Top Tips For Landing Pages

March 8, 2010

We’ve established in the last post (Do You Have Dedicated Landing Pages for Your PPC?) that landing pages are vital if you want to get the most from your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns such as Google AdWords. They are the key to converting visitors onsite – getting visitors to complete the actions you want them to.

If created well, landing pages can be used to make a ‘hard sell’. Not in a hammy, used car salesman way, but in the sense that you have visitors where you want them. Show them what they need to see, present the information with a focused message and hit them with some strong call to actions – remember we talked about your goals in the previous post? Landing pages allow you to create a pre-planned funnel/path, pushing visitors to complete those goals.

How do you create good call to actions, and how do you get people to do what you want? Well there’s no secret recipe I’m afraid. It’s a case of trial and error – test your landing pages and constantly tweak and amend them based on the results you get.

Here are the main things you need to be aware of when creating landing pages:

• Colourful, big and bold buttons: Hit them with a call to action in a visually appealling way with good quality buttons that tell them to ‘Buy Now’, ‘Sign up for our newsletter’, ‘Take a Free Trial Today’, ‘Download Now’ etc.. Make these buttons stand out from your page through the use of colour and good quality design
• Limit the use of links and menu options on the landing page: The more links on your landing page, the more likely people will click off elsewhere, get distracted and never complete the action you want them to
• Clever content layout: People scan webpages, they don’t read them (this goes back to the ‘lazy, demanding and impatient’ bit I mentioned in the previous post!). So make it easy for them to get the key information – use bullet points, short paragraphs, bold text and colour
• Make it easy for visitors to complete the goal: If your goal is to have them contact you, make the contact form small and simple. Do you really need their full address, date of birth and favourite colour? Think about the minimum amount of information you need in order to follow up that lead and only request that. If you’re trying to get them to make a purchase, don’t make them go through hoops. Display your delivery details and return policy clearly to instill a feeling of trust, and make sure you let them know that your online payment process is secure. Don’t give them any reason to start clicking about off the path you’re directing them down
• Make sure the key information is above the fold: This goes back to newspapers – when they’re delivered or displayed in newsagents, you can see the top half of the front page – this is where they put all their major stories and headlines. The same goes for landing pages – make sure your most important information is towards the top of your landing page – above the fold. Anything people have to scroll down to view is below the fold. Remember that people have different monitor sizes too, so what may be above the fold for you, may not be above the fold for all your visitors. Why is this important? Again, people are lazy, demanding and impatient and can’t be bothered to scroll down the page to find the information they want! If they view the content above the fold and it looks relevant to their query, then they may make the effort to scroll. But if not… bang goes the back button!
• Remember that not everyone will convert: Not all visitors will be in the position to buy the item they’re searching for (or contact you for the service your offer). They could just be in the research stage of the purchase process. Do you have anything you can give them? If you can’t fulfil your primary goal of a sale, what secondary goals do you have. Can you get that visitor to sign up to your newsletter, or can they download a guide with advice on the purchasing process (possibly via a form to capture their details)? It’s important to try and make the most of each click, and understanding that not everyone will convert is important. Give people more than one option – so create more than one call to action on your landing page.

If you have any other landing page tips, leave them in the comments below. Have you tried something that had amazing results? Share it with us.

Filed under: Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Tags: Google Adwords, landing pages, PPC