You… yes, YOU can have an effect on the customer’s con­ver­sion jour­ney with just a few easy steps. Here are some of the basic ele­ments you’ll want to keep in mind when cre­at­ing a land­ing page that converts:

1. Cre­ate a Clear Call to Action: Per­haps the most impor­tant tip you’ll see, cre­at­ing a great call to action is a sim­ple way to dras­ti­cally improve con­ver­sion rates. The call to action (CTA) is what you want vis­i­tors to do. Maybe it’s: Call Now, Click Here to Learn More, or Sign Up. Focus on one call to action on each page, and make sure your mes­sag­ing is con­sis­tent, in a promi­nent loca­tion, and easy to under­stand. When test­ing dif­fer­ent strate­gies, CTAs are one of the most impor­tant parts of your land­ing page. Exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent col­ors, place­ments, and messaging.
2. Focus on the Cus­tomer View­point: When you’re think­ing about your land­ing page design and con­tent, remem­ber to think like your cus­tomer, whether it’s a busi­ness or per­son. Do your cus­tomers pro­vide you with exactly what they were look­ing for in the search query? If so, give them that per­son­al­ized con­tent on the land­ing page. Remem­ber, your web­site is really NOT all about you or your com­pany. It is about show­cas­ing your prod­ucts or ser­vices in a man­ner that res­onates with your audiences.
3. Con­struct an Effec­tive Head­line: If the head­line on your land­ing page is not com­pelling, cus­tomers won’t be eager to stick around for long. This head­line should be attention-grabbing, but not over the top. You have already got­ten poten­tial cus­tomers to your site; now you just need to help them find out if you are indeed offer­ing what they are look­ing for. A typ­i­cal cus­tomer will make a deci­sion in less than 15 sec­onds about whether he or she is the right place—an effec­tive head­line can help with this.
4. Make Your Design Clean and Sim­ple: Don’t let con­sumers be dis­tracted by untidy visu­als. Leave plenty of white space on your land­ing page, make your fonts easy to read, add inter­est­ing videos, and cre­ate bul­leted con­tent that’s eas­ily scanned for impor­tant points. Your cus­tomer should never have to go dig­ging around in search of what they need. Pro­vide a clear path of nav­i­ga­tion, and sim­plify your pages to con­tain on the infor­ma­tion that is per­ti­nent to your customer.
5. Show Off Your Social Sta­tus: Have a list of top-notch cus­tomers? Been men­tioned in the press or given excel­lent tes­ti­mo­ni­als from cus­tomers? Let oth­ers know! Add a tid­bit on your land­ing page that shows you’re known for your great products/services. Give them the chance to read real reviews on the prod­ucts and ser­vices you are offering.

Now that you have what you believe is a great land­ing page, it’s time to mea­sure, ana­lyze, and adjust. Web­site test­ing is a vital part of the con­ver­sion process; it’s impor­tant to ensure that what you have cre­ated really works, and not just in theory!

In my next sev­eral arti­cles, I will dis­cuss the key aspects of a great test­ing strat­egy, along with how dis­play ads can help your com­pany achieve the most con­ver­sions when they are pointed to relevant land­ing pages. We’ll get into the tech­ni­cal aspects of paid and organic search and how they work together to cre­ate value. Most importantly, we will dis­cuss why ana­lyz­ing the data pro­vided by these ini­tia­tives is often more valu­able than cre­at­ing the cam­paigns themselves.