10 tips for the perfect landing page

A landing page is the bridge between your ad and your offer. It is a simple web page that is designed to persuade people who have clicked on your ad that they should buy your product or sign up for your offer.

Here we give you 10 tips to help you optimise your landing page for better conversions.  Landing pages don’t need to be complicated, keep it simple. A basic landing page will consist of:

1. Headline – This should repeat or be similar to the text that was in your initial ad. That way users know they are on the right page and you are reinforcing your message. It should be short never more than twenty words, preferably only ten.
2. Sub headline – The sub headline can go into slightly more depth and detail than the main headline. Tease them with the sub headline, it should make your user think “I have to keep reading to see what this product is all about.” Try to phrase your sub headline to evoke feelings of curiosity, surprise and emotion in your user.
3. Images – The brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. A user will be affected by the images on your landing page immediately so it will convert better with high quality relevant images. You could show a few images that demonstrate your product/offer being used by people, or even a short demonstration video showing off your product features. The core idea is that your target consumer will be able to visualise how much they need your product.
4. Sales text – So this is your final chance at persuasion. Again keep it simple, try to minimise your text to three bullet pointed sentences. You can use them to explain the product benefits, is it a unique product that they can’t get from anywhere else? Offer an introductory discounted price, etc. Additionally some marketeers include customer testimonials.
5. Contact us – Before getting out their credit card a consumer will want to know if you are legitimate and if they can trust you.  Your contact us section should include a phone number, a physical address and a support email address.
6. Social network icons – Integrate social network icons on your page: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc so that interested users can share your product to their social contacts, this is free promotion for you!
7. CTA – This is your call to action to take them to that final step to sign up or make a purchase. Again keep this simple, but make it big! Use a large button in a contrasting colour that stands out on your page with text such as “Sign Up Now”, “Buy Now” etc.
8. Maximise your thank you page – Once your user has converted don’t let them slip away. Continue to engage with them and keep them on your site. Include extra product videos, case studies, links to deeper content on your site, or up sell other products to them.

9. Page loading times – You must ensure that your landing page opens fast, all it takes is one user’s slow connection for it to go over the magic 2 second mark and potential sales will be lost by people clicking away. To speed up loading times here are a few tricks:

  • Put all your styles in the main landing page, not in separate files.
  • Watch out for web design programs adding CSS or Javascript you don’t need – take it out.
  • Load Javascript just before the </body> tag if you can. Avoid Javascript in the <head> unless it’s vital.
  • Photoshop Image Slicing produces very inefficient web pages. It is much better to export as a single image, and even better to just export images you need and place them with CSS Positioning.
  • Text on your landing page should be HTML, not an image. It looks better and speeds up your page.
  • Better-optimised servers can cut up to half a second off your landing page’s loading time and having a server in the same country as your offer can reduce load time even further.

10. A/B testing pages and traffic algorithms – Next, it’s time to do some A/B and multivariate testing which is all about trying out different combinations on your landing page such as CTAs, offers/discounts, headlines, your teaser, etc. Let’s look at your CTA button and what options there could be to test this: Try different positions for the button on your page, different sizes, phrases and colours. Test out these different combinations and see which works the best to improve your conversions.

ExoClick’s platform has some integrated intelligent algorithms that you can use to give automated control over the traffic that you send to variant landing pages. The automatic optimization algorithm for example, optimises traffic distribution based on conversion tracking results. So the landing page that is performing the best will automatically receive most of the traffic, while continuously testing against existing landing pages and any new page that is introduced. The traffic sharing algorithms can be selected in Admin Panel > Advertisers > Offers.

Check out our tutorial: How to use ExoClick’s new automated optimisation landing page algorithms

 

Giles Hirst