mat t hewwo o dward.co .uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tips/landing-page-optimization-design-examples/

Evgeniy Garkaviy

Landing Page Optimization – Boost Conversion With TheseDesign Examples!

This Is A Guest Post From Evgeniy Garkaviy

The Landing page is the most crucial page on your website. You have a f ew seconds to convince visitors thatyour product or service is right f or them.

In this post, you will learn my landing page optimization secrets along with real lif e examples.

What You Will Learn

How to use landing page optimization to increase prof its

How to analyse your landing page

The crucial things every landing page needs

Real world landing page design examples

Introducing Evgeniy Garkaviy

I have been working in SEO and Pay Per Click marketing f or over 4 years.

I have helped many small businesses in the UK and Germany reduce the cost of customer acquisit ion andhelping them get the maximum out of their marketing investment.

I am a Google AdWords certif ied partner and contribute regularly to www.temi.co.uk which I co-own. I have vastexperience with PPC and landing page optimization and of f er a range of PPC services to my clients.

Landing Page Optimization Made Easy

It is very easy to create a landing page but it is also just as easy to screw it up.

A lot of landing page designers wrongly assume they know what a user will be looking f or on your landing page.But that really depends on what action you want the user to take.

A poorly designed landing page can end up costing you a lot of money – I will show you exactly what you needto do and what you should avoid on your landing pages.

Using Cheesy Stock Photos

The majority of landing pages all suf f er f rom the same problem of using very similar stock photos.

Men and women in suits shaking hands: if the page of f ers some business services.

Workers smiling: in some research companies, developers.

Girl with the headset: online stores where a happy manager will help you…

You get the picture.

Using boring images like this is killing your conversions.

You may think that successf ul people on landing pages gives you creditability and trust, but most people donot trust them and that includes me.

Use Google search and you will see many similar landing pages using the same images.

A page containing a f unny or engaging picture is much more likely to catch a users attention like this one-

It is much better than boring men in suits shaking hands. What do you expect to see on a page that of f ers carinsurance?

I guess it might be a car, but you must think deeper and f ind something unique that will be interesting f or your

potential customers.

Poor Headline

Having a good headline helps to gain peoples attention spending more time on the page and browsing around.

The headline is one of the most important f actors on a page to help you communicate with visitors directly.The best headline has a clear proposition and call to action.

A good exercise to go through is to imagine your page without text – just the headline, call to action and f orm.

Would you take action based on just the headline? If you would your headline is perf ect!

Have a look at the page below-

Where is the headline? “Get Started Now” is the call to action. The video is there, but that is all.

From this, I can’t even understand what this page is of f ering. The headline is crit ical, even simple text like “SEOagency in Birmingham” would help.

Using video on a landing page can be hit or miss. If you have a lot of mobile traf f ic its likely they won’t be ableto load or watch the video which will hurt conversion.

Take a look at this landing page design that makes great use of the headline element-

Landing Page Is Not Relevant To The Advert

It is important that your landing page is highly relevant to your advert. You need to make sure you placerelevant text that helps inf orm users properly.

Sometimes you need to use a long f orm landing page with lots of text and sometimes it needs to be short andpunchy depending on your business.

Don’t f orget that Adwords has a “quality score” that is “an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, andlanding pages are to a person seeing your ad”.

Theref ore, if you have a relevant landing page to your ad, you will have a higher quality score (f rom 1 to 10). Atthe same time, the higher quality score means lower cost per click f or your adverts.

Who doesn’t want more traf f ic f or less money?

You should make your sure landing page-

Shows the benef its of your of f er.

Tells the user what they should expect af ter taking action.

Is specif ic.

For example,I saw this ad-

The ad says “Full Time Prof essionalShaman When You’ve Tried Everything” butwhen you visit the landing page it isn’t reallyrelevant to the advert. There is no header orcall to action.

This would be much better if there was a clear headline directly relevant to the advert with a clear call to action.

Information Overload

Your landing page should only f ocus on a single of f er. If you have more than one of f er on your site, then youmust create a separate landing page f or each of f er.

Some people think that such inf ormation as testimonials, mobile version, and great brand descriptions must beon a landing page to build trust.

The truth is that this usually only conf uses visitors and stops them f rom taking the action you want them totake.

You should remove all distracting elements f rom the page that does not contribute to the main call- to-action.

What are the biggest problems with this page?

It has 3 of f ers – Why do I need SEO, On/of f page package & 100% allowed methods.

