How I Increased Landing Page Conversions
Tags: Growth Marketing, Marketing, Conversion Optimization, Web Design, Digital Marketing

Landing pages are usually standalone pages on your website who’s only purpose in life is to grab someone’s contact information. Imagine a landing page is the person who’s standing outside your grocery store trying to collect your information. They are the ones with the clipboard and some enticing opening line.

Don’t let them change the color of the park bench! Sign this petition!

Companies of all shapes and sizes should be utilizing landing pages.

Why?

Because that’s how you get leads.

Unless you’re into buying leads but you really shouldn’t do that. But hey whatever works for you.

I digress.

There a few types of landing pages out there. But I’m here to tell you what’s worked for me when creating lead generation landing pages. These landing pages aim to acquire a lead’s contact information. Your landing page(s) should look different than your home page, about page, product page, etc. It shouldn’t be overly sales focused or pushy. It should have one objective in mind: get the conversion.

Let’s go. Liz believes in you.

Before we start let’s think about these questions:

What are you offering? Why should the user want to give you their contact information? What are the benefits of said offer? Is it worth giving you their precious email? Is the offer time-sensitive? Can you motivate them to act now instead of coming back later (or not at all)? What’s the path to get the offer? Are you using a form? Is the page user-friendly enough that the lead will convert without getting lost in the page?

Once you’ve answered those questions and written the answers down somewhere let’s begin…

No Nav Bars or Footers

Don’t give your user anything to click/navigate to other then the button that submits their information. Your landing page should be clean and distraction-free — almost like the easy mode on a phone. There shouldn’t be any other calls-to-action other than the one that converts them.

Landing page for Digital Ocean. So fresh and so clean clean.

Digital Ocean does this well. The only button I can click on this landing page is the one that signs me up and gives them my contact information. I mean, okay, technically they have Log In as a link but that’s just a formality more than anything. The person who wants to sign up for an account isn’t going to magically have pre-existing login credentials. Log In doesn’t distract from the conversion.

Digital Ocean’s landing page is a perfect example. It doesn’t have a navigation bar or footer to distract them. The path to convert is clear.

Make it Clean

The main goal of your landing page should be to make it as easy as humanly possible for a visitor to convert. Don’t clutter the page with side bars, amazing offers, heavy text or pop-ups. Keep it to the point.

Invision’s design is clean and well-organized. Snaps all around.

Invision’s landing page for their demo is pretty clean. The information you need is right there and there is only one point of action to take — sign up for a demo. They decided to add a “Watch Video” experience and the only reason it isn’t hindering is that it opens in lightbox so the visitor never actually clicks off the page.

If your landing page is easy to navigate you have a higher chance of a lead converting.

Use An Informative Header So They Know What You’re Offering

If your landing page is just a product screenshot or the cover of your eBook and a form then I must ask you….WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

That landing page tells me nothing. I want an enticing header that tells me about the offer. If you’re offering me an eBook that is going to help make me the leader of all things DevOps then tell me that.

Splunk gets it. They have the title of their eBook as the header. It’s got incredible marketing language. I mean The Essential Guide?? I must have this now.

Now let’s look at Docuware.

Their header is telling me what they are offering. Although it’s a bit vague. It’s enough to get me to read the body paragraph. The page itself is way too long and basically a home page but the top half has some points worth saving.

Tell Me More

If you’re trying to get me to download a whitepaper, eBook or some piece of collateral then tell me all the great things I’m going to learn when I download this document. If you’re trying to get me to sign up for a demo then tell me what is so fantastic about your product or what I’ll see in the demo. Splunk did this well in the above screenshot.

Domo utilizes green check marks. How nice.

I recommend no more than two paragraphs or one paragraph and some bulleted points about the offer. Keep them short and to the point. Domo did this well. They even bolded keywords for us. If you’re going to try this method please don’t get too crazy with the bolding. You don’t want to look like a Word document from the early 2000s.

Never forget.

Forms Should Be Concise

Each company will have varying degrees of what they want on their gated forms. Some just need the email but a business email, phone number, job title, and company size are what sales reps dream about. So work with your team and see what makes sense for your demographic. Keep in mind your personas. Do they want to fill out huge forms?

I actually made this meme. Go me.

I suggest only asking for the information YOU absolutely need. Most B2B companies ask for way too much information and end up losing the visitor.

Once you’ve sorted out what information you want on your forms. Create the form using a lot of whitespace. Don’t crowd the form fields. Make it easy to jump between lines.

