Yes, you read that right.
At Znbound, we have experimented with and developed a few tried and true landing page best practices over the years, especially in the B2B SaaS space, that have helped us create some of the most effective landing pages out there and we’re about to let you in on our secret.
Landing pages are one of the most important aspects of any online marketing strategy. After all, if you can’t get people to click through on your website, you’re not going to make any sales!
But what makes a high-converting landing page? And how can you create one for your own business?
It can be tough to know where to start, especially if you’re not familiar with the best practices.
A well-optimized landing page can be the difference between a website visitor bouncing off your page or becoming a valuable lead. In order to convert website visitors into leads, you need to have a clear understanding of both your audience and your offer.
Once you know who you’re talking to and what you want them to do, you can start crafting a landing page or just optimizing an existing one that will help you achieve your goals.
Key Elements of a Landing Page
There are certain elements that all high-converting landing pages have in common.
1. A Compelling Headline
The headline is one of the most important elements of your landing page because it is the first thing that visitors will see. Persuasive language is key when creating an effective headline. After all, you’re trying to convince someone to take a specific action, so you’ll need to use language that will encourage them to do so.
Your headline should be direct, and attention-grabbing. It should also be relevant to your offering. Your headline should be no longer than 10 words and should directly address what you want the user to do.
2. Form
The purpose of a landing page is to persuade the visitor to take a specific action, such as making a purchase or booking a demo which involves them sharing their information with you.
You need a form to make this transfer of information possible.
3. Value Description
The description is an opportunity to elaborate on your headline and give visitors more information about what you have to offer or what they can expect once they have shared their information with you. Use clear and concise bulleted copy to describe your offering.
4. Social Proof
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when people are more likely to take an action if they see that others have taken that same action. You can include social proof on your landing page in the form of testimonials, customer reviews, or other metrics like social media followers/likes/shares.
5. A Call-to-Action (CTA) Button
Your CTA button is perhaps the most important element on your entire landing page because it tells visitors what you want them to do next. Your CTA button should be prominently displayed and easy to find. The text on your CTA button should be clear and direct; for example, “Download Now” or “Request a Demo”.
The road to better conversion
STEP 1- Decide what is important
Creation
In general, your landing page should include but not be limited to the few important elements mentioned in the previous section such as a form, value description, social proof, and a call to action (CTA). One of the most important aspects of creating a successful landing page is to make sure that the information included is relevant and useful for conversion.
That means including only those elements that are likely to lead to a sale or desired action and removing anything that might distract or deter potential customers.
Optimization
If you are optimizing an existing landing page for better conversions, you are already a step ahead. A little help from tools like Google Analytics, Mouseflow, etc. would help you identify what is working on the page and what is not allowing you to make changes to improve your conversion rate.
They can show you where people are clicking, how long they’re spending on the page, and what sort of interactions they’re having with the page.
In addition, these tools can also help you track the performance of your landing pages over time, so you can see how your changes are impacting your results. By using these tools, you can ensure that your landing pages are effective and help you reach your marketing goals.
STEP 2- Limit the navigation options
When presented with too many choices, people can become overwhelmed and have difficulty making a decision. This phenomenon is known as choice overload or analysis paralysis. While having a wide variety of choices is often seen as a good thing, it can actually impede user decision-making and cause distractions.
Speaking of distractions, you want to make it easy for visitors to find their way around your site, but you also don’t want to give them too many options for leaving the page before they’ve had a chance to fill out your form.
That’s why we recommend removing the menu and footer from your landing page. This will help to keep visitors focused on the task at hand, and we’ve seen a significant increase in form fills across multiple clients where we have made this change. So if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to improve your conversion rate, taking off the menu and footer from your landing page helps narrow down the options and is a good place to start.
STEP 3- Keep the form short and sweet
Form Fields
You want to make sure that the form on your landing page has limited fields. The last thing you want is for users to get frustrated with a long, complicated form and abandon it altogether.
So keep it short—just include the essentials—and make it easy to understand.
We suggest limiting the number of form fields on your landing page to five. This also helps to keep your form within the “first fold” of the page, meaning that visitors don’t have to scroll down to see it.
It’s also important to consider what information is truly essential for your business. In many cases, additional information can be gathered by sales teams during follow-up conversations.
Experimenting with a two-step form can also be an effective way to capture more information without being overly intrusive. By keeping the initial form simple, you’re more likely to encourage visitors to fill it out. Once the visitors have taken that first step, you’ll find it easier to collect additional data points further down the line.
