“A landing page is a website page with a specific purpose — the objective of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads.

While there are many types of landing pages the intent is the same — get more leads.” (Hubspot)

When creating a landing page for your product or service there are several best practices that need to be observed to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing message. They are as follows: 1) Proper Landing Page Design 2) Specific and Relevant Landing Page Copy 3) A/B Testing 4) Metrics and KPI’s to Track.

Proper Landing Page Design

In order to create a well performing landing page you will need:

• An attention grabbing H1 Heading
• Relevant imagery to break up text heavy pages
• Lead Capture Form(s)
• CTA that is action-oriented and compelling
• Efficient copy that informs your visitors without fluff

Specific and Relevant Landing Page Copy

“For every 10 people that visit your landing page, at least seven of them will bounce off the page.” (Hubspot) In order to avoid a high bounce rate, your copy needs to convey your product or service to your audience in a clear and concise manner. This also means that the audience will also be able to UNDERSTAND your product/service within seconds of visiting your landing page. Your headline and your call to action (CTA) need to be complimentary to your copy, use the headline to draw their attention, the copy to solidify your authority, and the CTA compels the reader to complete the contact form.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is one of the most important steps in rolling out landing pages for your products/services. While it is very easy to conduct, it is often overlooked, leading to dissatisfied customers, a high bounce rate, and a negative blow to your organization's authority.

“A/B testing is simply splitting your traffic to two (or more) variations of a page to see which performs better” (Hubspot).

In layman's terms, you need to see what your landing page looks like across different devices, AND web browsers. According to Statista.com “Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide. In the second quarter of 2020, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 51.53 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017.” (Statista) Therefore it is essential to ensure that the different design elements of your landing page are not affected by smaller or larger screen sizes.

Metrics and KPI’s to Track

Metrics are vital to a landing page’s success. Trust us, you won’t be able to make a perfect landing page in one fell swoop. Landing pages require regular maintenance and adjustments to truly optimize. The following metrics are what we consider some of the most important to landing page development.

• Page visits ~ number of unique visitors to website or a specific page.
• Traffic Source ~ how did the visitor find the website? In example, organic search, paid, social, etc.
• Submission Rates ~ the number of form submissions divided by the number of page visits.
• Bounce Rate ~ visitors who immediately abandoned the page upon viewing. 
• Form Abandonment ~ started form and did not submit. 

To maximize the effectiveness of each landing page determine a cadence for review, a brief meeting to discuss any recommended changes, implement the changes, and repeat. Really, it's that simple.