You’ve probably experienced this before: You spend so much time and money creating an amazing piece of content. Your email opens and click-through rates are stellar, but your buyers aren’t engaging with your newest creation. You look at your documented goals, and your form fill-rates and content downloads are nowhere near where they’re supposed to be. Where did you go wrong?
Bland landing-page design and blah messaging are the most likely culprits.
Landing pages are your key touchpoint for capturing buyer attention and driving action. They deserve the same attention you give to making your content engaging. If your landing pages don’t excite your buyers, they’ll never make it to your content.
Spice up your landing pages to increase your conversion rates. Here are three ideas to add some zest to your current strategies:
#1: Embrace interactivity.
Adding interactivity to your landing pages is a great way to capture attention, and it will become increasingly important moving forward. HubSpot’s Ginny Soskey shows a great example in her blog post about how Bills.com uses three questions about debt — one per window — that lead visitors to a simple form. It begins with a sliding bar graph so visitors can select their level of debt. The pay-off is a personalized response on how to eliminate debt.
Soskey follows with another example from Trulia that asks for an address in exchange for an estimate of a home’s value. But that’s just the start. The pages that follow collect more detailed information about the home to provide a personalized report.
How about offering motion graphics, live chat or a pop-up? Or what about the one type of interactive content that deserves a discussion all its own: video? These additions will pique buyer interest and inspire them to share more information than they would otherwise.
#2: Add video.
Including video on a landing page can increase conversion up to 80%, according to Unbounce. Your visitors are also more likely to watch a video than read something — thanks to our ever-shortening attention spans. Forbes reports that nearly six in 10 executives would rather watch a video than read text. And a Wistia study shows that 80% of people will watch a video for up to 30 seconds. SEO also figures in; Ammari cites Forrester research showing that video will increase the chances of being ranked by a factor of 53.
Video can convey your message faster than text. So don’t be afraid to test short video clips on your landing pages.
#3: Rethink page design.
Interactivity and video can ratchet up the heat quotient of your landing pages, but improving your results may just take a simple makeover.
A/B test different images, calls to action (CTA) and layouts to see which landing page designs improve conversion rates the most. The Marketing TechBlog can give you a more exhaustive list of landing page optimization tips, but here are some ideas to get started:
- Add contrast: Design your CTA to stand out from the rest of the page. For example, make it more prominent by placing it on a colored background, along with your form.
- Include testimonials: People trust testimonials from customers and other objective sources.
- Use plenty of white space: Simplicity is always attractive. Make sure you keep the design open and easy on the eye.
- Add color: Colors can trigger emotions and actions. So be cognizant of how your target audience may innately respond to different font or button colors.
- Don’t forget your unique value proposition: If you don’t have something different to offer, you’ll have a hard time persuading people to give up their information.
Itching For Some More Best Practices?
If you’ve implemented some (or all!) of the tips we provided above, here are a few more best practices you can deploy to really ramp up landing page conversion rates.
- Keep your form “above the fold” but allow site visitors to scroll through the rest of the landing page content. This is an optimal experience for buyers using their mobile devices to discover and download content.
- Avoid overly staged or cheesy stock images. When you can, incorporate more authentic photography or powerful imagery that resonates with your buyers in an emotional way.
- Typically, we encourage marketers to keep their landing page copy short and sweet. However, there are times when having more content makes sense, especially if you include a lot of information that supports the value of your offer. Just make sure the most important elements are displayed first and that the form is always front and center.
Be creative. Dare to do things differently. Pepper your landing pages with some of these spicy ideas and watch the conversion rates heat up.
Download The Real-Time, Buyer-Focused Content Marketing Handbook to learn how you can rethink your promotional efforts to engage your target audience.
