Marketers spend a great deal of time and effort driving inbound traffic to their website in hopes of converting potential customers. One of the best ways to maximize your conversion rate is by creating optimized landing pages within your website design. An optimized landing page not only gets more eyes on your content but also encourages potential customers to reach out and get more information. In fact, optimizing landing pages can increase your conversion rate by 86%, which is why every business should be devoting time and resources to page optimization. In this article, we discuss the basics of a landing page and five steps you can take to design landing pages that convert.
A landing page is where you send potential customers looking for information on a particular topic to initiate a conversation. Landing pages are specifically designed to entice a user response and encourage conversion. The most effective landing pages appeal to a target audience and include a call to action for the user to reach out and learn more.
It is also important to have a clear design that is not distracting. When landing pages are too complex and difficult to digest, it increases the likelihood of a user leaving your page. When done correctly, every industry can benefit from landing pages. How you design your landing page is entirely up to you. However, here are few a few tips to help you create landing pages that maximize your conversion rate:
No matter the type of landing page you create, you always want your message to be clear and concise. If your message becomes muddled and leaves your reader confused, that will seriously hurt your chances of conversion. When you create a landing page, you want to establish yourself as a leader in your respective industry and a knowledgeable source of information that users can trust. For instance, if you own a healthcare company in the Tri-Cities, one of your landing pages could be about offering Telehealth options, foundational membership rates, or why your healthcare model is the best in the Tri-Cities.
Take some time to seriously consider how you want to represent your brand through your landing pages, and how your business addresses the needs of the users landing on your website. Storytelling content is a great way to engage users and increase the likelihood of conversion. Also, do not be afraid to add a touch of personality and even some humor in your content.
To maximize the inbound traffic to your landing pages, you want to utilize SEO principles that help your content rank towards the top in search engines. Whenever users look for a product or service similar to the one your business provides, they generally use search engines to find the best results. For search engines to get the best results, users type in words or phrases known as keywords. If we use the healthcare example, individuals in need of healthcare in Tri-Cities might search "primary care doctor near me," or " Telehealth options in Tri-Cities" into Google or another type of search engine.
Keywords come in two forms; short-tail and long-tail. Short-tail keywords are short phrases of one or two words, while long-tail keywords are longer phrases and are more specific. While short-tail keywords get more searches, they do not lead to as many conversions as long-tail phrases. You want to create content that utilizes the specific short-tail and long-tail keywords users are searching in the top search engines. Google is, by far, the most commonly used search engine. You can use Google's Keyword Tool to research the most common keywords and phrases in your industry.
What are you trying to accomplish with your landing page? The answer should be apparent within the first paragraph or two because you only have a few seconds to convince users to stay on your page. The stark reality of online sales and service-based businesses is most users click on a webpage, browse for a few seconds, then immediately click away. However, if you can get the user to stay, you always want to end your landing page with a call to action.
Your call to action needs to be direct, easy for the user to identify, and tells them exactly what they should do next to learn more information about their specific inquiry. To return to the healthcare example, the call to action could say, "sign up now" or "schedule your call with Dr. Schneider today." The call to action must contain a link to the exact place you want them to go to learn more. If the link redirects them to something unrelated, they will become confused and probably leave your website. Ultimately, you want your landing page focused on the content, with a clear and concise call to action at the end that clearly indicates what the user should do next.
There are multiple online tools you can use to track user data on your landing pages. Tools like Google Analytics tell you exactly how users are reaching your landing page. You can see what keywords work and how well your content ranks. Likewise, you can see which landing pages are getting more inbound traffic and which ones are lagging. Other metrics you can track include conversion rate, bounce rate, and exit rate. If you are not using analytics to track the progress of your landing pages, then you are essentially putting all of your time and effort into optimizing content to waste.
There is no perfect method of optimizing conversions, which is why you should never stop optimizing your content. Keywords can change over time, as well as user preferences. That is why you want to track your landing page data to know which pages need improvement and which ones are doing well. By continuously tweaking your content ensures it remains competitive, ranks well, and maximizes the inbound traffic to your website, which all contribute to optimizing your conversion rate.
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