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Episode 152: How to Improve a Landing Page Design for Conversion
732 Plays3 years ago
An effective landing page can make-or-break a lead generation campaign or product launch. This episode covers what we look for whenever we're reviewing a client's landing pages—or whenever we're designing our own!
3:15 What is a landing page?
6:15 Mobile responsiveness vs. desktop responsiveness
7:05 How to organize a landing page?
12:25 What content is needed on a landing page?
14:05 How can I include social proof?
16:50 Your Focus - The Next Step
Resources
Actual Review of a Landing Page: https://youtu.be/yNmeSC2dCck
Free Landing Page Template (Showit & WordPress/Elementor): https://daveyandkrista.com/landing-page-for-showit/
Blog Post: https://daveyandkrista.com/audience-5-simple-tips-for-creating-a-landing-page-that-converts/
Recommended
Transcript
Purpose of Landing Pages
00:00:05
Speaker
I want to reiterate that a landing page should have a singular focus. A landing page is not a place where you want to include your top-level navigation. You don't want to... Link off to your blog posts. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to include your most read blog posts or your most popular products, right? Your landing page really should be focused on whatever it is that you're looking to get people to do, whatever action it is that you're looking to get people to take. And so, like I said, typically that's going to be to get somebody to sign up for something.
Increasing Conversions
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:44
Speaker
Today on the podcast, we are discussing how to increase the conversion rate of a landing page. We're covering the exact elements of what we look for in a landing page and mistakes to avoid next time you're building a lead generation campaign. This episode has a corresponding blog post and YouTube video. The YouTube video is an actual recording of me reviewing one of our TILL clients webinar registration pages.
00:01:09
Speaker
So you'll see the principles that we discussed in the episode and the blog actually put into practice. We'll link to that in the show notes.
Announcements and Engagement
00:01:17
Speaker
Oh, and by the way, our Memorial Day weekend website sale is coming up. You won't want to miss it. Be sure to join our email community if you want to be the first to know when that sale drops and everything will be on sale from our full website templates to our add-on pages, including some of our most popular add-on pages that were recently released.
00:01:36
Speaker
As always, be sure to check out the show notes at daveyandchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you and let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands at Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at daveyandchrista. Now, on to the episode.
00:01:58
Speaker
Welcome back to the Brands at Book Podcast. Today we are talking about improving landing page conversion rates. Yes. Exciting. You sound excited. I am excited. I am excited. So this is based on, not really based on, but an extension of a YouTube video that I put together maybe a few months ago at this point.
00:02:18
Speaker
But if you haven't checked out the YouTube video, highly recommend it, basically what it is. It has a little bit of an introduction to it, but the core of it is a review I did of one of our clients over at Till, over at Till Agency, of their, I think it was a landing page.
00:02:36
Speaker
you know is a webinar registration page and basically what i was doing in that video was i was training our account managers or just providing them a little additional training on what to look for in a landing page design and so i want to talk a little bit more about each of those items on the podcast today
00:02:54
Speaker
But if you're interested in this topic, if you're trying to improve the conversion rates of a number of your landing pages, highly recommend checking out that YouTube video as well, and we'll be sure to link to that in
Landing Pages vs Homepages
00:03:06
Speaker
the show notes.
00:03:06
Speaker
Before we dive in, I think it might be helpful if you differentiate between a landing page and a website homepage because there's some confusion about what the differences are between the two. I know some clients that I've worked with have thought that their homepage was a landing page. So can you maybe differentiate between the two and say when you might use a landing page?
00:03:27
Speaker
Sure. So that's a really good question. Now, technically a landing page is any page on your website or any page of a website that somebody could potentially land on, right? So your homepage technically could be a landing page, you know, any sales page. What we have in mind in this discussion is a lead generation landing page.
00:03:45
Speaker
So what we mean by that is a page that you send people to, to collect either their email address or their phone number in order to send them, you know, something in return that might be, you know, somebody signing up for your newsletter. And so they're just signing up to receive news from you. It might be that they're registering for a webinar. They might be downloading some sort of lead magnet, like an ebook or something else, but that's really what I have in mind when I talk about a landing page, at least during this episode.
00:04:15
Speaker
A lot of times these pages don't have your typical website header and footer because the goal is to only give them a place to click to put in their email address.
Mobile Optimization Importance
00:04:24
Speaker
And we use these a lot of times to drive people to landing pages from our Facebook ads or from social media.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot that you can learn from improving the conversion rate of a landing page design for the rest of your website as well. So while your homepage, for instance, would probably have your top level navigation and links off to other pages, to a certain extent, every page on your website should have a singular focus.
