Marketing is the process of systematically communicating your value to consumers; people who can or will buy a product or service from your company. To reach consumers, most businesses create a landing page – the page of a company’s website that a specific traffic source will be redirected to after clicking an ad.
Your landing page is therefore your company’s first impression on your target audience, and you need to make sure you get that AHA moment from prospects. You should not overcomplicate the process of creating an AHA moment with consumers. In fact, it’s pretty simple. Here are 5 simple steps to optimize your landing page and convert more prospects.
1. Shorten Your Landing Page Loading Times to Generate More Revenue
The more time your landing page takes to load, the more disinterested your prospects. A responsive and fast web page is linked with good user experience while a slower one is likely to frustrate prospects and grow your Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC). It is also worth noting that Google prioritizes websites with fast loading times. Further, a fast loading page time within 2 seconds is correlated with a low 9.81% bounce rate, thus it is good practice to optimize all your web pages loading times. Simply optimizing your loading page to within 2 seconds get users on average to view approximately 6 pages more.
By way of illustration, Intuit, a tax software company found the following on how page speed ties in with site revenue
- If loading times were between 7 – 15 seconds, each second removed generated an average 3% increase in conversions.
- If loading times were between 5 – 7 seconds, each second removed generated an average 2% increase in conversions.
- If loading times were between 2 – 5 seconds, each second removed generated an average 1% increase in conversions.
The faster you make it for prospects to complete an action, such as completing a form field or adding items to cart, the more likely they will opt-in or buy. Keep it simple and keep it fast.
One Simple Step to verify Your Landing Page Loading Time
The loading time of your website will always vary and is dependent on the speed of your visitor’s network as well as their computer’s resources. One way to verify that your landing page is optimized is to try accessing it from a coffee shop or through a VPN that reduces your bandwidth.
Rule of thumb #1: If your page loads in less than 2 seconds, it is well optimized.
2. Add Aesthetic Features to Your Landing Page
Your landing page’s design should be aesthetically pleasing and simple for prospects to find the information they need and for returning visitors to convert on your call to action.
Here are 2 Simple Aesthetical Elements for Your Landing Page Design
1. Colors
- Your colors should always remain on theme.
- Use warm colors such as Red and Blue to harness attention.
2. Navigation
- Make it easy for your prospects to navigate across your landing page or other pages.
If a prospect cannot navigate with ease on your landing page, they will associate it with negative user experience, making it much less likely they convert as a user. For this reason, your landing page must have a visual appeal that helps direct consumers towards your call to action. In addition to visual appeal, your landing page should guide the prospect towards your company’s desired goal.
The following elements guides users towards completing an action:
- The user should be able to sign up fairly quickly. We typically suggest no more than 3 fields to complete, While keeping the top of funnel forms rather general and directly serving a need as opposed to collecting generic user info such as Email, Phone Number..etc
Your landing page should include multiple accessibility features such as:
- Changing the language displayed based on their location.
- Changing the currency based on their location.
Adding an additional information link:
- Privacy policy such as data protection.
A User Interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good
– Martin LeBlanc, Expert Technology Development, Caprion Co-Founder
3. Add Information to Your Landing Page That Displays the Value You Offer to Consumers
Your landing page should be able to explain what your company can and does offer. It is custom to follow this explanation with why your company should be chosen. Remember, your landing page is the first page potential clients see and as such it is your strongest sales pitch.
Using keywords and keeping it all concise is your biggest challenge as speed and understanding are the key points for converting a user. Remember, your objective is for the prospect to complete the desired action.
The expression Explain it to me like I’m a 5-year-old is the basis of the evaluation for this point.
These 2 Simple Question Can Save You Time and Money
Your peers, colleagues, suppliers and outside advisors are your best resource for understanding how informative your landing page should be. Simply ask them the following:
- Do you understand how this offering can help you?
- How long did it take them to understand?
You can also utilize this technique with someone who hasn’t interacted with your brand or company yet. If they feel like they need to ask a question to understand, then your information is not clear enough.
4. Add Visual Elements to Your Landing Page to Successfully Convert Prospects
Content is great and imperative, but visuals are better at conveying to users the value of your services, how they will benefit from opting in or engaging with your product, and why.
Rule of thumb #2: If you need to explain a concept using more than two sentences, consider using a visual instead (or a visual and a sentence).
Less is More – Keep It Simple
- Use icons and drawings to showcase features in your application.
- Use vibrant and positive colors to generate user engagement.
- Keep the page light and uncluttered.
- Keep the design and colors on theme and brand (logo, website).
- Make sure your visuals communicate your company’s value proposition
How Zoom’s Landing Page Acquired More Platform Users
One important step often overlooked is to align multiple landing pages with different user audiences. Enterprise clients are far different from individual users. Zoom mastered this strategy with the following:
- For enterprise clients, call to action is “Request a Demo”.
- For individuals, call to action is “Sign Up Free”.
Internal marketing teams must analyze a landing page from the end-consumer’s point of view. Thinking like your prospects and customers is the most valuable communication tool at your disposal, and it’s free.
The Importance of Aligning Your Landing Page to Your Audience: Lessons from The Zoom App
The buying process for enterprises is much more complex than it is for a consumer. Businesses go through a series of processes before buying a product for their teams. They consider usability, interface design and time to train employees primarily before buying a product.
Conversely, consumers buy on emotions. They make their buying decision much faster and consider interface design, ease of connecting with peers, and affordability primarily before a purchase.
The following illustrates the simplicity of Zoom’s landing page, its icons, and vibrant positive colors to deliver a great user experience to prospects, depending on if they are individual or enterprise prospects.
5. Add Captivating Features to Your Landing Page to Create an Emotional Bond with Your Audience
The simplest way to keep an audience captivated is by motion. Motion evokes emotion which in turn incentivizes an action.
How to Invoke Emotions on Your Landing Page
- Add interactive animations
- The more your prospect interacts with your page, the more likely they will interact with your products or services.
- Add a quick demo of the product or service advertised
- Product/Service Demos are typically included to make it easier for a consumer to understand the value of your offering.
- Add customer reviews or testimonial videos
- Your customers will speak more positively of the value you provide than you will yourself.
- Simply adding a positive testimonial can convey enough social proof for users to complete your call to action.
To test if your landing page is captivating enough, we use a technique similar to A/B testing. The Zoom app and web platforms utilized the following technique to grow the company’s user base to north of 50 million:
- Create multiple landing page designs with different levels of animation.
- Time how long each person views each page.
- Incidentally this test can also reveal to you which landing page is the best suited for a specific type of audience.
- Align and match your call to actions (CTAs) on your landing page to your audience.
In conclusion, ask yourself the following when evaluating your website’s landing page:
- How long do I have to wait before the page is loaded?
- How fast can I sign up, change language and search for more information?
- How long does it take me to understand what the benefits of the offering?
- How can I make my landing page more visually appealing to relate on an emotional level with the target audience?
