14 Winning Landing Page Design Tips

A machine won’t work if any of its important parts are missing. Similarly, your online campaigns will be abortive without landing pages.

Why, you ask?

Simply because the attention span of an average web user is diminishing. Meanwhile, the number of clickable links, content that can distract is growing on your website.

Many online marketers rush to set up websites or landing pages and get started with their online campaigns. There are many others who don’t.

Enthusiasm to launch campaigns shouldn’t be at the cost of ‘due diligence’. A landing page is a must for any link pointing out of your blog post, social update, or from within your email where you want visitors/readers/customers to do something. Note that landing pages are not just for PPC campaigns.

Just because you put up a landing page, it won’t guarantee you conversions or sales. There are rules, secrets and some fundamentals you should follow. Here is how you can set-up your landing page to convert like crazy:

Here are the essentials Your Landing pages must have:

Pay attention to the basics

There are fundamentals you must pay attention to.

First, there ought to be no navigation on a landing page. Your landing page should not have anything that visitors can click on. No social media buttons, no links to your website, and no clickable images.

Anything fancy on your page is bound to suffer. Landing pages should have no navigation. Make your page clutter free, and use this blueprint that the folks from KissMetrics created to get you started off on the right path.

One of the easiest ways to establish trust, which in turn maximizes conversions on your landing page, is to throw numbers, statistics, and facts liberally in your content.

Although we buy on an emotional trigger, our minds will still feed on quantitative information to justify that purchase. You will also have to cater to the ‘reasoning’ part of the human brain.

Enhance The Mysterious Landing Page Quality Score

Google is the de-facto choice for most people in the world when it comes to conducting searches and over 70% percent of people will find you or your business through search engines like Google.

The quality score determines how much you’ll finally end up paying Google. It’s a part of setting up your Google Adwords Campaigns right. The better your quality score is, the lower you’ll pay per click.

Now, if you were selling products or services online and if you are using Pay Per Click which is by far one of the most popular ways to market online, the quality score Google attributes to your landing page would mean the world to you, wouldn’t it? It makes sense to enhance your Landing Page quality score, doesn’t it?

Don’t break your promise and establish trust

This is where Message matching kicks in. If your ad says 30% off, your landing page should say the exact same thing. Promising a free trial (no credit card needed?), then that’s what your landing page should say.

If you say “free shipping’ on your PPC ad, your PPC landing page must have free shipping promised prominently.

Never deviate from what you are focusing on

In addition, provide content that is valuable and unbiased. This helps your readers to a great extent and solves their problems. While it has super benefits all on its own merit, Google places a huge amount of importance in transparency, trust, and goodwill.

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Keep the Mandatory pages visible

Google has guidelines you must not break; they aren’t very hard to follow. It is mandatory to have pages like about us, contact us, etc., which you must have in place.

You must also include a privacy policy, the terms and conditions, usage policies, affiliate disclosures, etc. These are simple and there is no reason why you wouldn’t follow these instructions.

Although you might be a little reluctant to have all these mandatory pages on your sales page (because it ruins the focus of your call-to-action like ” Buy Now” or ” Download a Free Copy”), it is still important to have them somewhere on your landing page.

I usually recommend unobtrusive places like your footer where it is still visible but doesn’t come in the way of your sales process.

Design: I won’t stay here if I don’t like what I see

When it comes to PPC, landing pages must be designed for optimum navigability, practical usage and the best looking design possible. Plus, the page should load quick.

Keep the landing page simple and stunning. Your visitors should know why and where they arrived and what they should do next. The call-to-action should get them thinking.

Pinch the motor brain, if you have to.

In addition, do this:

•  Keep JavaScripts at a minimum.
• Use tools like Photoshop, TinyMCG or Smush.it to compress your images and the hero shot.

Relevancy: This isn’t what I arrived here for

I was misled: An all too common practice on the Internet among business owners and online marketers who use ad words for their PPC campaign landing page is to make tall promises and make shameless claims about miracles that can never happen.

