently guide the users toward their main goal.
What makes an effective landing page?
- Include the elements on the previous page and only what is needed. Keep your pages simple and minimize distractions.
- Never ever use your homepage as a landing page.
- Remove main site navigation from the landing page so visitors can focus on completing the form and not continuing to search your site.
- Make it very clear what the offer is and make it irresistible.
- Absolutely make sure that the content on your landing page matches your call-to-action. If there is a disconnect in your messaging, visitors will hit the Back button.
- Reduce friction – don’t make visitors think too much or do too much work (i.e. reading).
- Use images wisely to increase conversion rates. Incorporate pictures of real people (not stock images or cartoons)
- Use the right form and only collect the information you absolutely need.
Effective landing pages are what will turn your website into a lead generating machine.
Incorporating the right colors
It’s important to set the mood of a landing page and influence viewer’s actions. Colors that will entice a viewer will vary among different site designs and the overall brand reputation it wants to convey. Either way, applying the right colors might draw traffic, bore viewers, or scare them away. Here is a psychology to what each primary colors mean to the normal human perception.
- Yellow – Optimistic and youthful; Often used to grab viewer’s attention.
- Orange – Aggresiveness; Used to call-to-action and attention grabber.
- Red – Energy; Increases heart rate and creates urgency; Often seen with clearance sales and references.
- Pink – Romantic and feminine; Used to market products and services for woman and young girls.
- Blue – Creates sensation of trust and security; Often used by banks and businesses.
- Purple – Soothing and calm; often relates to beauty or anti-aging products and services.
- Green – Associated with wealth; The easiest color for the eye to process and used with finance or entertainment websites.
- Black – Powerful and sleek; Seen as luxurious and sophisticated.
Use the proper design and take advantage of the visitor’s attention. Derek Halpern over at social triggers sum up these three concepts as human curiosity can’t resist certain urges:
- People can’t resist following the gaze of other people
- People can’t resist seeing where an arrow points
- People can’t resist following the “line of sight” of objects
If one person is looking at something, we have to look at it to find out why. If an arrow points somewhere, we want to know why. And finally, objects often have a “line of sight” and can act like arrows, which is why we follow them too.
Utilise these concept. Say if you have an image of person, have that person look right where you want them to look. If you have them look elsewhere, you risk sending your visitors eyes right off of their computer screen.
Landing Page Forms
Forms are the key to a landing page. Without them, there is nothing for the visitor to do on that page. Forms come in handy when it’s time for people to sign-up, subscribe to your site or download an offer.
You might be wondering how much or how little information you should require with a form. There is no magic answer when it comes to how many fields your form should contain but the best balance would be to collect only the information you really need.
The fewer fields you have in a form, the more likely you will receive more conversions. This is because with each new field you add to a form, it creates friction (more work for the visitor) and fewer conversions. A longer form looks like more work and sometimes it will be avoided all together. But on the other hand, the more fields you require, the better quality those leads might be. The best way to determine what works best is to test it.
There is a whole segment of the market that is dedicated to landing page optimization, because there’s a lot that can go into the design of a high converting landing page.
The good thing about landing page design, is that you should always be split testing. If you feel like another design is going to work better, test them against each other to see which one will work best.
