Landing Page Best Practices

Sarina Remiasz - September 21, 2021 2:30 pm

Creating a landing page may sound like an easy task, and in some ways, it is. The hard part comes when your landing page isn’t getting the conversions or generating the leads you want.

Having created thousands of landing pages for our clients, we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t when it comes to these important lead generators. No single recipe will work for all businesses, but here are guidelines for developing a successful landing page.

To Gate or Not to Gate

Which content should be gated? It’s the question all marketers have asked themselves at one point. While the answer can be subjective based on your goals, here are our recommendations for deciding what content is worth gating behind a form.

Whitepapers, eBooks, guides, and webinars are all resources that should typically be gated. These types of resources all have valuable content that goes deeper than top-of-the-funnel “101” level content. The download must be engaging and educational enough for a visitor to be willing to give their information – they know by now that their submission likely will be followed up by sales reps, so sharing their info includes a cost/benefit analysis.

Conversely, resources like case studies, infographics, brochures and marketing collateral with lighter or more promotional than educational content should not be gated because it’s more promotional (about you) than educational (about them). Instead, these marketing assets should be used openly on your site to promote your brand story, problems solved, benefits, and measurable outcomes of your products and services.

Know Your Audience

A landing page’s format, content and offering will depend on who you’re targeting, so before you begin creating your landing page, we recommend going through the brand story process. This will aid you in identifying your target audience, their problems, what they want from you, and messaging that will resonate with them the most.

5 Landing Page Best Practices

1. Add Your Menu & Header

If you are familiar with common landing page recommendations, you may be weary of this suggestion. Many marketers recommend against including your menu and header in your landing page to avoid “distracting” visitors and getting them to focus solely on your offer. We disagree with this: if you have an engaging offer with content that resonates, having a header and menu on your landing page should not distract from your offer, and should actually work to cross-promote other relevant pages of your site as well. After all, B2B buyers view 13 pieces of content before making a purchase or entering an agreement with a company, according to a 2020 survey by FocusVision.

And what if your offer doesn’t resonate? What’s the backup plan? Your header and menu serve as a place to go when they want to look deeper into your other offerings. This also helps to decrease your page’s bounce rate.

2. Forms

As one of the most important parts of your landing page, the form should follow a few key guidelines. First, it should always be above the fold, meaning that it is seen immediately by the visitor when the page loads without scrolling down (at least in part).

Shortening your forms as much as you can is also a good practice. We’ve found that longer forms are less likely to be submitted because many visitors look at them as too time-consuming or requiring too much information, especially if they are on their phone. The theme here is to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to convert.

3. Create Copy That Resonates

As mentioned before, knowing your audience is key to creating a successful landing page. Your landing page content can drastically change depending on who you are targeting.

For example, when targeting industry experts or knowledge seekers, a more information-heavy landing page without extra frills may be the way to go. On the other hand, if you are targeting customers for a more commoditized/transactional solution, condensing information using graphics and videos to make the offering easily digestible may be more appropriate.

4. A/B Test

As a tool that can be easily overlooked by many marketers, A/B testing is valuable when deciding between different landing page ideas. Maybe you are torn between two different page layouts and aren’t sure which layout would encourage more conversions. Simply run a test serving both pages to your visitors and see which version gets more conversions. There’s no harm in trying.

HubSpot has a user-friendly landing page creation tool that makes A/B testing easy. WordPress users can find plug-ins to manage A/B testing.

5. Content Reinforcement

There are a few optional items that can be added to your landing pages to strengthen their content. These include testimonials, videos and links to relevant materials.

If you are creating a landing page for a resource promoting a specific product offering, testimonials will be very helpful when trying to build your credibility and highlight the benefits of your service/product. Linking to other relevant resources from your landing page can also be helpful, as it makes additional information easily accessible.

If you are struggling with low conversions and a low average time on page, videos are a great way to serve content to your visitors in a more engaging way. Depending on your vertical, visitors are typically much more likely to watch a video than read a block of text.

Get the Most Out of Your Landing Pages

At Innovaxis, we are experts in creating landing pages that generate high-quality leads. If you’re spending a lot of time and effort on landing pages and you’re not seeing results, contact us so we can help.