The Lazy Marketer’s Guide to Landing Page Optimization

A landing page is the only opportunity you have to make a good first impression.  It is indeed the only way to convince your customers that your offer is the best there is.

Landing pages minimize the distractions, narrow down the choices and point potential customers to take a specific action that is important to them and to your business.

Think about it: Companies with up to 15 optimized landing pages can increase their leads by 55%.

Here are the essentials of building an optimized landing page that converts:

Prioritizing Your Calls To Action

Arguably, the most important aspect of a landing page is the call to action. After all, landing pages are created to urge users to take specific actions instead of just browsing through a website.  Ideally, pages with a single and precise call to action attract higher conversion rates than pages with too many or unclear calls to action. To make the best of your CTAs, you would have to A/B test them to determine which placement, colour, size, and wording results into more engagement. Importantly, your call to action should also complement the Offer. If you ask people to, “Sign up Today”, tie this in with the reward or offer to boost conversion. For example, a “Sign Up Today” CTA would work great with an Offer that reads, “To Get A Free 60 Minute Consultation With Us.”

Bottom line: Your calls to action should be the most prominent feature on your landing page.

The SEO- Landing Page Connection

When it comes to landing page optimization, most marketers only think in terms of Pay-Per-Click campaigns that channel searchers to the main landing page. Yes, PPC is an important aspect of setting up landing pages but other factors such as actual on-page SEO are equally important. In other words, the content on your landing page must correlate with your Adwords marketing campaign message. If the message you convey on your PPC ads is different from what users see when they reach your landing page, they will likely think they are on the wrong page. And up goes your bounce rate!

An effective way to ensure a successful transition from a PPC ad to the landing page is to understand what your users’ intention is. What kind of queries are they asking and what sort of keywords are they using? Once you know their intent, then you can use keywords and phrases in your landing pages that reflect this intention. When users land on your site and they find a headline that addresses exactly what they are looking for, they are likely to pull up their chair and stick around longer.

Let’s not forget that Google’s Quality Score for PPC ads is based on several factors, with the most important being using relevant keywords, and creating ads and landing pages that are relevant to users’ search queries. A higher Quality Score means a higher ad ranking and lower pay per click costs.

Bottom line: Optimize your landing pages with headlines and keywords that appeal to users’ intent.  

Segmenting Your Audience

A major cause of high bounce rates is sending all your visitors to one generic landing page. The truth is, different visitors have different needs depending on where they are in the sales funnel. A first time visitor who is simply searching for “home organization” may not be looking to sign up for anything. Leading such a visitor to the homepage (which can also be categorized as your one of your landing pages) where he can find information about what your home organization company does would be appropriate.

On the other hand, a visitor who is past the awareness phase and is now in the decision making phase could be ready for a landing page that encourages him to “Sign Up” for a free weekly newsletter on the latest home organization solutions.

One thing to consider though is that you need to be able to effectively test and track which landing pages are working effectively for which market segment.

Bottom line: Segmenting your audiences this way allows you to create dedicated landing pages that speak directly to your visitors’ specific needs.

Amplifying Trust With Social Proof

It is in our nature as humans to want to jump on a bandwagon if we see that our peers have done it too. In others words, people are likely to click on the ‘Shop Now,’ ‘Sign Up,’ ‘Try Us Today’, button if there are substantial trust signals. Testimonials, special appearances, number of users, association with trusted brands are all social proof indicators that can drastically boost your landing page conversion rates.

Bottom line: Showing your new visitors that others trust you enough to do business with you can convince them to do business with you too.

Conclusion

Landing page optimization is a continuous process that entails tweaking different details of your marketing strategy. However, what’s most important is to understand what your visitors or target audience really need. Once you get yourself intimately acquainted with their intent, you are really half way through the journey to converting visitors into loyal customers.