What Makes a Good Landing Page Design
No company, business, NGO, or e-commerce startup can survive online without a website. Savvy marketers know that creating landing pages which link to websites is the best way to get clients, gather subscribers, and create interest to the services or products offered.
The difference between a good landing page and a bad one depends on three things; the design, the copy, and the funnel it sends visitors upon. The marriage of these three things is what will make or break a landing page and its expected ROI.
Let’s look at what makes a successful landing page and what tools are available to help you create them.
What exactly is a landing page
A landing page is like a welcome mat for your site. You can create different landing pages for different products or services offered within your site. Essentially, a landing page is a sales page and the door to a whole range of possibilities for your visitor. You can also consider a landing page to be a standalone website.
Each landing page has its own unique URL. This URL can be shared online on its own, it can be added to blog posts on the website or on other relevant sites. It can be used for outreach in the same niche for link building.
People will click on this URL and then arrive at the landing page, where we expect them to convert! Conversion is the main purpose of any landing page.
What needs to be included in a landing page
- The most important aspect of a landing page is the call to action.
When someone enters a landing page, they need to know what it’s offering instantly, there can’t be any double guessing. The call to action should be in many different places in the landing page, on buttons, in a hyperlink, on forms. When the visitor clicks on the link, they will then embark on a funnel. The funnel is usually through a series of emails.
Other purposes of a call to action are for the user to enter a trial of a product, to see an introductory demo video, or download a free resource.
- The second most important aspect of a landing page is the headline and subtitle.
Perfectly chosen words will either keep a visitor engaged, or they won’t. A good header must perfectly convey what your product or offer can do for them. It has to appeal to their sense of need. The header must stay exactly what it is that makes your service or product stand out from the rest. Is it cheaper, is it faster, is it more intuitive, is it easier to use?
The perfect combination of headline and subtitle will grab their attention and make them feel like they NEED to click the call to action.
- The third aspect of a great landing page is the visuals.
A landing page needs eye-catching and captivating visuals. You can use images, illustrations, videos, data visualizations, or animations. Anything that will help tell the story of why the visitor needs your product or service. Video testimonials are a great option, as are positive looking charts with positive results from real users.
As a designer, it’s your job to create the right visuals for the landing page you are working on. Things like the way a person looks in a photograph are really important. A random stock photograph which people have seen in other places will not make a landing page unique or special. An illustration needs to be appealing and not boring or off-putting.
- Last but definitely not least, is the copy.
When writing the copy for landing pages, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. Remember to use short and long term keywords (which you have hopefully researched first). Use the keywords naturally, never keyword stuff a landing page. Talk about the product or service in a natural but convincing way. Stay away from cliched words like “cutting-edge” and “top of the line.”
Set up the text in easy to read chunks. Long paragraphs are useless in landing pages. Intertwine the text with buttons for your call to action.
Final Tip:
Get rid of any distractions in the landing page design. Don’t include navigation to anywhere except the call to action. Don’t have a menu option anywhere. Make the call to action the ONLY way they can get into your site.
Resources
A landing page can be created straight into a WordPress editor. With a plain page without navigation. There are also tools which can help build landing pages from tested templates that are tested to convert.
Over to you
Have you ever designed a landing page? There are some design templates here in Freepik which you can use to help you along. Online landing page builders are also a great help. Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever designed a landing page that converted better than expected!
