Landing Page Design: Turn Traffic into Your Loyal Customers

You were having conversion rate issues, but now an abrupt drop in traffic has alarmed you.

This has occurred because your website’s landing page was not generating the volume of visitors that you expected.

Now, it may not come as a shock that you’ve lost traffic due to problems in the landing page design as many marketers already stated that 70-90% bounce rates are because of no landing page optimization.

But as per a study by unbounce, it is cleared that

“Landing pages are in the middle stage of your marketer’s funnel”

That is your landing pages are big bucks-makers and for them to work for you, you gotta optimize your landing page as per the desires of your users 

A survey conducted by databox experts “a good landing page conversion rate ranges between 21-50%”.

So, you see at least 21-50% chances are there for conversions if you employ a page which attributes describe a good landing page experience to your targeted and visiting audience.

Now, before we go further on the topic of Landing page optimization. Let’s know “What is a Landing Page?”

This standalone page serves as a “converter” of leads for your business.

That is, the landing page design encourages your visitors to convert, from leads to subscribers, and eventually from subscribers to loyal customers.

So, let’s explore what appeals to your target demographic and website visitors, and how landing page optimization of your landing page design can help you increase conversions.

In this article, I share with you some landing page best practices that are going to help you improve your landing page conversion rate.

But before that, I would like you to watch this video.

So, Let’s get started.

How To Improve Landing Page Conversion Rate

As already discussed, the improvement of conversion rates depends on your landing page design and the optimization that you applied in it.

Now, you know what a landing page is to your company, that is, it is a lead converter from subscribers to loyal customers.

So, it is a requirement of your marketing funnel that you start optimizing your website’s landing page design and that can be done by promoting its outlook for your targeted.

Let’s achieve your conversion rate goals by following these landing page best practices:

Targeting The Right Users

Your landing page should be developed with the right user in mind considering that the marketing funnel isn’t to target every customer in the market.

Looking at the picture below, you understand that from 1.86 billion internet users, earning the percentage of right users for your business is pretty limited but achievable.

However, SEO experts believe that ranking and increasing metrics are far more important than determining who your users are, due to many wrong assumptions.

Though, they forget that if the traffic is irrelevant to your business, the bounce rate by your search engine rises too.

And this also affects your clickthrough rate. Though CTR may become high and also, this would neither guarantee leads nor conversions for your website.

Rather, with the wrong targeted audience, your customers’ bounce rate would increase.

Therefore, it is important for your landing page to favour your targeted and relevant audiences because that would bring your company business while increasing conversion rates too.

Now that we’ve cleared things up, let’s move on to the following question: Who is the ideal user for your company?

The ideal solution to find the correct user is by building a Buyer Persona

According to a study by MarketingInsiderGroup,

“93% of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals segment their database by buyer persona”

Now, this persona must have details of your target users’ age, name, vocation, problems, pain points, etc (as shown in the picture below)

Being a marketer, targeting small businesses and startups that can make decisions and seek your products and services is an optimal choice for you.

Just remember,

You should only create one buyer persona of your targeted users.

Creation of buyer personas can include surveys, database information, form fields and feedback. Using old databases and analyzing your competitor’s customer data via comments and followers on social media and even some customer surveys and interviews can help you create one.

Buyer persona helps your landing page to build a user-friendly website for your targeted user. Through this you can make changes in your landing page design that is more liked by the user.

I would like to tell you how to improve landing page conversion rates with this example.

Say, you have a restaurant business and the landing page you are designing is for children’s toys that you would be selling with a particular meal.

To attract customers, you have to firstly understand that your target users are not the children but their parents who are going to watch your landing page.

Now, that you are cleared to whom you are targeting using headlines, CTAs and Content with images and videos with respect to the parents’ desire. Right?

In a similar way, when you understand your buyer persona, you can accordingly arrange the landing page design to pursue your.

Effective CTA

CTA or call to action is one of the most significant landing page elements. It should not only appeal and compel your users to encourage them to know your products and services and join your business as a client.

Whether the call to action is a button, content or text, just keep in mind to use good and actionable CTAs rather than the basic ones such as Buy Now, Download Now and some others that you can see in the picture below.

Your personalized CTAs work on your target audience gaining their empathy and relatedness to your website.  This can be highlighted through a statistics by the hubspot,

“the personalized CTAs within a landing page converts 202% better than default versions of them and appeals to your traffic’s curiosity”

So, the potential of your CTA generating conversions is really high.

For example, on my website, the CTA phrase “Boost Your Sales In The Next 6 Months” and CTA button “6 ways to grow my business” is used as shown in pictures below,

Now, the phrase catches the attention of  small business and startups that are looking for directional support from my firm that has been in this field for over 10 years.