00:04:50
Speaker
Right? Every page on your website should have some sort of purpose and really focus on getting somebody to the next step. Basically, those principles are amplified on a landing page. Right? Because you're really, the whole point of it is to get somebody's email address or to get somebody's phone number if you're following up via text. So yeah. Okay. That's helpful. All right. So what are a few things that we look for on a good landing page, a high converting landing page?
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, awesome. So I think just to the outset, I want to reiterate that a landing page should have a singular focus. A landing page is not a place where you want to include your top level navigation. You don't want to... Link off to your blog posts. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to include your most read blog posts or your most popular products, right? Your landing page really should be focused on whatever it is that you're looking to get people to do, whatever action is that you're looking to get people to take.
00:05:45
Speaker
Like I said, typically that's going to be to get somebody to sign up for something. Email address, webinar registration, whatever it might be, but it's whatever that action is that you want people to take. Now, one of the first things that we're going to look for when we're looking at a landing page design is whether it's mobile responsive.
00:06:04
Speaker
And one of the reasons that we're going to look, right, is because my guess is that for most of our websites, mobile traffic makes up at least 50% of our traffic, if not more. That's going to vary a little from industry to industry. Actually, for our website, a lot of people visit on desktop. And, you know, there's probably reasons for that. One, people are shopping for websites, right? And so they want to see the desktop version. But for a lot of us, our mobile traffic is going to be greater than our desktop traffic.
00:06:33
Speaker
And do you find that is like a higher percentage for landing pages, especially if it could make from something like a Facebook ad? Yeah, that's actually a really a great point for a lot of our landing pages, our mobile traffic will be higher. Okay. Yeah. And for that exact reason, because we're running ads to these pages, you know, people are on social media, typically on their phone. And so that's where they're clicking over. But actually to make purchases, a lot of people are, I'd say we get more traffic from desktop.
00:07:01
Speaker
So what are some elements of a good mobile landing page?
Content Strategy for Engagement
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah. So content needs to be neatly organized. All right. And that's true of desktop as well, but it's even more true of mobile because there's less space. And so sometimes, you know, depending on what website platform you're using, especially how things snap into mobile is going to vary. And so while something might look intuitive on desktop, it doesn't translate over to the mobile version of the site. So what you're looking for or what we're always looking for is having, for instance, the call to action above the fold. All right.
00:07:35
Speaker
And maybe explain what the fold is. Sure. Okay. So call to action is simply the action, you know, the call to the action that you want people to take, right? The fold, it's a term that comes from newspapers, right? So when you get a newspaper, you see half of the page. All right. And so the most important news of the day is above the fold.
00:07:56
Speaker
So on a mobile device, that would be the content people see before they scroll. Exactly, exactly. So that's what we mean by above the fold. The most important content should be up there. All of that content, all right, every time I talk about content, it really needs to be benefit oriented, all right? People need to know what it is that they're getting, but they also need to know what it's going to do for them, if that makes sense. Do you have an example?
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah so I mean fitness industry is an easy example right because you know people don't care so much like maybe about the specifics of the diet program you know so much as much as they care about what it's going to make them look like or how it's going to make them feel right so you know if I'm selling a some sort of fitness product.
00:08:42
Speaker
I might not necessarily like the benefit oriented language is not necessarily you're going to do 1100 squats a day, right? As much as it is about how you're going to feel at the end of the program. Right. That makes sense. So yeah, I mean, same thing with like photography, we talked about this, we use this example a lot.
00:09:00
Speaker
where people don't really care about what camera it is that you're using, right? They care about the memories that are going to be captured, right? So trying to sort of make that mental switch from focusing on features to focusing on benefits. So like one example we use a lot of times for a photographer, a wedding photographer might be like seven tips for a stress-free wedding day or something like that. So then brides know that the outcome of the content that they're getting, the headline that they're seeing is going to be stress-free. So it's benefit driven.
00:09:31
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. So trying to keep it as benefit-driven as possible. It needs to be obvious what people are getting to, you know? So what exactly is it that I'm committing to? Am I just committing to a download? Am I going to have to watch a video? Right?
Clear Call to Action
00:09:47
Speaker
All that kind of stuff is important too, but I would say that it's sort of secondary to the benefit. Okay. Cool. And all of that needs to be clear before you scroll.
00:09:56
Speaker
Ideally, sometimes it's not possible, but we want to make sure that the call to action especially is as close to above the fold as possible. We don't always have, when I design landing pages, I don't always have the actual embed email address there, but I'll have a button at the top that links down to it, so you jump down to it.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah. Or it opens up a pop-up. I don't like pop-ups opening on mobile as much. It's just something that we like to try to stay away from. And if possible, we do try to keep the form above the fold. But yeah.
