Landing Pages

Landing pages are everywhere and I would say 90% of them have room for improvement. There are many elements to consider, especially if there is a form on the page. For a lot of business their landing pages and forms are the most popular channel for prospects and customers to reach out and communicate with a company. So shouldn't this mean that companies spend significant time and resources optimizing them? You have 3 - 8 seconds or 15 words to convince people about what you are saying; every element can have a huge impact on your conversion rate.
So what should you consider? What are some of the most common mistakes? Here are some to get things started and maybe I’ll post more later:

• Have captions for photos – they are read more often than your body copy.
• Add security icons and trust symbols – TRUSTe certified, BBB logos, 100% satisfaction seal, etc… It all add peace of mind and increases conversions.
• Drop the extra navigation that the rest of your site probably has – This only adds distractions that visitors may follow rather than what is presented on the landing page.
• Add a link to your privacy policy BUT make sure the link opens your privacy policy in a new window that is small and preferably off to the side. Too often a link to the privacy policy redirects the page away from the landing page and now your visitor is off away from what the objective of the landing page is.
• Consider saying anything other than ‘submit’ for your button copy. Submit is a very aggressive word; try something lighter like; here we go, start your trial now or join us. But when dealing with an e-commerce transaction, don’t get too cute.
• Consider white or blank spaces, they are effective for keeping things clear and concise but sometimes if they are too big people may see them and think they are at the bottom of the page when there is really more below the blank space.
• Do not let your copy go beyond aproximately 55 characters across.
• Left-align your copy almost always.
• Make your hero shot clickable - For some reason people like clicking on large images, have it go somewhere with more info or have it go to the primary call to action.
• Have your call to action above the fold and repeated below the fold at the end.

And most important……
TEST EVERYTHING – colors, layout, images, headlines, buttons, more or less fields, everything. Research best practices that are specific to your exact scenario then do some of your own testing and refining.

I have skimmed the surface on this topic, there is a wealth of information and research that has been done in this area. A good place to start looking for more info is MarketingSherpa. I will also post later on some more specifics related to forms and landing pages.