Building Perfect Landing Pages

Updated May 28, 2022

Visitors into Customers

So much of White Hat SEO and SEM is focused on getting people to your website, but what happens when they get there? To have any chance of converting a website visitor to a customer you need to make sure your site is focused on helping them make that transition. So let’s discuss how to optimize the post-click experience for your future customers.

We’re Coming in to Land

Landing pages are often the first time a visitor will see your website. First impressions count just as much online as they do in person. So making sure your landing pages are high quality, and that they represent what your business does well is key. So, how do you do that?

• Slim down the navigation bar – Google like your landing pages to have a navigation bar on them. If you’re using your landing pages for AdWords, or other PPC platforms, they should have a navigation bar. So totally removing the navigation bar isn’t really an option if you’re using PPC or social media ads. But that doesn’t mean you have to display everything. Create a more ‘streamlined’ version of your navigation bar that is focused on the reason someone has clicked on your landing page. The fewer decisions you ask a visitor to take, the more likely they are to take the one you want.
• Make your CTA visible – Your landing page needs to have a clear call to action. That means it needs to be obvious to your visitor what the next step they should take is. Should they fill in the form? Watch the video? Download the eBook. Whatever it is, it needs to be as obvious as possible. Subtlety is not valued in landing page design. Make the CTA front and center. If there’s a button, make it a bright color. And don’t leave the button text as “submit”, try to be creative!
• Link your headline and your ad – Make sure your ad and your headline are linked. Consider using the same text or similar phrases. The headline of your page is likely to be the first thing the user will see along with the URL, while the page is loading. To put them at ease, try to keep these things as similar as possible. You want your landing page to match what is in the ad because they clicked on the ad because you promised X. So make sure you know X is what they’re getting.
• Don’t offer anything else – Going back to the first point a little. Don’t offer anything else tempting to your visitors. You might have a landing page asking for their contact details so they can get an AdWords eBook. Don’t put a link to an AdWords blog post on that page. They may go there and not be able to find their way back to the LP. Or perhaps go there and forget all about the landing page. Attention spans are getting shorter, so try and help people stay focused.
• Don’t have too much text – Too much reading can be a turn off if the visitor isn’t expecting it. Try to keep things short and sweet.
• Use related images – back to the first impressions point above, people will skim a page with their eyes before taking it in properly. As such using related images is very important. You might have some cool graphics you can use, but if they’re not related to what the landing page is about, don’t use them. They will just confuse the viewer.

6 Steps to Building Perfect Landing Pages

Creating great landing pages isn’t something you can do overnight. It will take you months, maybe even years, to work out the right balance of information, text, images, and CTAs on your pages. So AB test slowly. Pick one aspect, change it, see if things improve. Then move on to the next thing to test. Then slowly your landing pages will evolve into conversion machines!