Design your way

There is more than one way of building a great landing page, but when you want to increase your chances of getting it right, there are a few basic rules to be followed and several elements that remain constant in landing page design.

The main consideration in landing page design is to determine how an average customer thinks. Once you have a basic understanding of what they look for, you can create something that makes your offer appear quite unmissable.

In addition to knowing what the customer wants and providing it, the main aim of landing page design is to create something that is going to attract customers away from competitors. This is attainable, but it does require some clever use of psychology.

A visitor might arrive at a landing page looking for value, for testimonials, a particular niche product or the best price. Keep in mind that visitors want to find what they have been searching for online.

It must be obvious from the start what a landing page is about and who it’s aimed at. Some landing pages are designed to attract people working in a type of industry or business customer, and many of them focus on an angle that will attract a specific type of consumer.

When building a great landing page, what you are aiming for is to convert visitors into customers. Anyone viewing it should be compelled by your call to action because the content they have just viewed matched exactly what was in their mind.

After reviewing the following characteristics of landing pages that work, you can get started with your own creative ideas for building a great landing page that is going to convert more of your audience into paying customers.

Start with a good headline

It takes less than two seconds for someone to read a headline and to understand what it means. A good headline makes an impact within that amount of time and acts as a hook for people to stay on the page.

Every landing page needs to have an attention-grabbing heading that builds interest in the mind of every visitor. To create the perfect headline you have to be aware of why visitors will click a link that bring them to your landing page and what they are looking for.

What most of us are constantly looking for is something that is going to please us and make us feel happy. The main heading you choose needs to assure visitors that they are going to get some sort of personal satisfaction from what is on the page.

Give more info with sub-headlines

After the headline the next most important element is the sub-headline that will build a person’s interest and lure them into viewing more of the content. A powerful sub-headline should appear just below the page’s main heading.

The first sub-headline should extend what has already been stated in the main heading and must be persuasive enough to encourage visitors to read on. When a sub-headline answers something that your visitors are wondering about, that is a sure way to keep them interested in finding out more.

To create the right subheadings you should know what your audience has in mind. There is always a set sequence of thoughts, so you not only need to know what questions they might be thinking, but also the order that they think of them.

Questions people consider about a product or service might include things like how much does it cost, how good is the quality, what are its features, what benefits does it provide, how effective will it be and how does it compare to other similar products or services.

They think: How exactly does it work? What can it do? What is included in the price? Does it come with a money back guarantee and can it be returned? Are there any shipping costs?

Additional thoughts may concern its affordability and whether or not it’s available at a discount.

Each subheading on the page should deal with a question that is likely to be in your audience’s mind. The content that follows each sub-headline must provide a full answer to what they were wondering about.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Internet users, as you probably know, have a very short attention span, and the human mind takes in details from an image far faster than it can absorb anything that is explained in words.

That old saying about a single image having more value than 1000 words is therefore something to be aware of when setting out to build a great landing page.

Images allow a landing page to communicate ideas faster than can be explained in any text.

An image does not need to show an actual product, it can represent what the product or service does, and what the result of using it will be.

Every image also has an emotional element, which allows a viewer to identify with what is represented, and therefore it can make a product or a service appear more desirable.

Most of the actions we decide to take are done for our own benefit, to avoid something bad happening or to gain some sort of advantage. Any marketing campaign will be more successful when images on a landing page clearly show that there is definitely a good advantage to be gained.

The value proposition

Any particular feature, service or innovation that gives a service or product a specific value that makes it appear much more attractive is a value proposition.

Your landing page must highlight to your audience the points that are of most importance to them. These provide a clear answer as to how it really is going to be of benefit to “you”, the customer.

Value propositions need to be set out as individual bullet points or in a numbered list that outlines the biggest benefits to be gained by using the service or the product.

Remember to focus on the benefits to the person who is looking at the page. Never create landing page content that has more to do with your business or your website than about your audience.

Use social proof

People like to know that they can follow in the success of others by using the same products or services. If some big company or anybody who is well known uses whatever it is that a landing page is promoting, then of course you should feature their name or company logo.

The names or companies featured in a prominent “as used by” section of a page do not have to be very famous. This section could feature, for example, the name of a leading website, an entrepreneur or a motivational speaker. This presents a positive reason for people to use the same product or service that they perceive as having a strong link to successful people and thriving businesses.

People are also more likely to be persuaded to purchase a product or pay for something when they see that others have already done this.

Use testimonials

A landing page design should also feature genuine testimonials from satisfied customers. It’s not difficult to encourage happy customers to put something in writing about why they like your product or service.

You may need to experiment a little when deciding where testimonials should appear on the page. People react differently to testimonials when they see them at the end of the page, rather than at the beginning. Your conversion rate could be improved when testimonials appear immediately after the list of benefits, if those same benefits are reinforced in the testimonials.

Have a great call to action button

When you have followed each of the steps so far for building a great landing page, by reading the mind of your audience, you are well on the way to finally getting sales or subscribers. What all of this has been leading up to is the call to action which persuades people that the button must be clicked.

A call to action button can be the difference between success and failure. It really is necessary to focus on how this applies to your particular audience. The wording of your call to action is what will drive people to click on the button that converts them into paying customers.

The same call to action may appear more than once on a landing page. It can be placed at the end of each individual section.

Don’t forget to place all these elements in a logical flow

The length of a landing page is not important. Long pages are actually very effective, and the most successful type of landing page design is one that breaks content up in segments that lead on from each other.

Elements of design can be used to enhance the flow. Some suitably persuasive design features can be placed at the end of each section, to draw the eye to down to what follows.

A customer who is truly engaged with the content will be also be following a certain thought process. It is not enough to just have some compelling content. Landing page design must also have a logical flow.

To be convincing and persuasive, a landing page should start with an explanation of what it is all about, followed by a list of benefits. Testimonials can follow on from the benefits and lead on to the final call to action.

A shorter landing page should focus on one element, which should be visual. In that case the flow will lead from a headline to an explanation followed by the visual content and ending with a call to action.

As always, test the page

The psychology used on one successful landing page will not apply to every type of product or service. When building a great landing page it’s important to do some comparison testing between two or more landing page designs, each featuring a slightly different type of trigger.

The final landing page design will be the one that has the highest conversion rate in A/B tests.