Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Inbound Marketing - Landing Page Landings

March 21, 2011, Kami Valdez

Calls to Action & Landing Page Best Practices (CV101)

Did you know you can double or even triple your conversion rates by making just a few simple adjustments to your landing pages? Landing page optimization is one of the easiest ways to boost your website’s performance. To motivate a customer to buy, sometimes all it takes is making a small change to a button or tweaking a headline.

Inbound Marketing Landing Page Landings

Image by: egmTacahopeful

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The first thing to know about landing pages is that they need to convey a call to action – your page needs to create a sense of urgency. Use persuasive language that stirs consumer emotions and compels them to take action! Be specific about the action you want them to take. When visitors click on a button that says, “Get your free eBook here,” ensure that the button redirects them to a page where they can actually get their free eBook. Some marketers create deception by creating buttons that redirect visitors to a page completely unrelated to the button they clicked on. Bad idea! This only frustrates people and prompts them to go elsewhere. Instill trust in customers by being genuine about your calls to action. Follow through and give customers what you say you’re going to give them.

Make it clickable and colorful!

When creating calls to action, use clickable, eye catching images to direct people to your landing pages. It’s good practice to make an entire ad image clickable – it reduces confusion about where to click. If your images are interesting enough, people won’t be able to resist clicking on them! It’s also good form to use consistent visual style between the clickable ad image and your landing page. Color is important! You want your colors to compliment each other nicely. Make sure there’s stark contrast between words and the background they’re placed upon. Colors should make sense – if your call to action button says something like, “Save money now,” it would make good sense to use a green color so people will subconsciously associate it with money. Also, if you have multiple buttons on a single page, make each one a different color – this will allow visitors to easily differentiate between them.

Is your customer having happy landings?

Arrange your landing page layout so it's simple and well organized. Your most important information should be placed at the top of the page. Visitors should not have to use the scrollbar to find your most valuable content. Strategically place your buttons in locations that are easy to find. People hate wasting valuable time searching for stuff! So, a word of wisdom – make things as easy as possible for your customers to find. Don’t force them to go hunting for it or they just might use their “Back” button! From time to time, check the functionality of your buttons to make sure they’re pointing to the right locations. Again, consider the frustration factor – people have little tolerance for broken links. Preserve your professional reputation by maintaining connectivity to all links. Also, monitor the effectiveness of your calls to action. If one call to action is not generating traffic, switch it out for another one. Experiment until you get the results you’re looking for.

Which flight path is your landing page taking?

When designing a landing page, place yourself in the shoes of your customer, “Why am I on this page and where is it supposed to take me?” Make sure that you’re fulfilling the primary purposes of the page – creating enough urgency that it prompts visitors to take action, and pointing them to where you want them to go. Just in case visitors missed your primary call to action at the top of your page, place a secondary call to action at the bottom. Make your page navigation clear and easy for people to understand and you’ll get them where you want them to go. Check out Jacob Gube’s blog for some good examples of call to action buttons.    

Topics: Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing, Conversion