00:10:29
Speaker
Cool. Anything else that is important to include on a landing page? Oh, yeah. Okay. So we talked about a mobile responsiveness. That's one of the first things that we're looking for. You know, one of the primary things just, you know, for all the reasons that we already mentioned calls to action, the call to action, just being a single clear call to action. There's no competing call to action. It is exactly, you know, the action that you want people to take.
00:10:52
Speaker
I'd say that there are some exceptions to that rule. One of them is if you have maybe, if there's some sort of demo that you can show people before they actually commit to taking whatever the action is, then sometimes that is okay. But I wouldn't take them off of the page to do that. You might click on that and a video might pop up and it might provide more explanation. But the circumstances that you would use that, I mean, really unless you're like a software company or you're providing some sort of free tool to people that's kind of complex.
00:11:21
Speaker
There's really no reason to include something like that. You're better off just embedding the video on the landing page itself, right? And so call to action, be like, download the guide, send me my video, like... Reserve my free seat. Yeah. Join the journey. Okay. Exactly. Exactly. A hook.
00:11:37
Speaker
All right, something that will catch the attention of the visitor and draw them in. It could, you know, a lot of times it is the title of your download or the title of your webinar, but it doesn't have to be. All right. So again, we're focusing on benefit focused language, but something that peaks people's curiosity and gets them to continue to read.
00:11:56
Speaker
So would it something be like, what if in 10 days you were five pounds later or something like that? Yeah, exactly. Something that's obviously related to what it is that you're providing that just gets people to sort of the next step. Cool. Are there any other details that we should talk about with the actual guide or freebie or anything like that on the page? What do you mean? Like the content of the freebie? Should you include content about what's inside or what they're getting?
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so that's one of the things that I had mentioned a little bit earlier, like people need to know what it is that they're getting. Bullet points are really helpful for that. I would stay away from paragraphs. So sometimes we come across, we're doing reviews for clients, and we come across long paragraphs of text that explain, and even one paragraph is too long, right? I mean, if it has, you know, if it's like an eight sentence paragraph, you know, you probably break that up into bullet points, but you just think about your own behavior when scrolling the web, right?
00:12:56
Speaker
Even if you're thinking about it in terms of like Instagram caption or Twitter or whatever, typically things are broken up in a way that you can quickly skim it. And you want to make sure that your landing page is the same. People are able to quickly skim. They can see the bullet points. Again, those bullet points, you want to give people an idea of what to expect when they download. It can't emphasize enough. Even that should be benefit-oriented. It doesn't matter that your download is 47 pages or whatever.
00:13:24
Speaker
really focus on the benefits in those bullet points. What, you know, after downloading this guide, what will you be able to achieve? Right? So kind of answering that question in those bullet points. Good to know.
00:13:35
Speaker
You might also include a few other things when it comes to your landing page design, social proof. I think this is especially important if you're trying to reach colder audiences, people who are, you know, maybe they've never heard of you before. They just came across this ad, sounds relevant to what they do. You know, this is an opportunity to build trust with people, to show that you have, that this guide or your product or whatever it is that you do, that you've actually helped people in the past, that you know your stuff.
00:14:01
Speaker
What are some ways that we can include social proof on a landing page? What are some kinds of examples? Social proof can be anything that elevates your reputation. That might be badges of places that you've been featured. That might be actual testimonials from people. Do they have to be for the product or the thing that people are downloading or can it just be general testimonials?
00:14:23
Speaker
They can be general testimonials. It's always stronger though if you can make them specific. So if you have people who can give you testimonials about that guide specifically, I think that's going to go a longer way. So social proof, you don't have to overdo it, but to a certain extent you can't really overdo it with social proof. You just don't want to distract from again that conversion, that action that you want people to take.
00:14:49
Speaker
An abbreviated about section. So I would weight social proof more heavily than this. I put more value on including social proof than the about section. But again, with cold audiences, they might want to know a little bit more about why it is that they should listen to you. So what makes you an expert in this topic? Just what makes you an authority? So including sort of an abbreviated about section at the bottom of the landing page can help with this. But again, shouldn't distract
00:15:18
Speaker
And I'm guessing you don't want to have any buttons that click off to their about page to learn more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want to, I want to include any buttons that click off to about pages or social media links for that matter. Right. Yes. On desktop, you know, you can get things, I mean, on mobile too, you can get things to open in a new window, but on desktop, it's really easy just to click back to the previous window. I have like a million tabs open on my phone and so I might never find something again.
00:15:46
Speaker
Exactly. So even though that's possible, I wouldn't link off, you know? And if people want to find you on social media, hopefully it's easy enough for them to find you, right? Yeah. I'll occasionally do that before downloading something. I'll, you know, maybe check that person out on social media. But like, if I feel like I need to, but I wouldn't link off to anything. Okay. All right. What else have we not covered?
