9 Tips to Create Optimized Landing Pages

If you’re not familiar with the concept, a landing page is a part of your site intended solely to meet the specific goals of a user who was prompted to click there (via advertisement, call to action, hyperlink).

A landing page is incredibly specific, and is optimized and geared around getting a visitor to complete a specific action or learn more about one concept.

Today, unique web technologies allow you to create landing pages with a unique design without knowledge of web-design and programming. You can use a gallery of various landing page layouts of different categories for web, social and mobile incoming traffic. Ready-made landing page is your key to success. It is a great asset to customize the process of getting customers right now.

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The intended action can vary, dependent on your site’s goals. For some, it could be providing information in exchange for a premium content download. For others, it could be registration for a contest.

Whatever it is, you’re looking to streamline the user experience and get them to focus on that action.

Seems simple, right?

Yes, the idea is straightforward. But the process of designing and implementing landing pages is actually much trickier than many anticipate, and there are a lot of small mistakes that can translate to poor results.

With that in mind, let’s take a list at the 9 ways to create optimized landing pages:

1. Create a Legit Call to Action

There’s no sense driving people to a landing page if they’ll exit the window only seconds after opening it. What might lead a user to do this?

Glad you asked! Your call to action is what prompts a user to click through to your landing page, by offering a preview or benefit of what they’ll find there. If your call to action is not genuine or sends people to a page that doesn’t include what the CTA advertised, you can expect to see poor conversions on that page.

To learn more about how to create effective Calls to Action, check out this post on Master Inbound.

Here’s an email I recently got from Big Lots (I’m a sucker for a deal!) and the landing page I got after clicking on the first offer in the email. It’s an exact match to what I would have expected to see, with additional information. Bravo!

2. Create Compelling Copy

You may be thinking “Duh!”, but it’s amazing how many pages overlook the importance of intriguing headlines and body text.

The headline on your landing page should include your keyword, and the body needs to do a killer job of persuading the user that your offer/download/whatever is relevant to their life through concise wording (bullet points can be great for this).

Don’t forget to obey the 5-second rule: if it takes longer than that for a reader to figure out the page, they’re not likely to convert.

Check out how Chase does a great job touting the benefits of their card and also labeling the product as “Preferred” in the headline of this page:

3. Simplify Design

If you want a user to participate in a given action, remove distractions and allow them to focus their attention on that concept. This includes your navigation bars and anything which might prompt them to click away from your site.

If you’re interested in learning more about optimizing design for conversions, check out this blog post.

Below, we can see simplification exemplified by Savvy Panda. The first image is the Content Download page (a normal page), followed by a landing page for one of those downloads. Note the removal of distractions:

4. Leverage Social Proof

Of all the methods of persuasion available to us, few measure up to the potential of social proof. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it’s the practice of showing prospects that others like them have executed an action, thus they should too.

Turns out, humans are hardwired to respond to this influential measure. Social proof is everywhere - in the Facebook like counters we embed on our blogs, on the McDonalds signs that read “Billions served”, and recently in eCommerce/social media integrations.

Use social proof on landing pages to show how many people have downloaded, or to present shared traits among users which might connect them. HubSpot does this by associating many of their landing pages and downloads to job titles, which creates an immediate social connection to readers:

5. Choose your layout carefully

Failing to structure a landing page according to the natural ways in which humans absorb content and read text is a surefire way to miss your audience’s attention. If you’re familiar with the Google Golden Triangle, you know that we naturally skim SERPs and most internet pages from the top left corner to the right in a triangle pattern.

Use this to your advantage by organizing the most compelling copy toward the top of your landing page, and providing more information directly below to the left. (Image credit: Nielsen Norman Group)

6. Include visuals

We’re seeing more and more in the news about the rise of visual content and the role it plays in marketing. The ability to visualize a concept and illustrate an idea will undoubtedly eventually differentiate great marketing and web design from good.

To ensure you’re in the former category, include relevant images on your landing pages which help the user to understand what they’re getting. After all, the probability of them reading your 500-word explanation is slim, but the probability of them seeing the associated image is 100%.

Here’s Sirius doing a great job including an attention grabbing visual:

7. Keep Your Message Simple

This seems like common sense, but a lot of landing pages that have a compelling offer and great benefits end up performing poorly because users are inundated with information.

In addition to simplifying your page design, take the time to edit down your copy and only include the text with provides critical information or persuasive value. And always follow the golden rule - only one intended action per page!

The page below, which I found in an article on ConversionXL, has way too much going on to be considered optimized:

8. Don’t make users jump through hoops

Speaking of keeping your message simple, it’s also imperative to minimize the required action on your visitor’s behalf.

If your landing page prompts readers to download an eBook, don’t make them fill out 20 form fields to get it. Ask for the least amount of information necessary to fulfill your site’s lead generation or intelligence goals.

Check out how easy SalesForce makes it for visitors to start a free trial:

9. Test Everything

If you want a landing page to generate action, it’s smart to try out several different ways to achieve that action.

A/B Testing encompasses all aspects of your page from copy to color to layout, and is a critical ongoing process for effective landing pages.

Start small and test one element at a time, and optimize based on your findings to reach higher conversion rates.

Check out this article from Search Engine Journal to learn more about testing (Image credit: Search Engine Journal)

Stick with Whatever Works

While reading these examples, you may have noticed that some break a few or a lot of the rules mentioned.

That’s one of the most important things to keep in mind when creating pages - test out a few different versions, and stick with what works best for you.

Many times, A/B testing reveals surprising insights about performance which indicates we should go against conventional wisdom. Even if it contradicts one of the tips mentioned here, the goal of landing pages is to convert, and you should stick to what’s been proven to convert for you!