Similarly, you can make sure your CTA instils your business’ uniqueness in the mind of users by personalizing them. That way your users are compelled to proceed with the direction and you get subscribers that are interested in your products and services.

One of the most common problems of this landing page optimization technique is the frequent usage of different CTAs within a single landing page.

CTA helps your landing page by grabbing the attention of the user to the solution that you are ready to provide and that is why you should not use too many CTAs.

Because one landing page must contain one CTA to provide clear intent towards your users.

Web designers or businesses that use too many CTAs within a single landing page creates a problem for their users: User intent, that is explained in the next point

Read More: What Is A Call To Action: 9 Killer Tips To Create CTA To Boost Your Leads

Intent Clarity

Intent clarity is the gem of Landing Page that brings about your leads to become subscribers.

Now, your CTA and headline may seem perfect to you but think if it clearly states the benefits of your offer and how you stand unique among your competitors in your business model or marketing strategy.

Let’s have a visual lookout with the landing page example given below and answer this: Do you know what the intention of the website owner is with this webpage?

This example shows a rather messy and crowded landing page which is also a home page.

Here, you can most definitely observe how every piece of information is stuffed into the pages, that is from comparison of trips to the offers and deals.

And also, there are only three prominent CTAs – at the top “Don’t Miss A Thing!” or on the form “Search Latest Deals” or below the form “Click Here” which is more of a confusion builder for the users.

What do you think your users would do if this was your site?

Well, to be honest, they would be lost and with no direction or clarity, your users would probably be back to the search results and go on searching for the results on other websites. So, now you know what not to do on your website.

 Now let’s check out some points on how you can show a clear intent to your users?

There are 4 intent categories for 99 % of all search terms: Informational, Navigational, Commercial, and Transactional

Taking these four categories in consideration, let’s work with an example, so you can understand how to apply them in your landing page.

This is another one of the landing page examples. In the picture given below, an edX landing page can be seen providing a clear intent through it’s headline.

Being an educational business website, edX had provided the much needed information to its target market with a CTA headline and universities working with them. (within the blue rectangle box)

Secondly, the buttons such as “Courses” and “Programs & Degrees” provide users with navigation options within the website, giving them a choice to proceed further exploration.

EdX business, on the top-right corner, is for the purpose of commercial and transactional information.

Here, you can understand the technique clarifying which attributes describe a good landing page experience for your targeted users.

So, keep in mind to use clear intent as that is what compels your user to stay and explore further.

Quick Page Loading Time

The Page Load Time of your website influences your ranking within the search engine’s metric. It should be 2 to 3 seconds is the limit your visitors are willing to wait for your page to load according to John Mueller of Google. Look at the tweet by him,

Henceforth, it is needed for an eCommerce website’s landing page optimization to include the page speed as preferred by your visitors, which is “as quickly as possible”.

Though, this may be the most undermined landing page elements but have been a point of discussion among the website operators and optimizers because a second delay can result in a 7% drop of your user, making your landing page less desirable for them to interact with

Now, the cautions for your page load time are:

1) Your landing page back-end web files (such as Java and HTML) must be compressed and its unnecessary data should be cleared out.

2) The heavy multimedia (image, videos, audios) should be taken into consideration and should be reduced in size or you can use caches that load them on the user’s computer and your page loads pretty faster.

3) Your landing page must not be a redirect to another webpage as it increases the load time of your webpage causing user loss.

So, keeping these cautions in mind and keeping your conversion goals straight as per the data in the picture below

Your landing page optimization requires that your web page loads within 0-2 seconds

Perfect Hook Points To Attract Visitors

Hook points are basic to effective marketing and are one of the landing page elements that grabs your audience’s attention.

So, you must answer this question: are they to your visitors’ liking?

Knowing that “your users are your empire builder” isn’t enough, you have to customize your landing page with an understanding of their required solution as that is what your product and services are about. Isn’t it?

This understanding is shown by the headlines within your landing Page and as per the blogging wizard,

“8 out of 10 people will read your headline, and only 2 out of 10 will read the rest”

So, it is crucial for you to optimize the headlines of your landing page as this hooks your user to your web page and compels them to subscribe.

Given below are some landing page examples that define the structure of your headline.

These headlines contain long-tail keywords as well as a hook point for its visitors.
Now, as the sites captivate the attention of its customers through the headline. They are letting it’s users know that their concerns are being addressed and this site is equipped to provide them with solutions too.

This compels them to explore the website further and Voila! They got new subscribers that are willing to check out their products and services.

And TechJury and MarketingSherpa supports this by admitting that

“90% of visitors who read your headline will also read your call-to-action”

So, for further engagement on the landing page your headline’s hook point and long tail keyword should engage your users first.

The bottom line for this is: Hook points are VERY important in your headlines.

Effective Videos

A landing page that contains videos breaks the heaviness of the content. Also, this appeals to your user’s knowledge and is easily practiced by them with only one click.