The call to action isn’t clear

All 3 of f ers take you to the same page

Anyone searching SEO and clicking an advert, already knows they need SEO

Instead of giving users 3 dif f erent choices that all lead down the same path, they should just of f er 1 choice.Making people choose is highly damaging to conversion.

Let’s take a look at a good example-

This landing page design has-

A nice photo

Short registration f orm at the top

Clear headline

Good content

This makes it very easy f or the user to take action and sign up.

Poor Call To Action

This is one of the most important parts of any landing page.

Af ter clicking your ad, people must immediately understand what you are of f ering. They will not spend muchtime browsing your page if there is no clear call to action.

This is especially true if you are selling something: people do not buy if they do not understand what they arepaying f or.

Your call to action must be well designed and stand out f rom the rest of the page. Don’t f orget to mentionwhat visitors should expect af ter clicking the button.

A good “thank you” page is very important, too. Your goal is to keep the user engaged af ter they have takenaction. Add social buttons to your “thank you” page f or extra bang f or buck.

Let’s take a look at a bad example-

There are quite a f ew things wrong with this landing page example-

It was a PPC ad but what should I do if I want to continue with the site? The only button “Get in Touch”(looks like a button but actually isn’t) appears on the f ooter.

People do not like to make a call. They want to get in touch via email or chat at f irst.

For the long landing page; it is better to repeat the call to action twice: at the top and in the f ooter.

They design landing pages. Really?

Here is a much better example-

What you will notice with this landing page example is-

Very appealing design.

Of f er is quite clear: Sign up now f or £1.19 per month.

Suitable list of benef its.

Call to action appears on the top and at the bottom.

Of f ers live chat and telephone support.

Sign up button is exactly the right size and quite visible. You can see that it is the most important area ofthe page.

This is a f antastic landing page that has all of the elements needed to boost conversions!

Poor Design Structure

There are many landing pages that have attractive designs but the visual hierarchy is poor.

An ef f ective landing page must have-

Clear, readable f ont size.

The same f or image size. People like to see big images because bigger images mean improvedconversion rate.

Clear & bold headline.

Call to action button must stand out.

As I said previously, if your landing page is long, then it is better to repeat your primary call to action.

This allows the users who scrolled down to read your f ull content to sign up easily as well.

If you are selling something like clothes or bags, then you can consider adding some other elements to helpwith conversion.

Something like a delivery countdown near the buy button that will encourage potential customers to make apurchase immediately.

For clothing, you can add “select a size” button – usef ul tactic if you want to make shopper reach a quickdecision.

When a user has taken action once, they are likely to take action again. Selecting the size prepares them to hitthe buy button.

Phrases like “only 2 lef t” can also help make a quick sale.

Asking For Too Much Information

The less inf ormation you ask f or on your landing page the more people will convert.

The ideal number of the f orm f ields on a landing page is 3- name, email address and password (if you arerequesting registration), city (if you are selling something), etc.

In f act, the only inf ormation you need is their email address because once you have that, you can obtain therest of the inf ormation later.

People do not like to share their personal inf ormation because they worry about their privacy.

That is why you need to include a statement assuring that their personal details are saf e and will not beshared.

Just add some text stating that f act on your registration f orm and the page will look more trustworthy.

Here is a bad example-

They have 7 f ields f or the “Free SEO analysis” of f er. But wait; the 7th f ield “website address” is not evenrequired.

At the same time, they’re asking me f ormy f irst name, last name, email, company name and telephone number.

What do they need my company name? In my opinion, 3 f ields would be perf ect f or this of f er-

Name

Email

Website Address

How can you send me SEO audit if you do not even know the URL f or my website?

Here is a much better f orm in the same niche:

Only 4 f ields. In addition to the 3 main f ields I mentioned above, they added “message f ield” where you can asksomething about prices, additional services, etc.

Wrapping It Up

Your landing page can make or break your bottom line prof its. A good landing page lowers advertising costsand deliver more customers per dollar spent.

But a bad landing page can easily see you burn through your advertising budget with litt le to show f or it.

Matt showed how important a good landing page is in his Facebook marketing strategy last week.

If you struggle to make good landing pages you can just use LeadPages which has lots of t ime tested highconverting landing page design templates to choose f rom.

Anyone can make awesome landing pages with their simple interf ace and the increases in conversion is morethan worth it!

I know Matthew is using LeadPages quite heavily across the blog and RankCracker at the moment!

You can also benef it f rom 21 more landing page examples.

Have you got any other landing page optimization or design tips?