Increase Your Conversion Rates With These 7 Landing Page Must-Haves Lots of traffic to your website won't equate to much if it leaves your potential customers angry and confused.
By Jonathan Long •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
A massive pay-per-click and SEO budget can deliver high-quality traffic to your website, but if you are sending that traffic to poorly optimized landing pages you are essentially throwing your money down the drain. If you want to convert more of your traffic into leads, sales and revenue make sure that your landing pages feature the following seven elements:
1. Attention-grabbing headline
If your landing page headline doesn't grab instant attention, you risk losing a potential conversion in mere seconds. A great headline gives the visitor a quick overview of your offer and gives them a reason to stay on the page. Make sure it grabs attention and it is clear -- and don't be afraid to test several headlines to see what your audience responds to the best.
Related: Steer Your Online Business to Profitability
For instance, split-test a statement headline against a question-asking headline and see what performs better.
2. Visually-appealing design
Your landing page must look great if you want to attract conversions. A sloppy "thrown together" looking landing page isn't going to inspire trust. Also, avoid using readily available templates. Consumers come in contact with these templates all the time and they all begin to look the same. You need to differentiate yourself from all of the other offers out there.
If you are going to spend money to push traffic to your landing page then invest some of your budget into the design.
3. Strong call to action
An effective CTA (call to action) commands attention and encourages the visitor to complete the action, whether it is a purchase, placing a phone call or completing a form. To increase your conversion rate, you are going to need to create very effective CTAs. So many people will throw together a CTA and sit back and wonder why the conversion rates are sub-par. Invest time and energy into developing CTAs that help you reach your conversion goals.
4. One clear offer
I will often see landing pages that offer a free trial or consultation as well as a downloadable ebook. You want to avoid doing this as it just confuses the visitor. If you want to test multiple offers that is fine, just split-test multiple landing pages each featuring one offer.
A single clear offer makes the entire process much smoother. For example, if you are running a pay-per-click campaign, your ad copy, landing page copy and offer should all be relevant. If a consumer clicks on your ad and then hits your landing page that has two offers it can cause a major hiccup in the conversion process.
Related: Why a Landing Page Will Make or Break Your Facebook Ads
5. Badges of trust and credibility
The average consumer is marketed to around the clock. Everywhere they look they see advertisements that claim to offer the best product or service. They are naturally skeptical, so make sure to include information on your landing page that builds trust and displays credibility.
Include badges of trust, such as the Better Business Bureau or industry-specific accreditations. Testimonials and media outlets that have covered your brand can also help to establish a level of trust and credibility.
6. Goal-specific form
You will often hear people say that "less form fields are always better," but this isn't necessarily the case all of the time. If you are just creating an email list, then yes, you can get away with just asking for a name and email address. If you are trying to generate a lead for your business then you need to worry about collecting the information that will create a high-quality lead rather than worrying about how many form fields you have.
If a high-quality lead for your business means you need a name, email address, phone number and a few other specific pieces of information, then don't be afraid to require it. Determine what information you need and ask for it.
7. No distractions
Every single visitor that hits your landing page is a potential conversion. You want to do everything that you can to prevent distractions -- you want your visitor to focus on your call to action and nothing else.
My company, Market Domination Media, creates service-specific landing pages for all of our lead generation and we remove all navigation menus and links from our landing pages. When someone hits our landing pages, there are no other pages within our own site the visitor can navigate to and there are no external links to pull them away from the offer.
This greatly increases conversion rates. The visitor either completes the form or they leave. If you want to see an example of a distraction-free landing page, click here.
Do you have any other landing-page optimization tips to share? If so, leave them in the comments section below. We would love to hear them!
Related: Want to Sell More Online? How 'Split Testing' Your Site Can Help
