Because every industry, business, and audience is different, there is no exact formula for implementing design and copy that will create the perfect landing page. But, there are elements that have proven to work best at attracting attention, educating audiences, and initiating conversions. By using these elements, you can improve the effectiveness and power of your landing pages.
These are the ten elements you must have if you want to create the perfect landing page for your products or services.
1. Concise and Compelling Headline (and Subheading)
A headline is one of the most important pieces of a perfect landing page. It’s also one of the most difficult elements to create because you only have a few words to execute such a big task. A strong landing page headline must be concise while attracting attention and promoting understanding. It must interest and educate audiences in just a few short words. Because this can be difficult to do in one phrase or sentence, the best landing pages also include a supporting subheading that drives the message home.
2. Hero Shot
A “hero shot” is a large, eye-catching image featured at the top of a landing page. Hero shots are essential because you want to quickly convey a message to your audience, and images help people process information up to 60,000 times faster than text alone. So include an image that represents the message you are sharing. Choose a graphic that captures the feelings you want to convey or the results you want to show.
3. Identification of Audience Problems
The perfect landing page helps audiences identify their situation and the problems they are having. It clearly explains the troublesome world that the potential customer is living in which can be fixed by your product or service. Use copy that outlines the complicated issues they experience, the questions they have, or the struggles they face.
4. Expression of Your Solutions
Once you outline the problems your audience has, explain how your product or service provides a solution to those issues. Connect audience problems to your unique positioning statement, and explain how your product or service helps them overcome their obstacles.
5. List of Features and Benefits
After you introduce the larger solution you offer, dive deeper into how you are able to provide those benefits. Outline the features of your products and services and tie each one to the benefit it provides users, customers, and/or clients. Never only list your features. Always link them to benefits so your audience can understand why the features are relevant and important. Also, make this text easy to read, absorb, and scan by highlighting your copy as bullet points or call-out blurbs.
6. Credentials
Once you’ve made a few bold statements about how you help customers solve their problems, prove why you are qualified to do it. The perfect landing page includes credentials that give authority to the person or business offering the products or services. These credentials should include industry awards and recognition, a list of experience, or results data. It may also include logos of brands who have used or benefited from your products or services.
7. Social Proof
In addition to sharing information that shows your audience you know what you’re doing, also include social proof. Social proof is anything that helps your audience see that others are happy with your product or service. It may include testimonials, reviews, and social mentions. Whenever possible, make your social proof even more effective by including pictures of the person who made the comment. Kissmetrics found, “Testimonials are more likely to be believed when they are accompanied by a corresponding picture.”
8. One, Clear Call-to-Action
A landing page is designed to get an audience to take action. The most effective way to accomplish that goal is by using one call-to-action on the page. The perfect landing page doesn’t confuse audiences by pushing them in multiple directions. It’s built around one, clear call-to-action and continually uses copy that guides the audience toward taking that step. Consider the buyer stage your audience is in when they find your landing page, and always end your copy with a phrase that explains what they need to do next to advance through their buyer’s journey.
9. A/B Testing Capabilities
As mentioned at the beginning of this post, there is no exact formula for creating the perfect landing page. Landing pages will perform differently based on industry, audience, and offerings, and slight changes to details like copy, font colors, images, and button sizes can drastically change conversion rates. See this handy infographic on increasing lead conversion for a good primer. Then, so you can’t become complacent with your landing pages. You must continually adjust and test to see what changes make your page more effective. To accurately test your work and find the perfect landing page, use A/B testing tools that allow you to adjust and monitor your changes.
10. Inbound Links Directed to the Landing Page
The last must-have for a landing page has nothing to do with the content on your actual webpage. It has to do with the content on other pages of your website. The perfect landing page is linked to by other pages on your website. Adding inbound links that point to your landing page from other pages on your website will help your landing page get better SEO rankings. More links to a page tell search engines that a page is important. So link to your landing page from other pages on your site using your landing page’s target keyword as the anchor text.
Plug the Perfect Landing Page Into a Complete Digital Strategy
Now that you know how to create the perfect landing page, it’s time to put it to use.
A landing page can’t create results on its own. It needs to be book-ended with a strong strategy to draw traffic to the page and a strategic nurturing process to convert leads into sales and customers.
To learn how to plug your landing page into a complete digital marketing strategy that leads prospects through the entire buyer’s journey, get our free ebook that outlines the process from start to finish.
