How to Create High Converting Landing Pages that Take Off in 2020

What are landing pages?

Landing pages are the pages of a website that are reached ‘post-click.’ They are primarily associated with paid advertising campaigns (PPC) and are the first page a visitor will see after clicking on an online ad.

In this article we’ll look at the design, anatomy and psychology of the landing page. We’ll also share 10 incredible optimisation tips for turbo-charging your success.

The landing page is designed and set up to follow through on the intent of the searcher who has clicked on an ad.

The content and context of a landing page has to quickly connect and relate to the visitor.

A well-designed page will understand the motivations of its audience by addressing their needs, desires and fears. In other words, the reasons why they have arrived at the page!

Landing Page Design for Success

Landing pages should have a business goal. It needs to identify with and speak to the intended target audience. This has added importance as it is likely to be the final ‘pre-action’ page at the end of a paid-for campaign.

Your target audience wants to solve a problem, further their knowledge or be entertained.

Therefore, a landing page has to narrow in on the searcher’s intent and focus on delivering on the ad-copy promise.

Problem – Agitation – Solution (PSA):

The purchase process is highly emotional: avoiding or resolving pain is often a more powerful motivator than gaining pleasure and can be an influential psychological factor in the buying process.

Identify a problem and provide a solution – use emotive copy that addresses pain points and identifies with the emotion that is driving a sale or further action.

The Anatomy of the Landing Page

The actual building blocks of a landing page have evolved greatly over the years. Simplicity will always be important but there are certain factors that have also been shown to influence the psychology of the decision making process.

Unbounce have a fantastic landing page example:

Headline: Often the most powerful part of your landing page. Aim for a captivating, benefit-based headlines. Identify a pain point and ask a question. If you can ask a question that can immediately be answered with a resounding ‘yes!” then that’s perfect.

Intro and Sales Copy: Deliver personalised, value-orientated copy. Highlight features and benefits that relate to the emotion of an action or purchase.

Pricing and Justification: If you are selling a product or service, make sure to place emphasis on value and the idea of saving money.

Always try to frame a purchase as an investment in the solution – never as a cost!

Data-gathering form: This is the important part of the page that will be converting leads and visitors. Use simple, user friendly opt-in forms with non-intrusive, minimal data capture. Ensure your GDPR compliance too!

Testimonials and Social Proof: Be proud to showcase positive product or service reviews. Peer reviews can be highly persuasive and influential.

Call to Action (CTA): If your potential customer has got to this point – tell them EXACTLY what you want them to do next. Highlight the step you want your visitor to take to facilitate the business goal of the landing page. A contrasting colour for the call-to-action button will help it to stand out and get noticed.

Landing Pages Optimisation Tips

Any type of marketing and promotion of your business or services should be optimised for success. A landing page can be charged up with obvious and not so obvious conversion-rate optimisation (CRO) methods.

Here are 10 powerful ways to increase your conversions:

Relevant visuals: A smiling face image ‘J’ has been shown to increase the conversion rate of landing pages. The psychology of selling has a large association with happiness and positivity.
MIMO: Creating a sense of urgency and ‘miss it or miss out’ effect. A countdown timer creates this sense of urgency and text such as ‘limited spaces available’ and ‘only 6 remaining’ are strong psychological nudges.
Make a point of a tick: Bullet points help to capture the eye and focus attention. Making a bullet point into a tick increases this even further.
Are you talking to me? Make it personal by directing your content at your ideal customer. This is where the creation of customer personas can be massively beneficial. Using personal and possessive pronouns like ‘you’ and ‘your’ can also create psychological connections with your audience.
CTA Power Words: Use simple and effective words in your calls to action with words and phrases such as ‘shop’, ‘save’, ‘free’ or ‘book now’. Don’t leave a potential customer guessing what’s going to happen next.
Moving Pictures: Depending on the purpose of your landing page, media content like video can be a highly effective conversion tool. It can be useful for big ticket items and high value service offerings. Accurate information can remove doubt and increases purchase confidence.
Aligning your Message: Align your ad-copy and design with the landing page. This helps create a seamless customer experience and maintains brand consistency.
Get to the point! Be specific not generic. There is even less time (and space) than normal to get the message right. Have a single, primary focus and avoid the paradox of choice. It’s unlikely a visitor will venture beyond this single page!
Give stuff away: Giving away valuable and informative content and information can be an effective way of gaining the trust of a potential customer. An email address in return for a quality FREE gift helps build a marketing database that can be re-targeted in the future.
The Man from Del Monte: If you can get your customers to say a resounding “yes!” (with either their inside or outside voice!) then the deal is pretty much done. Even if you’re not selling oranges to a multi-billion dollar global brand the principles remain the same. Ask a question that encourages a ‘yes’ response!

If you’re too young to understand that clever Del Monte reference…

Landing Page Analysis

A/B testing is pretty straightforward with landing pages. As they have little long-term SEO value it’s perfectly fine to tweak them as you experiment.

You could even test more than one at exactly the same time on the same domain.

Experiment, analyse, learn, capture, convert

Well-designed landing pages can be strong and consistent sales drivers for your business.

The flexibility they offer means you can quickly adapt to the ever-changing trends and needs of your customers.

Don’t be afraid to experiment and get it wrong until you get it right.