Want to increase the effectiveness of your landing pages but not where to start? In this guide we’ll explore seven important factors that need to be applied to create landing pages that drive traffic and conversions for your business.

Generating traffic for your website is important, but it’s how you handle that traffic that really counts. Effective landing pages should allow users to access relevant information and offers that move them closer to your conversion goals.

Understanding the role and function of your landing pages is essential to the success of your online marketing efforts. For businesses that are currently generating a steady stream of traffic but failing to capitalise on that traffic, the problem could lie in your landing pages.

#1 Learn and Refine

Creating effective landing pages that resonate with your target audience and fulfil the conversion goals of your business is a process. Testing, refining, and optimizing is an important element in understanding the function and purpose of presenting content to your audience. Whether you are a marketer or business owner who is handling the online presence of your business, the most important thing that you can do is continually test, record data, and apply changes based on the information that you collect over time, this includes proper page formatting.

Successful landing pages aren’t created on the first attempt. The most valuable insight into your audience comes from real-life data and testing over an extended period.

#2 Make the Journey Simple

Before creating new product or service landing pages for your website, it is important to consider what you want that landing page to achieve. When a new user lands on your website, they should be funnelled towards a predetermined conversion goal that drives your business objectives. For eCommerce businesses that may involve moving visitors from a product page to a checkout page. For a service-based business, the conversion goal may be a phone call or email enquiry. Irrespective of your field, the conversion goal should be determined before creating a new landing page.

Think of your website landing pages as a funnel that directs users towards a sale or enquiry. In order to consolidate traffic, reduce your bounce rate and ensure you’re getting the most out of your traffic, it’s essential that your landing pages are aligned with your conversion objectives.

#3 Define Your Conversion Goal

As a marketer or business owner, it’s important that your website creates a logical and cohesive experience for users. If users are reaching your website landing pages expecting to find out more information about a particular service or product, then you should clearly communicate how they can acquire the product or service in question. Before you create a new landing page, you should be able to answer the following questions:

What action do I want the user to take from here?
Is the action simple for the user?
How much is this action worth to the business (this is especially important for landing pages geared towards PPC marketing)
Is there another page on the website that is already targeting the same keyword, service, or product?
Can the user complete a conversion on one page?

#4 Consider Mobile Usability

According to the latest data from Tech Jury, 63% of total web traffic now comes from mobile devices and tablets. For marketers and website owners, it is more important than ever to consider mobile usability. Websites that fail to create a site that can be accessed, browsed and fully utilised from a mobile device could be ostracising almost two-thirds of their potential audience.

Consider how your landing pages look on mobile devices and remember to keep your most important information above the fold (scroll). Most users will skim the content of your website to find the call to action (CTA) or specific piece of information such as a phone number, price, or contact form. Ensure that CTA buttons are easy to locate and that they are not hidden between large content blocks or below the fold. For websites looking to collect user details and generate enquiries, it’s important to display your contact details or a contact form in a prominent position. For eCommerce businesses, the emphasis needs to be on having an ‘add to cart’ button and ‘quantity’ button that is easy to navigate.

#5 Use Internal Linking Wisely

There is no disputing the role that internal links play in an effective on-site SEO strategy. Internal links (linking between two pages on the same website) provide search engines with important information about the structure and hierarchy of your website. When it comes to creating landing pages, it’s important to simplify the user journey and funnel visitors towards a conversion goal – not towards a distraction. Testing from Sydney SEO company Safari Digital revealed that websites that over-optimized important landing pages with internal links in prominent positions experienced a higher bounce rate that those who kept them towards the bottom of content.

When creating landing pages, it’s a good idea to keep internal links away from the main body of text. Your landing pages should provide enough information about the product or service you are offering that users do not need to navigate away from the page to complete a conversion. Minimize distractions and simplify the user journey by keeping internal links in the bottom third or the page.

#6 Social Proof Matters

Crowd-sourced reviews play an important role in strengthening user trust and shaping opinions on the buyer journey. The latest available data from the PEW Research Centre revealed that more than half of adults under 50-years of age habitually check online reviews before completing a purchase. Of those surveyed, more than 40% claim that they will always check reviews before making a purchase. On the other hand, a mere 16% of adults in the United States said that they do not check online reviews at all when completing a purchase.

For website owners, it’s more important than ever to make the most of customer reviews. Mitigate the instance of users navigating away from your website to learn more about a product or service by displaying reviews on your landing pages. User generated reviews are one of the most powerful ways to improve trust and boost credibility with your potential customers.

What Can You Take Away?

Creating landing pages that drive the conversion goals of your website takes planning, effort, and continual optimization. The tips outlined in this article provide a blueprint for improving your landing page strategy and making the most of your website traffic.

Remember to make the most of data available through Google Analytics and Google Search Console to optimize and improve the effectiveness of your landing pages. Making changes based on real user data will significantly improve your conversion rate.