Form Placement
We think that form position is important and can have a significant impact on conversion rates. Generally speaking, it is best to place forms on the right-hand side of the page, as this is the direction that most people read in so having the form on the right makes more sense from a visual perspective.
Because our brains are wired to think chronologically, we naturally expect forms to be at the end of a process (i.e., after we’ve read all the information on the page). Therefore, if you want your visitors to actually take the time to fill out your form, putting it on the right side is your best bet.
Ultimately, it is important to experiment with different form positions to see what works best for your landing page.
STEP 4- Do not ignore the Core Web Vitals
Because the user experience matters more than ever before. In today’s day and age, the user experience is everything. If your site is difficult to navigate or slow to load, users will simply go elsewhere. In fact, according to Google, 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Core Web Vitals are all about measuring the user experience, so by paying attention to them, you can ensure that your page is delivering the best possible experience to visitors. Ultimately, this could lead to more conversions for your business.
Google has asked to prioritize Above-the-Fold Content and since most of your landing page content is “above the fold” make sure it loads quickly by prioritizing it during development.
STEP 5- Follow the herd
People tend to prefer familiar things. Although it may be tempting to try to stand out from the competition by doing things differently, there are actually some very good reasons to stick with industry standards.
It is important to remember that people don’t want to have to think too hard when they are using your website – they just want the process to be quick and easy. This means that if you deviate from the norm when it comes to your landing page, you may actually end up confusing and frustrating potential leads.
By keeping your landing page design similar to other websites in your space, you can make sure that customers have a positive experience and are more likely to fill out a form.
STEP 6- Experiment Experiment Experiment!
Creating and optimizing a landing page is not a one-step process. Keep tweaking until you are happy with the conversion rates. After you have made a change, give it some time but closely track the user behavior on the page and the conversion rates to decide if you would like to move forward with the change you made. If you see that the conversion rate has increased after making a change, then you can be confident that the change was successful.
If you’re not sure where to start or are hesitant to make any big changes to your landing page- start small. Make a small change and see how it impacts your conversions.
You could experiment with changing one element of the page, or you could A/B test different elements on the page such as the headline, CTA button, etc. to see what works best for your audience. By starting small and testing different changes, you’ll be able to find the right combination of elements that convert well for your business.
Even though we spoke about industry standards in the previous section, we believe that there are certain factors that could work specifically for your audience and this is where little experiments like these could help you get to your aha moment.
STEP 7- Build a conversion path
Now that you have crafted and optimized your landing page for better conversions, the next logical step is to make it easier for visitors on your website to get to the landing page.
This can be done through strategically placed call-to-action buttons throughout the website. Start by listing down your high-traffic pages and placing CTAs after the scroll depth of the page has been checked.
It’s also important to know when and how to direct the visitor to the landing page. You don’t want to drive too much traffic to the landing page too soon – you want to make sure that the visitors who do land on the page are those who are most likely to convert. By carefully planning your conversion path, you can increase your chances of conversion and make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
The option to navigate to the landing page should always be within reach for your visitors. The best way to do this is to place a CTA on the menu and make it sticky. This will ensure that visitors can easily find the page, regardless of where they are on your site. Additionally, you can experiment with the color and text of your call-to-action (CTA) button to see what works best.
However, for most businesses, a major portion of the branded traffic lands on the homepage and directing that traffic straight to your landing page from your homepage may not be the most effective approach. Instead, consider leading them to your product or solution page first. From there, they can be directed to your landing page through a CTA on the page’s banner. Following this conversion path will give potential customers the information they need while still providing opportunities for them to convert.
The conversion path would be as follows
Homepage > Product/ Solution page > Landing page
Helping visitors navigate via a product page also gives you the leeway to keep content on the landing page as concise as possible.
The category traffic on the other hand brings in organic traffic to your search-optimized blog posts. The conversion path, in that case, could be as follows
Blog page > Case study page- to let them know the capabilities and possibilities of what your product or solution can do > Landing page
This makes the website easy to navigate but also converts your category traffic.
Start converting!
Landing pages are a necessary part of any online marketer’s toolkit, but they can be tricky to get right. The good news is that with some practice, you can create landing pages that convert like crazy.
You may have a great product, but if your landing page isn’t optimized, you’re losing potential customers. We can help. Our team, at Znbound, is experienced in the art of conversion optimization and can help turn a lackluster landing page into one that converts.
Ready to get started?
Contact us today for a free consultation on how we can improve your landing pages and increase your bottom line.