When you can, use radio buttons or dropdown menus so the visitor doesn’t have to think too hard when filling it out. You don’t want to complicate the form. The easier the form is to complete, the better.

ServiceNow asks for way too much information. Maybe try using Smart Forms guys?

Most B2B companies use drop downs for job titles and departments. Everyone else usually uses drop downs for State and Country. If you can make the form easier to fill out then do it. Here are some other tips on making your form magical.

Build Trust

People want to feel like they can trust you and they’re part of something that other people already like and trust. You can achieve this trust by including logos of your current customers or by adding customer testimonials to the landing page.

If you’re going to include logos of your customers then make sure they are of high-quality, in uniform and not overly busy. They shouldn’t take up the page. Some companies prefer to just place logos on the page with no rhyme or reason whereas others like to have some sort of marketing language to go with them. If it were me, I’d go with the latter. If you can drive home your brand and messaging then why not? If it is genuine I say do it.

CrazyEgg’s customer logs are all (almost) the same size and not overly powering.

Including a customer quote on your landing page can help build trust or add what we in the biz like to call “social proof” but again use it sparingly. If it’s going to clutter the page then don’t bother. If the quote seems too good to be true or it sounds like someone in the PR department wrote it then don’t use it.

There are arguments for and against adding customer quotes to your landing pages. I vote that you A/B test both scenarios and see which works best for you.

Use Powerful Call-To-Action Buttons

Once they get to the end of the form there should be a strong action statement in your call-to-action. After all, it is called a call-to-action for a reason.

SproutSocial used a button that is on brand.

Be creative. Don’t have the CTA button just say “Submit” or “Send” — this button is another place you can add some flavor and show what your brand is about. It might take some time to see what is effective. A/B test different button colors (that make sense with your brand’s look and feel) and looks. Effective call-to-action button design could easily be a whole other post. But UserTesting has one that could help you in the meantime.

Test out different language in the buttons to see what converts better. Here is some effective CTA language that’s worked for me in the past:

Download Now

Get a Demo

Get Started

Get the PDF

Get eBook

View Case Study (but only if it opens in a new window and it is being tracked)

Talk to Us

Schedule Your Demo

Speak to an Expert

Let’s Do This (if your brand voice fits this style of language)

You know better than me what kind of language and design works for your company so take all of these tips into consideration when configuring your landing page. Don’t do anything off-brand or something that would trigger a negative experience for your visitors.

Targeted Landing Pages

A landing page by definition is unique so don’t use the same one over and over again for different personas.

If you’re going to run a campaign targeted for web developers don’t use the same landing page or messaging you would for the person who is in charge of accounting.

He’s not in charge of accounting. He’s in charge of p(up)ersonal.

Create a landing page that is unique and provides a distinct offer that fits the persona you are targeting. You should create multiple landing pages for each persona and each persona’s offer. The web developer’s campaign should have a different landing page for their demo and the collateral you want them to download– same persona but different offers. If that doesn’t make sense I can explain in more detail.

Take the time to craft one-of-kind landing pages per campaign, per persona, per offer and if applicable, per medium (eBook, whitepaper, demo, etc).

Here’s how I approach it. Spreadsheets are your friend.

Totally made up information but you get the idea right?

Some Other Things to Consider:

Make sure the landing page is responsive and you’ve accounted for mobile-friendly forms with fewer field options.

Always tailor the landing page for AdWords or PPC campaigns. Keep it targeted. You only have a few seconds to make an impression from a Google click.

Always test and document your efforts.

In order to create a lead generation landing page that actually generates leads you need to do some research on your personas. You need to figure out what kind of offers they want.

Kel would love a landing page that offered free orange soda for life.

After you’ve done your research and taken careful notes, try implementing what I’ve recommended. Test and see what works for your company. You might find that you don’t have enough customer logos yet so customer quotes are your thing. Or that a bright blue button on a muted landing page is really effective at driving conversions.

Not trying to sound like your parents but you don’t know until you try.

Why yes I did use Amy Poehler again. She’s amazing.

Whatever works for your brand, do it. Make sure you test and document and don’t forget to track your landing page urls please. It’ll make your job a lot easier.

Good luck. You can do it.

_____________________________________________________ A

I’m Allyssa. I am a hybrid designer who likes to front-end code, who loves marketing ops and marketing automation, growth hacking and content marketing. You can find me on Twitter usually tweeting about sports, music and whatever podcast I’m listening to. If you want to chat over email you can jet over to my website to send me a message.

You can view my portfolio over here or over at Behance.