You’ve paid for advertising, done online targeting, written persuasive copy, and generated traffic to your website, but the number of leads is not what you expected. Conversions are low. Sales are slow. The ad campaign looks great on paper, yet it isn’t working.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!In most cases, the problem is not with the ad itself; it lies in what happens after the visitor clicks.
Landing pages are the hero or villain in your digital marketing campaigns. A landing page is a single point in time where a visitor’s interest can either convert to taking action or disappear. An excellent landing page can exponentially increase the return on every dollar or rupee, spent generating traffic to your site. A poor landing page can waste all those dollars or rupees.
In this guide, you will learn how landing pages affect lead generation and sales, what differentiates higher converting landing pages from average landing pages, and what you can do right now to create landing pages that produce results consistently.
What Is a Landing Page, and Why Does It Deserve Its Own Strategy?
A landing page is an individual webpage that is created for the sole purpose of convincing the visitor to complete an action from the landing page. An action could be anything from filling out a contact form to using the product as part of a free trial, to downloading a free guide, to booking a demo, to purchasing the product.
The main difference between a homepage and a landing page is that the homepage is designed to accommodate multiple audiences, be linked to several places, and have many options to navigate from. A landing page is only one page and is designed only for one visitor type, requiring only one need or intention, and forcing them to complete just one goal of conversion.
This evident difference between the two pages is crucial. Research can help show that when someone uses paid traffic to get to a homepage versus a dedicated landing page, their conversion rates are significantly lower. When a visitor clicks on an ad for a free 14-day trial of project management software and ends up on a generic homepage with many product features displayed, blog entries, and numerous places to navigate, the cognitive dissonance between the two creates confusion, and when visitors are confused, they will abandon an action.
A landing page removes that “friction” for visitors. It continues the discussion that the ad began, provides a reality check by meeting the promise of the ad, and makes it clear and simple for visitors to know how to proceed to the next step.
The Direct Link Between Landing Pages and Lead Generation
Lead generation involves capturing user intent at the exact moment it happens and then utilizing landing pages to convert that interest into actions such as submitting forms or signing up for services.
A compelling headline grabs the user’s attention by expressing how they will benefit from your product or service and should reassure them that they are on the correct webpage. A much higher number of users will convert if your headline is specific to what they want and relevant to what they are looking for.
Good form design is critical to converting your users. The fewer fields that are on the form, the less friction there will be when trying to get early-stage leads. If you ask only for the most essential pieces of information, your likelihood of users completing the form will increase dramatically.
Using social proof/trust signals such as testimonials, reviews, and guarantees creates credibility and provides potential users with information about the specific results you have created and how real users have benefited from taking action.
The call to action (CTA) is the most important element of the page to drive conversions. The clearer and more benefit-based phrases, such as “Get My Free Guide,” will result in higher conversion rates compared to phrases like “Submit.” Placing the CTA in a visible location and making it compelling to the user will increase the chances of them taking the next step.
How Landing Pages Drive Sales Performance
Landing pages play a role in both generating leads and selling products, although they do this at different times in the sales funnel.
For e-commerce businesses or those that require direct-response selling, the landing page is typically the last step a visitor takes before making a purchase. The ability of the landing page to overcome any objections (from the visitor), build desire for the product being sold, and create a sense of urgency will directly relate to how much revenue the company will generate from this landing page. On the other hand, for a B2B company or one selling high-dollar items, landing pages are generally utilized for capturing leads who will then go through a lead-nurturing process; however, the overall quality and appropriateness of those leads will be completely determined by how well the landing page qualifies and pre-sells the visitor before they become a lead.
Message Match and Purchase Intent
Your landing page should contain the same message if you are using an ad and your email. If you are providing a specific offer on an advertisement, the user expects to see the same offer on the landing page. If there is a mismatch of messages between the ad or email and the landing page, the users become confused and lose trust, resulting in an increased number of people dropping off from the landing page.
Creating Urgency and Scarcity
Creating a real sense of urgency, such as a limited-time offer or limiting the number of seats available for an event, will compel users to take action sooner rather than later. It’s imperative to create a true and ethical sense of urgency because if you mislead your potential customers, you risk damaging your credibility and eroding user trust.
Page Speed and Mobile Optimized Page Experience
Fast page loading times are critical to conversions. Even the smallest amount of delay (1-2 seconds) can create an unsatisfactory experience for users and cause users to bounce from your page. Since a large percentage of users will be browsing via mobile devices, landing pages should be mobile responsive and easy to navigate, and also optimized to allow users to take quick actions such as filling out forms and clicking on calls-to-action.
