Quick and Dirty Landing Page Best Practices Guide
The key to designing a landing page is optimizing it for conversions. While there is no set formula that works for every company every time, there are some guidelines that can help get you going. The most important thing to do is get your landing page up there and start A/B testing different elements. I've come up with a quick and dirty landing page best practices guide to help get you started.
The two areas you need to focus on when considering landing page best practices are the layout and the language.
Design: Keep the page easy to digest visually.
Use bullets,
Keep all important content above the fold.
Include an engaging photo.
Have a headline and a sub-headline.
Make the headline clearly display the benefit (and include keyword.)
Experiment with using directional cues- aka arrows, people looking at the download button.
Use contrasting colors. Your download button should stand out.
Keep the form as short as possible- only ask for the information that you absolutely need.
Use video to quickly explain what’s in the ebook or something about how the ebook pertains to your product.
Language: Use as few words as possible and get to the point.
Be succinct! Do you absolutely NEED every word that's on your landing page? Every word should be contributing to the objective of your landing page.
Use the same language in the headline (or sub headline) as you use above the form and for the “DOWNLOAD” button, for example “Download” or “Get your copy” “Sign up” etc. Don’t use the word “submit.”
Explain how downloading the ebook is going to affect the bottom line and keep the message simple and focused.
Add testimonials with photos of people if possible. This can be at the bottom of the page - below the fold. “This ebook changed my life and saved me millions of dollars!”
Optimize each page for SEO. Using a helpful tool like Yoast (if you have a Wordpress blog) is a great solution.
Once you have applied some of these landing page best practices to your page, get it up there! HOWEVER, you're not done! It is important to make sure that you have a good analytics system in place so that you can track the page performance. To get a higher conversion rate, change one thing at a time and compare. Over time, you can get get that conversion number up!
PRO TIP: A good average landing page conversion rate is 20%- as in 20% of your landing page traffic is converting.
