4 Elements Every Landing Page Needs

Online marketing means more than attracting visitors to your website. In addition to developing a steady stream of web traffic, you need to help your prospects take action on your lead generation forms, promotional sign-ups, and ebook downloads. Effective landing pages are essential for facilitating these goals.

Two items to keep in mind when developing your landing page strategy:

• First, your landing pages need to be clean, minimalistic, and to the point.
• Second, your landing pages need to focus on your sales, transaction, or other conversion-driven objectives.

Effective landing pages improve conversions, promote user engagement, and build strong connections with prospects. Accomplish these goals by incorporating the following five elements into your strategy.

1. Visual Feng-Shui

Landing page designs should be conversion driven. Whether you're collecting prospect leads or encouraging people to sign up for a free trial, you need visual cues that direct visitors towards the goals that you've set. Every element on your landing page needs to lead to one place. The visitors eye should naturally flow towards the form. Keep your pages streamlined, harmonious, calm, and balanced. Design clutter will only detract from your conversion goals.

2. Human Interest

For many of your prospects, landing pages function as introductory handshakes. In a matter of seconds, website visitors will form an opinion about your brand and decide if they should trust you or not.

Remember that your audience includes people who are very different from the marketers, engineers, or industry experts who surround you all day, every day. Show that you care about your web visitors, and make it known that your brand is committed to solving their problems. Keep the jargon to a minimum, and talk to your prospects with a conversational tone. Position your brand as personable, warm, and friendly.

3. A Value Proposition

Why should prospects do business with you? Are you saving them money? Are you helping them accomplish more in less time? Does your brand provide an essential service that can make your prospects' lives easier? Can you quantify how you've been able to affect the sales or savings of your existing customers?

The best landing pages present answers to these questions as key selling points. They provide inherent value to the visitor. Don't assume that people will immediately understand why working with your brand is important. Your landing pages need to clearly explain why your brands' products or services add value.

4. A Quantifiable Goal

Every landing page needs to promote objectives that you can measure. How are you assessing your marketing campaign's effectiveness? By the number of leads that you've generated? By the boost in sales that you've experienced? No matter what, make sure that you can isolate one or several dependent variables that describe the success of your campaign. Optimize your landing pages around these goals. If you can measure it, you can improve it.

Final Thoughts: Test and Re-Test

Landing pages are excellent candidates for A/B testing, so feel free to experiment with page elements so that you can keep learning. Try changing some of your headlines, copy, colors, CTA's or images to gauge the relative effect on performance. Continuously learn from your findings so that you can keep building the best landing pages for your marketing goals and brand.