Your landing page is the culmination of all the hard work and expenses that you put into your extensive digital marketing campaigns. It’s the moment of truth that can make or break all your marketing efforts as getting visitors is only half the battle. Too many businesses focus on the ways they can point the potential customers in the right direction, but when it comes to converting them into leads, they fall short.

Landing page optimization is half art half science. There are certain true-and-tested methods of crafting a compelling landing page that we are going to discuss in detail in this post, but ultimately, the effectiveness of your landing page comes down to the depth of your understanding of your business and its various facets. If you have a good grasp of the core aspects such as your target markets, competitive advantages, and strengths and weaknesses, then all that will be left is how you can articulate your offers in a way that creates the most impact. To make sure that we are on the same boat, let’s quickly review what a landing page is and what purpose does it serve.

What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a web page—often on a company’s website—that serves as a convergence point of all the traffic you drive from your digital marketing and advertising campaigns. It’s designed for a specific audience with the goal to convert them into leads or sales for specific product or services offerings.

Landing pages differ from other pages on a website in that they are specifically optimized to get that desired conversion and all of the elements on the page from the images and graphics to the copy and descriptions are deliberately designed and laid out to encourage the potential customer to take the intended action.

A Clear and Easy to Understand Headline

Upon landing on a page, the first thing that users evaluate is whether or not they have come to the right place. As an extension of your marketing and advertising messages, your landing page must include a clear and easy-to-understand headline at the top to reassure the visitors they are at the right place and explain what is being offered.

In order to be effective, the headline should be a value proposition that clearly and concisely articulates how the customers are going to benefit from your products or services. To minimize the bounce rate, your headline must fulfill the promises you have made throughout your marketing and traffic funnel as any misalignment may disappoint the visitor and cause them to leave. For example, if you’re running a student blog, make sure to write headlines that will appeal to students, and not just the average population.

A Specific Call-to-Action

A well-designed landing page is explicit and upfront about the action the visitors should take. The call-to-action is the central element of the landing page and everything else is designed around it. CTA is often implemented as a button that makes the conversion happen and leads the user down the desired path—whether to a page with a form to collect contact information or a product page that accepts orders.

It’s recommended that your landing page has at least two CTA buttons, one above the fold which is the top section of your page that’s visible immediately without the need for scrolling, and one at the bottom of the page after all the information has been presented. The reason for this is that some visitors are ready to move forward with your CTA once they have landed on the page and there should be an option that lets them do that. The other CTA button is for other visitors that need more information to make the decision. Be careful about implementing more CTAs as repeatedly telling the prospects what to do can yield the opposite effect.

Social Proof

We human beings are social creatures. Our perception of a phenomenon is heavily influenced by how others perceive it and behave in relation to it. If a product or service is used and praised by many, you are more likely to trust that it will be useful for you as well, and therefore, you are more likely to try it.

By incorporating social proof in your landing page, you substantiate your claims. You provide evidence about how what you offer has helped others solve their problems. This is best done by showcasing testimonials or case studies. Video is usually the best format for this purpose as it is the most engaging type of content but you can also use concise text-based testimonials. Testimonials should be a few sentences long and they should tell the story of where they were before they found your solution and how your solution helped their situation and what their results look like.

Last but not least, a landing page should be free of fillers, fluff, and distraction. It should contain one message, one core offer, and one call-to-action. A landing page is no place for things like the history of your company or your other products or services. Many businesses remove menus and navigation bars from their landing pages and incorporate no external link to prevent any sort of distraction and keep the visitors’ focus just on what’s being offered.