8 Tips to Boost Conversions on your Landing Page

Advertising is useless unless it points prospects toward information that leads them to convert. An effective landing page can bridge the gap between advertisements and salespeople, delivering warm leads and providing information for interested visitors.

B2B businesses have caught on to this effective technique. Sixty-eight percent of B2B businesses use landing pages to earn new business, Marketing Sherpa reports. Holdouts of this popular trend usually send prospects directly to their Web sites, but those prospects are less likely to convert than if they'd been set to an informative, well-designed landing page.

1. Design a Fresh Page

Landing pages and Web sites may look similar, but they serve different purposes. A landing page is essentially sales content designed to get viewers interested in your products or services. Like any effective advertisement, a landing page has a clear message and persuasive content to support that message. Design your landing page around a singular idea.

Whether your service or product is the best, the cheapest or the only one around, use typographic hierarchy to direct viewers toward the takeaway. A typical landing page includes a logo, information that expands on the advertisement and a link or lead form for more information.

If your small business doesn't have a professional look, Logo Garden logo design can create a brand scheme to highlight your landing page, Web site and any other brand materials. As you launch new campaigns, design new pages. Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate seven times more leads than those with fewer than 10, Hubspot reports.

2. Encapsulate the Call to Action

A landing page is about what's next. As you design your page, focus the reader's attention on what he or she needs to do to continue down the sales path. Your call-to-action is crucial for conversions, and it needs be a heavily researched.

Encapsulation focuses a page on the most important information. Highlighting the CTA by enclosing it in a circle for instance, forces the readers eye to see it. When the reader clicks through to  the page, he is directed toward the next step.

3. Move Important Information Above the Fold

Web designers often consider the blink test, the three to five seconds when a visitor first lands on your page in which he or she judges it and decides whether to stay. Landing pages are especially prone to the blink test, so all important information must be above the fold.

That may mean paring down the copy or reducing line width to conserve space, but it's necessary to keep visitors on your page long enough to consume the content. Write landing page copy in the second person using you and your. Visitors want to feel like you're speaking directly to them,  and this direct language will attract their attention.

4. Get Creative With Copywriting

All the graphics and effects in the world can’t replace great copy. Your message needs to be made clear with you words. Copy that is written for everyone can often do more damage than good. For instance, if you’re selling POS software aimed at small and micro business owners, the words may include “affordable” and “focus on what you love” while large businesses have different goals.

Stay away from all caps or exclamation marks; these are spam triggers that scare customers. Another common sense, but overlooked, tactic is readability. Flashy fonts can be great for leaving a mental mark, but hard-to-read text is frustrating, especially on a mobile device.

5. Test For Success

Think of testing your landing page as practicing a craft. You can’t get better without striving to do so.Test from a data and analytic standpoint and for usability. Test multiple aspects of your page  for quality  A/B split testing. This includes the headline, copy, call-to-action and the positioning of  links, buttons and objects.

You can calculate results with tools from sites such as SEMrush.com. Those sites track organic  positions for domains and landing URLs, search volumes, CPC, competition, number of results and more. Place your call to action in different locations of the page and track the results. A centered CTA might work  better if there are few images yet a large centered image can guide the reader to an off-center CTA.

Test load times. A sluggish page can hurt your conversions and your SEO. An impatient customer might leave your page even though they were ready to buy. Although the results are not definitive, Google has said slow loading websites will have their rankings penalized. Pingdom.com and other similar sites test site speed to analyze it and find bottlenecks.

6. Bring Video Into The Mix

Attention spans are like the dinosaurs of the digital age. In a world where they’re on the brink of extinction, you need something that captures a user’s attention and keeps it. Video can serve as an  equalizer for visitors just looking to pass by. A step-by-step tutorial to show the simple and easy-to-use nature of a product is a great B2B tool. A message from the CEO is often used by startups looking to connect with customers. If you create a great landing page video, don’t be satisfied without testing different taglines to get the best results.

7. Remove Navigation

One of the main principles that separates a landing page from a Web site is navigation. The best landing pages don't have navigation bars because it forces the visitor to take in the content on the page. Instead of navigation, focus on directional cues to guide the reader.

Tweaking the angle of an image can get the user to naturally read over a pitch or message before leaving the page. The absence of navigation means you will want to have large identifiable buttons heading toward important pages

8. Show Off With Social

Your social media strategy is nothing without a share-friendly landing page. Social media is obviously an integral part of growing a business, but there is a psychological advantage to showing shares and likes.

Social proof, or informational social influence means people will naturally be inclined to imitate a popular action. There are plenty of options like Facebook sharing and follow buttons, embedded tweets or just number of subscribers/customers.

You can find step-by-step embedding instructions with resources like Moz and WordPress. Case studies and testimonials also gain the trust of potential customers. focus on generating conversation, engagement and interest no matter the social route you decide to take. Use Socialcrawlytics.com to learn about your and your competitors social metrics.