REVIEWS
With these 12 true & tried tips, you can level with landing page design best practices of some of the most successful internet companies. And they’re easy to do, so why not?
When B2B companies adopt a marketing automation platform such as Salesforce Pardot* to take centerstage into their digital marketing, they are often challenged by the new marketing components they all-of-a-sudden have to invent.
If it wasn’t challenging enough to ensure that these new digital marketing components be ‘at par’ with their corporate branding, they also have to ooze Best-of-Breed digitally. If you are one of them, this articles answers the questions in your mind:
12 Landing Page Design Best Practices that are Easy to Adopt
Adopting Landing Page Design Best Practices can bring you and your website several elusive prizes: a boost to your brand, more site traffic, improved lead generation, and extended prospect insights.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #1 :
ADD A FORM
A form offers THE BEST WAY to convert anonymous website visitors into prospects you can build a relationship with.
No matter what kind of form, add a form and collect your visitor’s email address.
The secret to successful conversion here is not make it feel like ‘having to complete a form’. Rather, invoke the submission of an email call-to-action through offering something attractive to your website visitor. That something should be ‘of value’ to these potential clients, ideally free (or a sharply reduced price). Think of a limited time offer, a free report, a consultation, a relevant eBook, an implementation guide… Most importantly, the give-away has to be 1) relevant to your potential client in relations to where that prospect is in their buying journey. And 2), it has to build the relationship between you and the prospect.
While give-away may have business value, resist the temptation to want lots of info in exchange. Keep your form short. The shorter the better. Opt for just an email address, first name and last name. Then, build that skeleton profile through progressive profiling techniques.
This is my top tip, by far: add a form to all your landing pages. – It’s essential for marketing automation.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #2 :
ADD KEYWORDS
Including search keywords to your URL tells Google and other search engines that these keywords really ‘belong’ to you. You are not just talking about them in your website content. You are those keywords. Keywords can be included in the URL root, a category, or the landing page portion of the URL. All options are good for SEO.
Beyond this, they confirm to your readers that they have landed at the right place, which help build trust and will enhances the likelihood of them completing the form and parting with their email address.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #3 :
BUSINESS NAME IN URL
Adding your business name to your URL is an excellent practice for several reasons. a) It’s good branding. b) It ensures site visitors that they are giving you, their trusted brand, their information. It makes them feel safe. This is particularly true for strong, well-known brands. And c) It is also good for your SEO presuming that you will want to rank well for your own brandname and products/services associated with your brand.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #4 :
ADD BUSINESS NAME
It may seem rather obvious as you are reading this, but just ascertain that your business name is either in the landing page copy or at least actually visible on the landing page. Given that a large portion of landing pages do not include the business name, doing so will give you an edge in credibility and in SEO.
Landing Page Design Best Practices Tip #5 :
ADD ADDRESS
Websites where the address is displayed right next to the form, where it is easily findable from the landing page ~ those sites convey trustworthiness. These business are for real. They exist. Adding an address to your landing page is good business sense.
It is often also highly practical: potential office visitors can determine the exact location of your office and can assess how long it will take to get there.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #6 :
ADD PHONE NUMBER
Add a phone number, and perhaps even make it a feature on your landing page ~ ‘Call 1-800… ‘ . You can combine that with a ‘call to action’ people can get a free consultation or instant expert advice, or merely ask a simple question.
Landing Page Design Best Practices – Tip #7 :
FEATURE a TESTIMONIAL
Add a testimonial. Testimonials convey trustworthiness.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #8 :
ADD FURTHER INFO
Add product/service benefits (and/or a search* option). This will help prospects and buyers to easily learn more about you and buy from you. Also good about your services. (*Search does represent a risk of the reader moving away from your goal: getting their email address, but furthers their goal of: finding answers to their questions).
Landing Page Design Best Practices #9 :
CREATE a SEO TITLE
Add brand name, location and other search keywords to the page title for SEO purposes.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #10 :
ADD MAP
If relevant, add a Google map. TIP: test and ensure that Google has mapped your offices, shop or conference venue location correctly. Sometimes it is around the corner from where you really are. If you have a business like Pizza Hut, well, then that’s a problem.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #11 :
HAVE TRUST SYMBOLS
Add one or more relevant trust –inducing symbols. Such as a membership of an industry association, winning competition prize badges or banners that tell you’re a top performer in survey results.
Landing Page Design Best Practices #12 :
DISPLAY a PHOTO
Feature a relevant, beautiful photo. Ideally of a happy person. In context.
You have a few options: Show the person who matches the ‘signature file’ on the form. Or, feature the prospect Persona enjoying the product, by placing him/her in the context of the benefits derived of your product. If you wonder what I mean with that, think: Pretty girls having fun playing at a beach volley ball scene, laughing, and … drinking Coco Cola.
Bonus Tip
If yours is a landing page for a Google Ad, Google will give your ad preference if the landing page is considered to be of good quality. In their view, a “high-quality landing page” should have “appropriate and original content that helps the user complete their task. It should be easily navigable and transparent about the nature of the business, how the site interacts with the user’s computer and how it intends to use their personal information”.
(In addition to Google landing page quality, expected click-through rate and ad relevancy — during Google Ads’ real-time auction, many additional factors such as the reader’s device, his/her location and the time of day, are considered to determine the quality of an ad.)
Over to You
I promised that these would be 12 really easy-to-implement tips for you. You can add most of these features to your landing page within a couple of hours. Don’t take my word for it. Implement the suggestions and see for yourself that these are 12 top tips for landing page design best practices. Then, come back for more.
Alternatively contact us for a free consultation on how we can help you to make your landing pages convert better. We would be delighted to help out.
*Update: Pardot is renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement as of April 5, 2022.
Last Updated on July 11, 2022
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