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Landing Page Design Best Practices
By Jamie Klemcke | November 2, 2009
Six Tips to Improve Conversion
In preparation for the “Leverage Search and Ye Shall Be found” webinar that I’m serving on this Thursday, I was on the hunt for tried and true best practices for landing page designs. Not just any tips, but landing page design tips to improve conversion. After all, isn’t that what all of us marketers are after?
Here are the 6 tips as stated by Interactive Marketing (rephrased just a bit) — all of which I agree with based on testing my own campaigns and capturing results.
1) Create a Strong Headline
Use headlines that clearly state the biggest benefit(s) that your product offers. Tell visitors exactly what they can expect to receive out of your landing page.
2) Compelling Offer
Your offer is the second opportunity to improve conversion. It is your “call to action” so make it bold and relevant.
3) Lead with a Strong First Paragraph
It must be written with strong benefits that capture your visitor’s attention and make them want to continue reading.
4) Product/Service Benefits
List your benefits in the order of your product’s “value hierarchy” to your target market. In other words, state your product’s strongest benefit first, and its weakest benefit last. I’d personally recommend leaving off the “weakest benefit.”
5) Relevant Imagery
The best practice is to use images that clearly portray the biggest benefit your product or service offers your customer (rather than generic “feel good” stuff like unknown logos and clip art). Studies show that product images usually work best when placed to the left of your product description (or lead paragraph) since it makes it easier to read your copy from left to right. Plus, people like to read “captions” under your images almost as much as they read your headlines. So, add powerful captions and make your images clickable to the order/sign up page.
6) Professional Look & Feel
According to a recent study by Stanford University, 46% of Web sales are lost on websites that lack the critical elements that build value and trust with website visitors. The number one reason the people indicated why they wouldn’t buy from a website was because it had an unprofessional “look and feel” that lacked credibility and did not “feel” trustworthy. Having a professional look, and trust building logos (such as VeriSign and BBBOnline certifications) help convert significantly more of your website’s qualified visitors into new customers.
Here are a few landing page examples that are proving to yield results for QuantumDigital:
If you are interested in learning how to write for SEO success, gather highlights on paid search campaigns and more tips on landing page and campaign best practices check out the free webinar featuring Heather Lloyd-Martin, President and CEO, Successworks; Teal Murley, Client Services Coordinator, Oneupweb and yours truly.
Until then,
Jamie
November 16th, 2009 at 5:15 am
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