What Makes a Successful Landing Page? (Part 1 — Basic Landing Page Structure)
“Never. Start. A. Marketing. Campaign. Without. A. Dedicated. Landing. Page” — Oli Gardner, Unbounce
There are five must-have core characteristics on a landing page. These characteristics are broken down below:
1. Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Your landing page should detail what is unique about your product, or what it is you’re offering. This can be conveyed through the following elements on your page:
- The main headline
- A supporting headline
- A reinforcement statement
- A closing argument
2. Imagery (static or video)
This should directly relate to the proposition but it shouldn’t dominate the page so much that it distracts from the proposition or call to action*
*unless of course your proposition details are contained within a video.
3. The benefits of your offer/product
This can be done with a conventional bulleted list to summarise the benefits or the benefits and features could be described in detail using a combination of imagery and text, flowing down the page, or even a short video.
4. Social Proof — The positive influence that’s generated when people find out that ‘everybody’s doing it’
Building social proof into your offer in the form of testimonials, reviews or trust seals, is a great way to generate interest, increase credibility and drive more conversions. Some examples of social proof are:
Registrant count: If you are running a webinar, list the number of registrants to encourage a herd mentality (if that many people are going, it must be good). Note: only start listing the number when it gets to an impressive count otherwise people might be discouraged from attending.
Download count: Similarly to registrant count, show how many people have downloaded your ebook or white-paper to encourage more downloads
Share count: Showing the social share numbers shows how many people find your content valuable enough to tell others about it. The best place to put this is on your confirmation page when they’ve already expressed interest.
Anti-spam statement: Put a simple statement next to the email form field or underneath the form, that says you won’t spam them. Ever.
Testimonials: Customer testimonials show that others have made the effort to report back on the quality of your content/work. The best kind are video testimonials, followed by written ones with a photo and official title. Never use a fake testimonial!
Customer logos: If you have an impressive client list, take advantage of this by prominently showing them on your page, but always be sure to seek permission first, just in-case there’s statement on line 327 of an NDA saying you can’t share the fact you’ve worked with a particular client
Media mentions: You’ve seen these before. It’s the list of logos from CNN, NBC, FOX News, TechCrunch etc. If you’ve been lucky enough to have been mentioned in big publications or on TV, make sure to show off.
Security badges: If you’re asking for sensitive data, include these to show that you are using security best practices, such as a secure server. Examples would be McAfee or Symantec.
Content previews: Leverage people’s desire for “Try before you buy” by including a preview of your content such as a chapter of your ebook, for example, Amazon has perfected this with their “Look Inside” concept.
Past content examples: If you are asking someone to sign up for a newsletter, show them an archived example so they know what they’re signing up for.
5. Call-To-Action
The call to action could be a sign-up, link to purchase a product (or purchase a product directly), add a product to basket, request a demo or request a call back. The call to action could also be getting your audience to complete a form and submit it. The form could be to sign up for a newsletter, request a demo/call-back or to download a white-paper.
It’s very important to make sure that your CTA copy tells the visitor what the CTA is going to do or where it’s going to go as descriptively as possible — for example instead of a generic CTA like “Learn more” or “Find out more”, if the CTA is going to take them to an eBook or a survey use something like “Read the eBook now” or “Take the survey today”. Another thing to be aware of is that the chance of conversion will increase if you use the words my/your in the CTA — for example, on a book/dvd launch, instead of saying “Reserve a copy”, say or “Reserve my copy today”. Little tweaks like this make it a bit more personal and more inviting.
You should include just one prominent call to action which should link through to any of the above as multiple CTAs could be a possible distraction from the main CTA.
In part 2 of this series, I’ll be talking about landing page UX.