The Role of A/B Testing in Landing Page Optimisation
When you launch your landing page, you’re beginning a long journey toward creating an optimal page. This journey consists of both systematic/intentional testing and iterations over time, until you find the combination of elements that produces consistently high-converting pages.
A/B testing (testing two different versions of a page with segments of traffic to see how they perform compared to one another) is the best way to improve the performance of a landing page. You can A/B test virtually anything related to a landing page; common examples include testing the layout of the form, the colour and copy of the call to action, the hero image, how the value proposition is formatted, and the placement of testimonials.
A/B testing requires a lot of patience; the longer you test, the more statistically significant your findings will be. Before making any conclusions from the results of a test, you need to have enough traffic for statistical significance, but also avoid testing too many variables at once, as this makes it impossible to determine what changed and why. The best way to A/B test is to start with one meaningful variable and work your way down, based on which variables you believe will have the largest impact, such as the headline and the call to action.
Ultimately, through consistent and ongoing testing, a culture develops in your business that is continually learning from the results of tests and applying these learnings to the next campaign. As each incremental increase in conversion rate shown on the landing page occurs, the return will compound on every subsequent campaign that sends traffic to the landing page.
Common Landing Page Mistakes That Kill Conversions
It is equally as important to know what to stay away from as it is to know what the best way to get something done is.
You Have Too Many Exit Points on Your Landing Page: Navigation menus, footer links, and social media icons provide potential customers with too many ways to exit before completing the conversion. Make sure that all links on your dedicated landing page are either not included or at least minimized and do not lead to actions that would prevent the user from completing the conversion event.
Your Value Proposition is Not Clear, Specific, or Beneficial: If the user does not understand what you are offering and why it is important to them within the first five seconds of arriving on your website, they will leave. The value you provide should be apparent to your users immediately, should be specific, and should emphasise the benefits to the user.
You Do Not Have a Visual Hierarchy: A page with only a long block of text, no visual structure (i.e., no headings), and no white space or images creates cognitive exhaustion on your users. Most users will scan the page before they read it, so you need to design your page so that it rewards the user for scanning it by using clear headings, short paragraphs, bullet points to illustrate key benefits, and strong calls to action.
You Are Not Using the Thank You Page: The thank-you page that is generated after the user submits a form is one of the most misused pieces of lead-generation real estate. Instead of putting a simple “Thanks, we’ll be in touch” message on the thank-you page, you should use this page to help the user understand what to expect after they submit the form, offer a bonus resource, ask the user to share your website or a particular resource through social media, or provide the user with an additional offer.
Measuring Landing Page Performance
The phrase consists of ways to logically track what is going on in the world of internet marketing and how well certain marketing tools work at their jobs to determine if a website will make a return on investment (ROI). Some of the key measurements of success include:
- Conversion rate (percentage of people who complete the desired action);
- Bounce rate (percentage of people who leave the site without doing anything);
- Average time spent on the page.
- Form abandonment rate (percentage of total visitors who fill out forms);
- Revenue per visitor for online stores documenting sales.
Sales pages should also track costs associated with gaining a customer. Tracking these numbers (metrics) tells us if webpages are able to achieve their conversion goals, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the success or failure of the webpage at generating profits.
By utilizing Google Analytics and heat map tools such as Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity, we can gather both quantitative data (what is happening) and qualitative data (what visitors are doing). Combining both types of data will enable us to make more informed decisions when making changes to web pages.
Conclusion
A landing page should be treated as an active sales tool rather than a passive destination, a 24/7 version of the ads. They qualify visitors, build trust, help diminish sales objections, and help the customer perform an action. When designed well and continually optimized, landing pages become one of the highest leveraged assets within your marketing stack.
The difference between a 2% conversion rate and a 6% conversion rate from the same traffic source translates to three times the amount of leads generated from the same amount of ad spend. Due to this compounding effect, elite marketers put a priority on landing page optimisation as an ongoing strategic initiative.
Begin by auditing your current landing page with reference to the principles in this guide. Determine the largest “gap” in performance based on your research done earlier – could be message match, speed of page load, form friction or clarity of call-to-action – and make that adjustment before all else. Finally, test, measure, and repeat until the results meet or exceed expectations.
