5 Easy Ways to Spruce Up Your Landing Page Experience
Landing pages are a critical component of any successful digital marketing campaign. They are specifically designed to convert website visitors into leads, subscribers, or customers by providing them with a targeted message and call-to-action (CTA). Understanding the best practices for landing pages is crucial to driving growth.
We find that the majority of landing pages don’t work for small business owners because of poor design and user experience. Landing pages are considered middle-funnel marketing content, meaning that they are meant to target customers who already have some basic awareness or trust of your brand. For them to work their best, you’ll first have to warm up leads through social media, email, ads, or other top-funnel content.
However, even the most well-designed landing pages, with the proper “lead-in”, can still struggle to convert if they don’t provide a positive user experience. Poor user experience on a landing page can cause visitors to quickly leave the page, resulting in a higher bounce rate (people leaving the site quickly) and lower conversion rates.
Importance of User Experience on Landing Pages
Five Easy Ways to Create Landing Pages That Convert
#5 Implement Interactive Elements
The Importance of User Experience on Landing Pages
The Interactive Design Foundation describes user experience (UX) as “the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. UX design involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.”
The value of good UX design for landing pages is clear. By making your landing page instantly communicate how to use it and how it connects to your business, you hook visitors quickly and get them to stick around.
It pays to be fast in making a good impression. Studies suggest that the average website visitor decides whether to stay on your page or not in just 8 seconds. If they leave, it’s not just a loss of a potential customer or client. They’re also raising your bounce rate, which will penalize your search ranking.
Good UX design prevents the momentary confusion and frustration that can cause a visitor to tap the back button. Instead, it raises their engagement, inviting them deeper into the site to find the answers to their questions or see what you have to offer. The longer they stay, the more they see, and the more likely you are to make a conversion. This isn’t just speculation, either. According to a report by Forbes, a well-designed user interface could improve your landing page’s conversion rate by up to 200%, and a better UX design could yield conversion rates up to 400%.
One invaluable tool for improving your landing page UX design is A/B testing. This involves the creation of two different versions of the landing page, or specific elements from the page, and testing both to see which one visitors respond to better. By comparing metrics on versions A and B, you can identify which elements are most effective and which areas need improvement.
Five Easy Ways to Create Landing Pages That Convert
Whether you're a startup looking to attract your first customers or an established company aiming to increase your client base, landing pages can play a pivotal role in driving conversions.
But creating an effective landing page is an art and a science. It requires a solid understanding of your audience, a compelling message, and a strong call to action. These tricks of the trade are all about building trust with your visitors, personalizing their experience, making the conversion process a breeze, improving user experience, and keeping your audience hooked.
#1: Add Social Proof
Social proof is a powerful tool for increasing trust and credibility with your website visitors. Showing that third-party, independent voices will vouch for your brand is a major asset for making conversions. It means that the page visitor no longer just has to take your word that you provide value to your clients. With social proof, they can look at outside opinions to help make their decision and understand just how your brand has been able to solve problems in the past.
The most common forms of social proof are reviews. You can cherry-pick the best ones out there and showcase them on your landing page as a way to have more control over your appearance. Some review sites or aggregates can also be embedded on a landing page for a more honest and trustworthy appearance. You can also go beyond text reviews to collect video reviews, testimonials, case studies, influencer endorsements, or much more. The possibilities for social proof are as diverse as they are convincing for page visitors. If a lot of people out there like you, why wouldn’t they give you a try and take action?
#2: Use Personalization
Personalization is another effective way to increase engagement and conversions. By tailoring your landing page content to the specific needs and interests of your target audience, you can make a more compelling case for your product or service. For example, studies show that Millennial shoppers prefer having a lot of information accessible to them without having to make phone calls or proceed further down the path of commitment and conversion. Baby boomers, in contrast, prefer to start phone and email conversations early on, coming to their decision with the help of a representative. They get overwhelmed by the same information that makes Millennials feel more comfortable.
By paying attention to the age, gender, background, and other key demographic factors of your target audience, you’ll gain an advantage on your landing page. Curate information, create graphical content, and use language that appeals to the people most likely to heed your call to action rather than trying to capture a general audience. Ideally, you’d even seek out members of your target audience to review potential landing page decisions to ensure your content choices are working as planned.
#3: Simplify Your Forms
Long or complex forms can be a major turnoff for visitors and can significantly reduce conversion rates. The more information you ask for, required or not, the more time and mental energy the form takes, and the more likely someone is to just give up partway through. Asking for excessive information can also raise suspicions that you are going to misuse personal info or bombard the visitor with advertising.
Simplifying your forms and only asking for essential information can help streamline the process and increase conversions. Don’t ask for anything more than is absolutely necessary for the visitor to take the action you’re calling them to. Make sure the forms are responsive and easy to fill out. All questions and prompts should be written in a clear and concise manner. When filling out the form on your landing page is as simple as breathing, you remove so many obstacles to conversions.
#4: Improve Page Loading Times
This one is a bit more technical, but page load times can have a significant impact on user experience and conversion rates. Any page that takes too long to load will just be ignored, or, at best, give a negative first impression to your visitor. The Search Engine Journal suggests your page should load in 3 seconds or less. In some areas with poor internet access, it may take a bit longer. Another suggestion is to load your favorite Youtube video and count how long it takes to start playing. If that number is 8 seconds or more, divide it by half to find your target page load time.
To improve load times, consider optimizing images. Kinsta offers a good guide for this process, but basically, keep your image file size small and use JPG or PNG images wherever possible. You’ll also want to minimize the use of large videos or other multimedia, which tend to contribute huge amounts to a landing page’s file size. Using a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute content is also a good idea, as these networks help your website server “share the load” and deliver files to your visitor more quickly. Speed is definitely the name of the game when it comes to creating landing pages that convert.
#5: Implement Interactive Elements
Interactive elements such as quizzes, surveys, or product demos can help increase engagement and encourage visitors to spend more time on your landing page. While creating these elements can take a little bit of technical knowledge and experimentation, the benefit is major, particularly with younger audiences.
Encouraging the visitor to think about their relationship with your brand and where they fit into your content invites them to draw closer to the brand. If they feel engaged enough, they might even invite other people to take a look and boost your landing page views.
As an added benefit, these elements can also help you gather valuable data about your target audience and their preferences. Answers from quizzes or recorded behaviors from product demos provide a wealth of information. Be sure to take a look at the data and use it to fine-tune your landing page as well as any future content.
Also, be sure to keep in mind how these interactive elements play with your intended call to action. Sometimes it’s best to place them before the first CTA to “warm up” the visitor, while in other cases they’re best saved until after to avoid distraction.
Key Takeaways
Landing pages are critical because they often represent the final step to take potential clients to actual clients. They are your greatest opportunity to deliver your call to action and have the visitor hopefully take that action. They are worth investing your time and effort into, so you can develop a full understanding of how to improve your landing page experience.
But remember, landing pages aren’t meant to hold the full weight of your web presence. They are specifically designed to convert visitors into leads. Landing page best practices put a streamlined user experience first, and everything else takes a distant backseat. These five tips should help you improve that user experience, and make major strides forward on your landing page. With the right warm-up and follow-through, you’ll easily be able to improve your landing page conversion rate and expand your client base!