00:16:06
Speaker
I feel like that's a pretty good amount of stuff to include on a landing page. I'm trying to think of the ones that I've designed and I don't know that I put anything else on a landing page. I mean, I guess if it's a webinar, you'd also include details about when it's playing or if it's like a live webinar, right?
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, so you'd want to include that kind of information. You know, if it is live webinar, generally show up rates are higher for live webinars. If it is live webinar, I definitely include that information. If it's a recorded webinar, I probably wouldn't tell people it's recorded. I wouldn't say one way or another whether it's recorded or live. You know, one thing that I'll say just, you know, kind of as a general rule here when it comes to landing page design, this is I think just true in advertising in general, is it's all about getting people to the next step.
00:16:53
Speaker
That's what you should be hyper focused on in every element of your design. What do I need to do to get somebody to the next step? You don't have to in the advertisement that gets people to the landing page, sell people your product, right? You just need to peak their curiosity enough to actually get them to click the ad to go to the landing page.
00:17:12
Speaker
When they're on the landing page, all you have to do is really focus on creating that content in the hook and in the bullet points that gets people to enter their email address. And so I think it's a lot less overwhelming, even troubleshooting a landing page that's not converting well when you're really focused on what is the next step. Okay. That's really helpful.
00:17:35
Speaker
So that's pretty much it when it comes to improving conversion rates for landing page design. There are a few other things that I'll just mention here, sort of advanced tax I'll say, right? Depending on what it is that you're doing, right? If you are trying to ultimately sell something to somebody, which who isn't, right? I mean, if you're doing lead generation, you're ultimately trying to sell somebody something, right?
00:17:59
Speaker
few things that you can do.
Maximizing Post-Conversion Engagement
00:18:01
Speaker
One, not everybody who signs up for your email list is going to receive your email. This is going to happen for a number of reasons. One of those reasons, people are going to put in the wrong email address. Some people's email service providers are going to block your emails for some reason, or they're going to go to spam, or whatever. Or they put in a spam email address, they only occasionally check. However,
00:18:23
Speaker
nearly 100% of people after they put their email address in or after they put their phone number in are gonna land on what page? A thank you page. A thank you page. So the thank you page is a great opportunity to put an offer in front of people or again, whatever that intermediate step is that you feel people need maybe to ultimately become a customer or client. So use that real estate. Yes, it should be clear that somebody's
00:18:51
Speaker
download is on their way or some general directions for what happens next. Hey, check your email. Make sure you confirm your email in order to actually receive the download. If you don't see the download, check spam, that sort of thing. But below that, you can put an offer. That's a time where maybe you put your best-selling products in front of somebody. For webinars, especially webinars that are already recorded, sending people straight to the webinar page.
00:19:16
Speaker
So, instead of sending people an email in which they have to click on a link to go to a webinar, right? Just send them straight to the webinar page. A lot of people sell courses, right? They'll send people straight to the webinar page and then they'll be actually content under the webinar as well. Let's see. A recent client whose landing page I reviewed, she had FAQs under the webinar page that answered some questions that she got about the program that she's selling in the webinar, right?
00:19:46
Speaker
something else that we've done before is actually put the sales page below the free training, right? And so now you have this thank you page that again, nearly a hundred percent of people are landing on. And you know that they at least once have seen the sales page, even if they actually don't show up to the webinar and actually watch the webinar.
00:20:04
Speaker
I think we put the replay on the sales page, right? Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what I'm talking about. Any webinar that's already recorded, right? The webinar is embedded on the page and then underneath are whatever content that you want to put people in front of people at that point. And so again, just thinking through general email open rates, right?
00:20:23
Speaker
I mean, a good opener rate, I mean, that's even in the ballpark of 30%, right? And a good click rate anywhere between what, 2% and 5%, right? And anything higher than that, that's good too, of course, you know? But point being is this is an opportunity to get in front of 100% of people at least once. So anyways, just wanted to toss that out there. You won't find that in the YouTube video. Anything else that we should cover?
Free Resources
00:20:48
Speaker
If you don't want to do all of this yourself and you want to save yourself some time, we have some free templates for Show It and WordPress Elementor, free landing page templates, and you can get them on our shop, so daveangerson.com slash shop. We have all of these elements included exactly like Dave just talked through. Yeah, exactly. If you don't want to get yourself, go and download those and they're free.
00:21:10
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Cool. Well, that was a good one. That was quick. If you have any questions about this, feel free to send us a DM on Instagram at Davian Christa. You can also head on over to the show notes to access any of the resources that we mentioned during this episode. And as always, we want to create content that you're interested in. And the easiest way to know that you're interested in something is for you all to send us an email or a DM asking questions or letting us know. So feel free to do that.
00:22:02
Speaker
you
00:22:05
Speaker
Thanks for listening.