What is a Landing Page and What Makes an Effective One?

You’ve got a sharp-looking website for your business, determined who your target market is, and came up with a fantastic offer to generate leads and grow your email list. Now, you need an effective landing page. What makes a landing page different from your other pages? Here’s what you need to know…

The Anatomy of a “Perfect” Landing Page

Here are the elements of an effective landing page, aka a squeeze page…

1. A great headline. A good headline entices the visitor to keep reading. By the way, it’s not clickbait. I like the Co-schedule Headline Tool. It’s free and easy to use. You want a score above 70. The higher, the better.
2. Highlight the benefits first. The visitor thinks, “What’s in it for me?” or “Does this solve my problem?” Furthermore, state the problem, then provide the benefits/solution in bullet points.
3. Tell them what you want them to do. That’s your call-to-action (CTA). It’s a command. In addition, make the button clearly visible and “above the fold” — so the visitor doesn’t have to scroll.
4. Make it easy on the eyes. That’s the right color scheme. The contrast between text and background should make it easy to read. The text should not be too small. There is a psychology to color. Red or orange buttons create a sense of urgency. However, if those colors don’t match your color scheme, pick a button color that stands out.
5. Get visual. Videos are best to explain the offer and benefits, and pictures should be sized correctly — not too large as they need to load quickly. Make it short and sweet. Capture the visitor’s attention in the first 15 seconds.
6. Display Social Proof. That is, reviews, recommendations, and trust symbols.
7. Expand on that social proof with credible testimonials. Moreover, user-generated content (UGC) works great here. That’s when a happy-camper customer takes a picture of themselves with one of your products or using your service.
8. Minimize navigational links. In fact, remove navigation altogether. Reason being, you don’t want people to get lost in your website. You want them to get to the business of giving you their name and email.
9. Keep your intake form short and sweet. You want their name, and email address and maybe ask no more than 3 questions to help you segment your list.
10. Place your form above the fold. Don’t make people search or scroll for what you want them to do.
11. Try A/B testing. If you’re not sure what color scheme will work or what buttons or call-to-action to use, try A/B testing. However, keep in mind, this does take some time, and you have to create two landing pages. Nevertheless, sometimes just changing the color or text of a button will make a huge difference.

The link to this page doesn’t need to be in your main navigation. It should be a graphic or button in various places around your website and of course, social media posts. (Related: Branding and the Psychology of Color.)

The Anatomy Of A Perfect Landing Page

Check out this infographic from Neil Patel…

All in all, the objective of having a landing page is to convert the visitor to a lead with the right call-to-action. As a result, you’ll get qualified leads and a segmented email list to be able to personalize your email marketing campaigns. Having said that, the job then, of marketing automation is to nurture the lead into a sale.

Related: What happens if you’re not getting your desired results?

If you’re struggling with this, let’s schedule a free 15-minute phone consult and we can brainstorm your marketing efforts.

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