Research shows using videos on landing pages can increase conversions as according to Forbes, at least 60% of people prefer watching video.

So, check out this data below that shows a promising increase of leads, when videos are used within landing pages, emails and even, ads.

Though, nowadays users prefer short videos such as explainer, promo and demo videos while using a video on your landing page, :

1) Your videos must be short as around 49% of businesses use shorter videos.

2) Use videos that are interesting in nature as 72% of people prefer videos instead of reading text or content to gain information about a new product or service.

Hence, as another landing page element, videos can be used for optimization of your landing page. A type of video marketing done for your user is much more approachable to them.

Images For Landing Users

Images and infographics, like videos, work as a density breaker of your content which is read by your users. 

These provide a connection to the traffic of your landing page with your content and also provide directional elements for your page when you want your user to point them towards a particular paragraph or forms.

The famous saying of: “Every picture tells a story”, also applies to your website’s landing page design which attributes describe a good landing page experience as it points in the direction of the important content on your page and provide a connection with the users

For example, look at the picture given below, you can see the form is “pointed at” by the animated boy picture in the landing page.

Leads are a lot more achievable if your page design can inspire an engaging response from your users, and what better method to accomplish so than using visuals and infographics.

For example, in the image above, the youngster pointing his finger at the form serves as an attention grabber for on-page traffic. It leads traffic to the ‘form filling’ station.

Similarly, you may use such pictures, such as memes, gifs, and infographics, to draw user’s attention to your landing page elements and could even make your content browsing more engaging for them.

It’s now up to you to decide how to employ photos for landing page SEO as an attention grabber or to generate specific reactions within the narrative for the leads.

Right Proportions Of Elements

The landing Page elements within your website such as Headlines, CTA, images, videos, etc are there to appeal to your users and so the proportions must also be unique when you are trying to engage your users.

Now, the conflict of visuals vs content is a major throwback that can either increase your subscriber or decrease them.

That is if too many visuals are present within your website but very little content to support it, your user may get the idea that there is no research conducted or your site has lack of knowledge

And, similarly, too much content with very few visuals can cause your customers to leave your site because of heaviness of content and eventual dullness.

Below are examples of landing page examples in which you can see the right amount of space used to give information and provide visuals without any of them clambering over each other.

The proportion used in this picture is compelling to users with the right amount of white space and CTAs available.

 Now, those were just two landing elements taken into consideration, visuals v/s content let’s check out some other elements from the picture below.

1)  Headlines and Content

2) Visuals (Images and Videos)

3) CTA button

4)  Limited white space and navigation options

5) Form

6) Quotes and facts about your business

7) Closing argument to offer & deals

These are some of the elements in your landing page design that can improve landing page conversion rate by applying them in the right proportion.

Working Forms 

Forms are an integral part of your landing page that binds your business’ connection with your users as they provide their information (such as emails) within them.

Now, of course, you need this information from your user to reach out to them later or just to send them an offer through emails and such.

But if this landing page element is poorly designed then that can cost you your leads, presented below is a  form which has a clear message that directs the user to put right information and an unclear message that does not help much.

Your user definitely chooses the option that resolves his/her problem. Therefore, the  formation of a form depends on the goal you want to achieve from it as well as your user’s stage.

The goals for your landing page element, the forms, could be for collecting emails, trying for leads, initiating offer details, giving free webinar, free book chapters and even some of the product details that they viewed but couldn’t finish the details and buying session.

Now, you have to understand that your leads can be at any stages that are given below when they are looking into your business:

1) Customers are new and want to explore.

2) Customers are interested but want to have reassurance.

3) Customer is ready to buy 

4) Customers are still checking out their options

So, according to these stages, the options for forms you have are:  Email catchers, reassurance forms, multi-step forms and urgent, time-bound offer forms.

Using the form with the right features such as less amount of information asked for, using a directional image to highlight it’s presence or line-of-sight image to point out your form and a clear intent or hefty offer that they couldn’t resist.

Performing a goal orientation of your form, the check on the stage at which your customers are and implementing right features on it creates your landing page optimized form and helps in conversion of leads into subscribers and then, loyal customers.

Mobile Optimized Landing Page Design

Landing Page design of your website is the key feature that should be optimized

as per the requirement of your users and more than 50% of the internet population uses mobiles, it is important for your website to be optimized accordingly.

Look at the statistic given below, here, the usage of mobile to pursue the internet has increased since 2011 and has been increasing since then. 

In order to reach the targeted population the mobile optimization, which attributes describe a good landing page experience for the users at a global level, is very crucial because, ofcourse, you want to be where your leads are. Right?.

Mobile optimization is a landing page vs website feature that should be implemented on both as this is one of the most requisite landing page ideas for the present digital peak.

