5 tips for successful landing pages

Does this sound familiar to you? You have a lot of visitors on your website, but they leave only after a short time. You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your landing page, yet conversions are rare. Maybe it’s time to rethink your landing page. Our 5 tips for successful landing pages should help you.

With our 5 tips for successful landing pages, we’ll show you the DOs and DON’Ts for landing pages. We answer the most important questions against the background of digital marketing and marketing automation: What makes a good landing page? Which elements must be included on a landing page? What are the mistakes to avoid? And of course, how can I generate more conversions with landing pages?

1. Know your customers

Remember: Landing pages are created by you BUT visited by your customers! Imagine going to a store to buy a specific product. The store is large and has an overwhelming assortment. The corridors are badly lit and winding. There are various promotions everywhere and the interior design is from the last century. Just the way the shop owner likes it!

I would like to make the claim that very few customers feel comfortable in such an environment. Consequently, they will quickly leave again. The shopping environment must be adapted to the customers in order to be attractive, inviting and confidence-building. Customer experience is your key to success.

To create successful landing pages, consider the following: Think about who exactly your customers are. Personas help you to describe them in the best possible way. Try to answer the following questions:

• Who is your customer?
• What is her:his background?
• What exactly is your customer looking for in your shop?
• Why did she:he just come into your store?
• What previous knowledge of your products does she:he already have?
• What problem would she:he like to have solved with your product?
• How would she like to be addressed by you?

Be as specific as possible when describing your personas. The more concretely you can answer the questions, the better. The important thing is to do this from the customers’ perspective and not based on how you would rate them. It is best to ask your customers directly or to get input from independent external parties and thus check your assessments.

2. Landing page as part of the customer journey

When customers visit your website, they have usually already dealt extensively with the product they are looking for. You’ve done your research. Opinions sought. Reviews read. Or already had previous experience. Not only concerning the desired product, but also your company. Your customers are on their customer journey. This leads them step by step to the desired product and ideally guides them into your sales funnel. Depending on where exactly your customers are in their journey, the landing page must pick them up accordingly.

If a customer is only at the beginning of the customer journey, a well-designed landing page can provide valuable initial information. Examples might include:

• What are the features of your product?
• What advantages does your customer gain from the product?
• Are there different product variants?
• What are third party opinions or reviews?

Be open, transparent and honest in providing this information. Because they serve not only to inform interested customers, but also to build trust. A customer who feels that you have provided them with open and honest information will return at a later point in the customer journey. Targeted follow-up emails, after an initial visit to your website, can help here to build additional trust. How to create emails based on our templates and best practices can be read here.

Once a customer has decided on a product, your landing page can actively support them in the final purchase decision:

• Once again list the advantages of your product for your customers.
• Give her:him the certainty to make the right decision – e.g. through testimonials or reviews of other customers.
• Make the conversion as easy as possible for your customers.
• Be transparent with your pricing and offer multiple options.
• Let customers choose and give them the feeling that they have the final decision. No one wants to feel pressured into a hasty purchase.

3. Goal of the landing page

You are now clear about who your client is. You know what she:he is looking for and where on the Customer Journey she:he is. Time to think about what goal you want to pursue with your landing page. Goals can be many and varied. For example, with your landing page, you want to:

• Inform customers about new products
• Go into detail about a product
• Generate new leads and lead customers into your sales funnel
• Encourage participation in the competition
• etc.

These considerations seem trivial, but it is one of the most important tips for successful landing pages, because goals are often watered down. Try to keep the goal of your landing page as specific as possible. Too broad, and customers are confused, don’t feel picked up, and bail. Finally, there is nothing against having several landing pages. Each of them can address a different customer, be made for a specific stage in the customer journey or pursue a different goal. Therefore, if you want to create successful landing pages: get them right from the customer’s point of view.

4. Content, content, content

The rule here is: as little as possible and as much as necessary. Quality is crucial.

Guide the customer through the landing page and avoid distractions. Don’t be tempted to cram all sorts of information onto a landing page. Focus only on what is relevant to your customers. It will help if you make a few considerations in advance.

1. Why do your potential customers visit your landing page?
2. Where are they in their customer journey (information or purchase)?
3. What exactly are they looking for? (see points 1-3)

Pay particular attention to the following when creating content:

• Make sure landing page content displays well on mobile devices.
• Be authentic in language, imagery and design.
• Create recognition by using the same design for the advert and landing page.
• Use customer-friendly language. Technical jargon only if it is understandable for your customers.
• Match the content you want to convey to the goal of your landing page.
• Make sure that important points immediately catch the reader’s eye even when skimming the landing page.
• Include a clear, simply worded call-to-action.

And because it’s so important, let’s go over it again: the content of your landing page must be designed from the customer’s point of view, appealing and trust-building. Put the benefit for the customer in the foreground and convey a clear message. Where possible, incorporate trust-building elements like ratings or reviews. After all, customers buy more than just your product.

5. Test – optimize – test – optimize …

And here we are already at our last of our 5 tips for successful landing pages.

With the design, the first important step to create successful landing pages is made. Now it’s a matter of putting the result of your reasoning to the test. There is no set recipe for the ideal landing page. Customers, tastes, products, companies or even current trends and circumstances are too different. Many factors influence the performance of a landing page – even in the short term. Therefore: always test new landing pages! A/B testing, customer feedback, eye tracking or web analytics data are some of the ways to determine, for example:

• whether and how your landing page performes
• where customers stay and where they jump off
• which choice of words, images and language leads to more conversions
• which layout or color scheme is best
• where Call-To-Actions should be better placed
• which contents work better and which less
• whether the right customers are being addressed

And when the optimized landing page sees the light of day, the testing-optimizing cycle continues.

Implement landing pages with marketing automation

With a landing page that converts successfully, the customer journey naturally continues. Ideally, your channels are linked so that you can track and optimize end-to-end. We therefore create landing pages right away with marketing automation. This means that the landing pages are set up directly with a campaign. To do this, we have taken these 5 tips for successful landing pages to heart ourselves and created optimized templates, each available in your corporate design. So you can easily fill your content and start campaigns right away.

With this in mind: Happy landing page building! Learn more about our landing page package with marketing automation here.