website pages are static. They might help with branding, educating, and building authority, but they’re basically glorified placeholders. If you want your website to actually work for your business, you also need pages that generate leads and drive conversions. This is best done via strategically designed landing pages. The question is, how can you optimize them for conversions?
What is a Lead Generation Landing Page?
Before we dig into the nitty-gritty details of landing page optimization, let’s get clear on the basics.
“In digital marketing, a landing page is a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign,” Unbounce explains. “It’s where a visitor lands after they click on a link in an email, or ads from Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or similar places on the web.”
Unlike most website pages, which have multiple links, buttons, and calls-to-action (CTAs), landing pages are highly focused on one central goal or CTA. Everything is designed to drive someone to opt in, sign-up, or otherwise enter your sales and marketing funnel.
Tips for Optimizing Conversions on Your Landing Page
Optimizing a landing page for lead generation is challenging. However, it’s also not rocket science. As long as you pay attention to a few key principles and study what’s already working, you’ll be fine. According to this New York SEO agency, here are some tips you can use:
1. Focus Above the Fold
Never assume that a landing page visitor will scroll once they’re on the page. You have just a few seconds to grab their attention, and that means the majority of your focus should be above-the-fold. In fact, your landing page should be capable of performing and converting with nothing more than the content at the top of the page. (Yes, this means your opt-in form must be above-the-fold.)
2. Use a Lean Opt-In Form
Speaking of opt-in forms, you need to keep them lean. Every field you add to your forms is another reason for a potential lead to not complete the form. As fields increase, conversion rates decrease.
If two fields will do, there’s no sense in including three. In fact, the highest-converting landing opt-in forms only ask for a name and email address. Asking for a phone number, address, and other personal information will drive opt-ins down.
3. Test Different CTA Button Copy
The best landing page optimizers are laser-focused on the details. This means optimizing individual elements like the copy on your opt-in/CTA buttons.
As a general rule of thumb, a generic CTA button copy doesn’t work nearly as well as specific text. You want your buttons to be action-oriented. Here are some examples of generic text:
- Register now
- Click here
- Subscribe
And here are some examples of specific action-oriented CTA button copy:
- Get your free copy
- Send me my free gift
- Join the movement
Do you see how much more powerful this copy is? It compels people to click, rather than simply describing what the click does.
4. Focus on Benefits Over Features
In the marketing world, we say that features tell and benefits sell. If you’re just talking about features of your product or company on a landing page, you’re really only telling them who you are. It might be interesting, but it’s not exceptionally valuable. It’s better if you share the benefits of these features. That’s how you compel people to take action. Anytime you find yourself talking about technical features, switch gears and turn those features into tangible benefits that the customer enjoys when using the feature.
5. Eliminate Exit Points
When a page has a bunch of links pointing them to other pages, they bounce much faster. Your objective with a landing page is to eliminate all (or at least most) of the exit points. This means no links in the header or hyperlinks in the copy (unless it’s driving them further down the conversion funnel).
6. Use Exit-Intent Popups
In addition to removing exit points, you can add exit-intent popups. This is software that automatically detects when a visitor is about to leave the page and serves them an overlay opt-in form that encourages them to subscribe, register, or opt in before leaving.
Putting it All Together
For many businesses, landing pages are the heartbeat of the company. It’s how they generate a majority of their leads (a fraction of which become customers). By learning the art of landing page optimization, you can instantly elevate your business and improve results across the board.