You can see the differences in the picture given below where the difference of content can be seen within your website and mobile optimized website.

As you can see this eCommerce site has sent a URL to its user for viewing their product and services within a message.

Now, this message can be opened in two ways: firstly, in an mobile optimized environment where a proper offer is inducted to clear the intention and CTAs are given to proceed further.

And secondly, in your website optimized environment where neither a CTA nor an offer is placed confusing the user with the title image of “SALE”.

Now, perhaps the difference could be seen such as the presence of a call-to-action button, optimal view of image, right proportion of whitespace and clear direction of the page.

Therefore, using a mobile optimized landing page design is as important as using the forms in your website because this awares your user

Responsive Navigation

Landing page ideas for optimization is to have a responsive and relevant model within your page which, also, includes proper and directional navigation on your optimized landing page.

Navigation may seem easy, you would think it is just to put a button at the top, within a form or even a CTA button to show your intention.

Let’s check out an example of a landing page navigation that uses different navigable buttons as seen in the picture below.

Your user needs an easy way to navigate your website, even through your landing page, so providing them with options to explore your website keeps them engaged.

Look at another picture of the landing page design, this provides an optional queue to your users keeping them engaged with the headline, CTAs and other places within your website that your user can use through these navigation buttons.

Observing this landing page design, you can see how the proportions of the landing page elements complement each other, even the navigation tools are provided in-sight of the page when a user opens it. 

“Tour”, “Upgrade”, “Help” and “Explore” are the navigation tools in the picture of this landing page and work as a choice for your visitor whether he/ she wants to work the landing page or would rather explore your website.

So, marketers such as yourself can use navigation links on landing pages to achieve goals other than the immediate goal of the landing page, i.e., to increase conversion rates in case of a new user that wants to explore your website first.

Consider this case where your visitor wants to check out your social media links while they’re on the landing page. Now, as they are pretty new to your website you can effectively take the opportunity of making them a subscriber and by providing them with a social media navigation tool.

You have basically boosted your site’s social out that depends on the type of user you are dealing with. 

Short and Precise Content

Content is “your knight in shining armour” when it comes to the engagements of your user on the landing page.

You would think, why would content be needed on a landing page?

Well, because it advertises your products and services’ features that you want to market.

The content includes headlines, CTAs, offers and the linked content featuring your products. It is very important that your content is short, precise, and interesting.

 Now, to attain this level of attention from your user, the content on your landing page and linked it, should have:

1) Easily readable to users. Keep in check the usage of keywords in h1, h2 and other subcategories which can be seen in the picture below.

The main motive of doing this is to catch the eyes of the user on the call-to-action words and make their own judgement to stay and explore.

2) The content must have important and to-the-point information, using bullets and numbering can help immensely.

Using heavy content can easily distract your user from the task at hand, so be careful about how much content you are using within the landing page. So, your content should be able to get your point across to the user with minimal words.

For example look at the amount of content within the landing page given below

You can find more points to enhance your landing page content through theTips To Build A Landing Page That Actually Converts

Testimonials & Reviews From Customers

Testimonials develop trustworthiness of your brands and work as a secret weapon to improve conversions which is why they are widely used by marketers 

customers spend 31% more time on the pages which have great customer reviews.

The testimonial above is from our website’s landing page. Similar to these, the User Generated Content(UGC) used in your landing page should be relevant to the pain point of the users who explore your landing page.

Now, this drives more traffic and is a technique used by varied SEOs for improving the landing page design and simultaneously improving landing page conversion rates of your website.

Using the testimonials from your previous customers which attributes describe a good landing page experience for them, promotes your business extensively while equally keeping the trustworthiness of your customers within your brand.

BONUS: Best Free Landing Page Builder (Softwares)

The landing page is an artistic technology that needs proper equipment to build it. Here are some of the best free landing page builders for you to find on the internet this year:

1) Wix (businesses and individual, 30+ free designs)

2) Ucraft (small business, social media creators and even bloggers)

3) Launchrock (Startups and Creators)

4) Usmo (startups and small business, question-based landing page designs) 

These are some landing page builders that are free and help you build an interactive and professional landing page design. You can even directly use an already available design, especially on the builder, Wix.

Conclusion

From the question of ‘what is a landing page’ to ‘how to improve your landing Page’s conversion rate’, the basic problem that you face is the optimization of your landing page design for your users.

The clarity of intent within your landing page design as well as the landing page best practices that you applied to optimize your landing page and improve landing page conversion rates.

Now, you have all the points to optimize your landing page for your business, let’s get started working on some of them by using the free landing page builders that I provided in a Bonus point.

For more marketing tips and services, you can schedule a free-of-cost 30-Minute Strategy session with our experts. In this call, our experts would discuss your business and provide you with the free strategies that you can use to boost your sales and revenue.