Crafting the Perfect Landing Page: Boost Your Conversion Rates

keys4marketing Comments (0) August 22, 2024

A perfect landing page can significantly improve conversion rates and help achieve desired goals.

A landing page (LP) is a web page designed with a specific purpose in mind, typically to convert visitors into leads or customers. It serves as a focused destination that users “land” on after clicking on a specific advertisement, search result, or a external link. The primary objective of a landing page is to encourage visitors to take a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, downloading a resource, or filling out a form.

Having a well designed & well functioned landing page is crucial for many organizations. A thoughtful & good landing page has a significant impact on the success of marketing campaigns. It improves user engagement, conversion rates, and brand perception.

Typical customer acquisition journeys & types of landing pages

1) Full funnel journey (FFJ) :- This is a journey where the customer gets converted on it’s own without any offline or call center help e.g. when you buy a pair of shoes from Myntra or order food from Zomato. This can happen on web or app (preferred is app with deferred deep linking)

2) Assisted funnel journey (AFJ) :- When a customer drops a lead and the conversion happens through assisted sales like call centers e.g. when you want to buy a loan or when you want to book holidays or buy a car or buy a house. In this journey, LP play a very crucial role. This normally happens on web

In this AFJ, there can be 3 types of landing pages :-

1) Specialized & specific web page (basically external landing page) :- We will discuss this in detail in this article

2) Deep linked web page inside the website (Product description page of an organization’s website) :- These are the landing pages where a customer can come and drop a lead. These are pages inside the website of the organization

3) Native web page within the acquiring channel (FB forms) :- These open within the channel’s UI with email, phone numbers already auto filled e.g. Native FB forms. Here limited functionality is given and hence not much can be done here.

Best practices for creating an external Landing page to maximum engagement & conversion

Explaining above slide, there are 2 major aspects while making a Landing page, irrespective of for any industry or organization. These are

1) Tech aspects

2) Customer experience (CX) aspects

Tech aspects :-

Tech aspects are very important as this is the soul of Landing page. It has 4 parameters like speed, domain, responsiveness & entire funnel & events tracking. Speed and tracking are most important and most critical also 🙂

The typical loading speeds for Landing pages should be :-

For 4G & 4G fast network the speeds should be

Ideal: Under 1 second
Good: 1-3 seconds
Average: 3-5 seconds
Needs improvement: 5+ seconds

For 5G network the speeds should be

Ideal: Under 0.5 second
Good: 1-2 seconds
Average: 2-4 seconds
Needs improvement: 4+ seconds

For tracking purposes, we should have at least 4 types of tracking :-

1) A unique identifier/s of the landing page (e.g. UTM, source ID, SKU ID etc.) & leads dropped from that identifier falling back in the system of CRM (dialer) so that assisted sales can happen

2) Heat map tracking, events tracking like clicks on button & funnel tracking like traffic, drop offs on each page

3) Platform pixel placement like FB pixel so that the platform can track back. Postback URL tracking (via deferred deeplink) if there is app download journey inside the landing page

4) Retargeting pixel placement (e.g. criteo)

Caution:- When we add multiple pixels, tracking scripts the page load time increases which can be detrimental to consumer experience. However there comes a hack known as ‘Parallel tracking or delayed tracking’. So when a user clicks on the ad, the landing page opens (without any scripts loaded & when the user lands on to LP, the scripts loads in background)

TIP :- The page should be mobile responsive and should not be more than 3 pages scroll. The lesser the better.

Customer experience (CX) aspects :-

1) UI elements :-

It’s very important to have a great CX with more of white space, less of clutter. Please don’t be greedy here. Don’t overload the information. Be crisp & clear. Don’t try to upsell/cross sell much here. This is not the right platform for this.

While strategizing a landing page, one can have many elements which are divided into 5, these are

1) Promotional elements

These are the elements which shows the value proposition to users and generally the first things that a customer views. Generally offers, discounts etc. are communicated in this section. Few examples are quoted here. This is basically the ‘hook’ for the customers.

2) Trust elements

This is the element which is inserted to instill trust in users’ mind like reviews, ratings, testimonials, statement from CEO, some certifications, awards etc. This is the ‘decision’ making stage for any customer

3) Cross sell/upsell elements

This is the element for cross sell & upsell where in the customers are lured for either choose a higher ticket item or take some other SKUs together with present one to get a better deal (basically bundle deals).

A perfect analogy of this is offline stores wherein the sales person always try to increase the ticket size & give you some some bundle deals like socks with shoes etc.

If you want to do this, do smartly as there are high chances of drops offs if you push too much

4) Information based elements

This is a important element to be inserted which tells users about all the information needed to buy a product or service. It has product usage videos, FAQs, descriptions, content blogs etc. This is a ‘engagement’ stage of any customer.

5) Social elements

Social elements consists of media mentions, clients logos, case studies, links to the social media handles with ratings, a small HTML snippet of the social chats etc. This is again a trust element which is more to do with buzz in external mediums like media, social media etc.

2) UX elements :-

UX elements govern the flow and types & quantity of CTA. Sometimes LP are not just a single page but series of web pages to complete the journey. The flow of entire pages & the user journey should be easy & fluid.

The CTAs can be form filling, whatsapp, chat bot, calling number, missed call number or even order (buy) directly from this page (rare scenario because in case of direct buy, organization land users not on a special LP but rather inside the website on the PDP page).

TIP :- More than one CTAs are good to have but more than 4 are confusing. So ideal is just 2 or at max 3 & not more than this.

TIP :- In a long scroll LP (although not recommended), CTA needs to be fixed or floating for ease of customers.

TIP :- Verbiage of CTA are very important e.g. Get a free callback or Get a free assistance both have different CTRs and should be experimented thoroughly. Similarly Order now or Buy now also have differernt CTRs. What works or what doesn’t has no set defined rules. Just try & learn

3) 3C’s elements (content, creative & communication) :-

Last but not the least is 3C’s which are content, creative & communication. This basically defines the look & feel of the LP.

{Remember the thumb rule here is :- Be Crisp, Clear, Consistent & Classy}

Every organization should define a brand tonality (part of bigger exercise which we call as building Brand bible) & should stick to that. Changing them is not at all recommended. The 3C’s on the LP should be simple, clear & pleasing to eyes. Too much information & too much clutter should be avoided. Remember goal is to convert the customer and not churn away. Read more Content to commerce strategies here https://www.priyangagarwal.com/post/content-2-commerce-strategies-for-success

Summary & General Tips :-

1) Having a less loading speed for LP is must. Don’t compromise. Strategize basis on this only. Too many pixels increase page speed. So balance off.

2) Having too many UI elements is not recommended at all. Be wise. Select & choose few elements & do A/B testing (Promotional, Trust & Informational element is must, rest elements like social & cross sell/upsell are optional).

3) More than one CTAs are good to have but not too many.

4) Design of the page should be clean with breathing spaces. A big NO on too much clutter

5) A few pop ups are good to have. But don’t irritate customers on this front.

6) A strict NO on showing ads on LP. A big reason for drop offs

7) Restrict to have more than 1 page in LP.

8) The content & creative should be as per the brand guidelines. The website, app & LP should have the same tonality, colour scheme & content. Consistency is the key