When visitors click on those PPC ads (or any link whatsoever) they come to except something and they are looking for just that — like a free trail, free shipping, a free sample, a free download, or a buy button to buy that thing you promoted.

If they don’t see that on your landing page, you just lost that person.

For marketers and business owners, losing is not an option. Or is it?

Trust and Valuable content: I won’t buy from con artists

More often than not, most visitors don’t buy immediately. They need to trust you and like you.

This is possible only if you have content that reeks of honesty, reflects a personality and is never biased. The content focuses on contributing value for the readers and not con them or force them into buying your wares.

This will take time, but it is the only true, tried & tested formula to convert your reluctant visitors into happy buyers.

Spice those landing Pages Up: Because Spice Makes it fun

When I wake up each morning, the entire capitalistic world is focused on a relentless mission to shoot their messages to consumers across trying to convince me to buy their wares — a raging pursuit to occupy my mind share (and wallet share).

Trouble is just that: there are too many messages out there coming my way and nothing ever stands out.

Your landing pages must standout. They should convert like crazy, and for that, and they should be appealing enough.

Get anchors for long pages: Long or short, nudge them to the CTA

Long landing pages are fine, until your visitors go right down to the bottom of the page, click on that standalone button lying alone at the very end, and see that nothing happens.

If nothing happens, they’ll leave.

If you use Unbounce for building landing pages, you can use their anchor tag and link that solitary button to the main button above the fold.

Visuals always attract: I like what I see

According to Brain Rules

“When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. “

Let’s admit it, plain text is boring. Each picture is worth a thousand words, thousands of dollars and certainly boosts your bank account by adding a tremendous amount of appeal to your landing page.

Use appropriate graphic elements and images to add punch to your landing page.

Shocker Content, precision, and controversy

Nothing grabs attention as much a shocker of some sort or some kind of blunt statement. Controversy can fuel clicks and that’s your final goal, isn’t it?

Why stick to normal, tasteless, bland and insipid content when you can use shockers, blunt statements to pull your readers in?

Yet another variation in this strategy is to be precise and say just as much as you should.

Stick to the point: Rambling is expensive

Readers are notoriously impatient online and they prefer cut-the-crap-and-give-me-no-more-bullshit approach to your landing page copy.

Many landing pages are guilty of putting too much information on a landing page. Most landing pages are built to convert for “low -commitment” offers such as free trials and free downloads. Why add so much information for a “no sale”?

Brevity is critical for your landing page copy. Keep it simple, don’t confuse your visitors, and that can help boost your conversions a lot more.

Social proof: Videos, Interviews, Media coverage, Association with Trustworthy Institutions

If images can say so much, what would a video do for your landing page? Have you thought about featuring yourself in a video introduction? How about an interview or two?

Also, any sort of media coverage or media association mentioned on your site like having logos of CNN, BBC, Fox News, etc., is sure to make your visitors think “wow, this can be trusted; it was on TV”.

Similarly, association with newspapers, magazines and periodicals can be effective too. Further, adding logos of institutes like BBB (Better Business Bureau), Verisign, Truste, etc can go a long way in establishing this trust factor.

Sweat over conversions, not just design

Prepare Your Landing Pages For Maximum Conversions. The problem is that too many marketers and business tend to sweat the small stuff — like button colors, trying to match offline marketing collateral with their landing pages, fonts, placement of elements, and more.

Conversion is the ticket for your big fat back account. Conversions are the only KPI you should sweat about. Everything else is “small stuff”.

No matter what you do, conversion is right at the threshold of your final goal: making a sale. Your landing page is instrumental — among other elements — in helping you achieve these conversions.

If you want visitors to take action, the action should happen on a landing page. Today, websites have too much on them to distract and visitors can easily get drifting across your content instead of taking the action that holds value for you.

How do your landing pages look like?