This post shows you how to design a great landing page, even if you didn’t go to school for design
You’ve designed a great marketing campaign.
You have inventive creatives and a compelling call to action, reeling in a huge number of clicks on your Facebook ads.
The problem? Customers aren’t converting after they click.
That’s where a well-designed landing page can help you. This post is designed to give you the tools you need to create a great landing page – even if you don’t have the word “creative” in your title.
Why landing pages?
A website can be a great tool for your marketing efforts. But a homepage can be overwhelming to a potential customer.
- They might not know where to click to take advantage of the offer that appealed to them when they first clicked on an ad. A landing page makes the place to click clear by only giving the user one place to go.
- They could get distracted with something else on your page, such as a link to your Twitter account or another article you are promoting. A specific landing page cuts out the distractions.
- They might have gotten up to get a coffee or moved their bag for someone on the bus and forgot why the clicked in the first place. People get distracted easily! With a landing page, when they return to their computer/phone/tablet, they’re instantly reminded why they’re there.
“Every link on your page that doesn’t represent your conversion goal is a distraction that will dilute your message and reduce your conversion rate,” says Unbounce in their guide to landing pages.
What’s a landing page?
A landing page is hyper-optimized for conversions. It strips out the clutter present on most websites and instead provides just enough info to get the potential customer to convert.
They don’t exist as part of a website. Instead the only way to get to it is (usually) through an advertising campaign.
Customers can then click through to a page on the website (such as a shopping cart or registration page) or sign up for an offer that generates a new lead for you.
OK so how do I build one?
You don’t need to be versed in all 360 degrees of the colour wheel to build a landing page that reels in new prospects, says Chad MacDonald, an instructor in the Digital Marketing Certificate program at the Telfer School of Management and the Creative Director at Soshal.
Landing page tools like Unbounce and knak. are great because it’s a (relatively) simple tool. If you can drag and drop (most of us can), then all you need to do is remember some basic design principles.
Here’s what MacDonald recommends for marketers on building killer landing pages
A/B test:
Sick of trying to guess what design is going to capture the most leads? Well, now you don’t have to. A/B testing will send out two different versions of a landing page to two different audiences. The number of conversions for each will tell you which performed better.
Use colours to your advantage:
Don’t go wild with colour. Combining black and white for less important elements on the page with more vibrant colours surrounding your call to action will help push customers toward a conversion.
Keep it simple:
It’s easy, with a tool like Unbounce, to over-design. After all, when all you need to do is drag and drop, you can readily get carried away. MacDonald recommends keeping the focus on your call to action as much as possible. Once you start adding in extra elements – say, a link to your Twitter account – it loses its effectiveness. Give the customer only as much info as they need to click on your call to action – no more.
Have a clear understanding of what you want to do:
Is the purpose of your landing page to get people to sign up for a free offer (as is the case with my example above)? Or do you want them to sign up for a newsletter? Only once you know what you’re trying to accomplish as a marketer can you begin laying out your page.
Mark Brownlee is a Digital Marketing Strategist in Ottawa and a candidate for the Digital Marketing Certificate at the Telfer School of Management.