Landing page optimization includes all those processes which are intended to enhance landing page elements and get more conversions. As opposed to completely redesigning your landing page, a better approach would be to use research data that shows what your audience prefers and what they like to see.
This isn’t a process that can be completely accomplished in a day. Consider it an ongoing situation, where you make changes in response to the information you receive about target audience behaviors. In that sense, optimization is something you’re constantly doing.
The wants and needs of your potential customers are constantly changing too. Here are some of the best practices that a professional SEO company would employ, and which you should also make use of.
Keep your Optimized Landing Page Simple
A simple landing page might not seem advantageous and make your offer very clear. It’s important to remove as much visual clutter as possible since your focus should be to guide all visitors toward the call to action. Everything else is just accompaniment.
Try to include just the most basic and essential components on your optimized landing page, so that you don’t detract from the whole point of the page itself. If your visitors get fascinated by all the bells and whistles on your landing page, they won’t pay attention to the one element which is most important.
Stay Above the Fold
Of course, there is no real ‘fold’ per se on the screen, and that actually refers back to the old days where a newspaper would be folded in half. It’s important that you keep your really important elements above the fold.
If a visitor has to scroll down to find the CTA, you’ll probably lose people before they get to it. Make sure to present your most important information on the initial visual screen, so that it’s not necessary to take any additional action to find the real heart of your message.
Use Contrasting Colors
By using contrasting colors, you’ll make important information stand out much better. Plus, if you can incorporate good use of clarity and color, you can make it even better. Contrasting colors can emphasize your call to action in such a way that it simply can’t be ignored.
For instance, if you were to have a black background with some bright white or yellow text, that would provide visual clarity and contrast that really makes your message stand out.
Use Scarcity Methods
It’s a good idea to convey to visitors that there’s only a limited time to act on your offer. Limited opportunities make the offer more compelling, and it’ll get the idea across that they need to act now or lose out on their chance.
This should be a legitimate time constraint as well. For instance, offering a discount that will run out after two weeks, or attendance at a limited-series webinar. To be really effective, you can include a countdown timer to provide visual emphasis for the limited nature of your offer.
Simplify your Call to Action buttons
As any professional SEO company can tell you, one of the worst things you can do is confuse your visitors by the labeling on your call to action buttons. Instead of stressing them out, you should make sure that your buttons are all very obvious and clear, so there’s no confusion about what you want visitors to do.
Make sure that any action you want your visitors to take isn’t up for misinterpretation or ambiguous, because that will more than likely cause them to do nothing at all, and this will negate the whole effort to get them to your landing page.
Include Contact Information
There are quite a few ways you can convey your contact information to optimized landing page visitors. Of course, there are obvious ways like including your email address and your phone number right on the landing page. You can also establish an entirely separate contact form, and ask users for a little more information.
There’s also the possibility of including links to other pages you want visitors to browse through, especially a help center. At your help center, you can provide information such as tutorials and answers to frequently asked questions.
Experiment with Headlines and Content
Even though images and video rule the roost in terms of capturing visitor attention, the written text and content you provide are still very important. As long as you make your content visually appealing, your audience will probably still read most of it. Make sure you take advantage of the opportunity and present them with high-quality content.
One great way of determining what kind of headlines and what kind of content is most appealing to your audience, is to make use of A/B testing. This will give you ideas on your audience’s preferences and that will provide the data you need to create an optimal content page.
Experiment with Different Page Lengths
There is one school of thought which says only the very shortest forms work well on your optimized landing page. The other one is that asking for anything more than the user’s email address is a waste. While this may be true in some cases, it is certainly not the general rule of thumb.
When it comes to developing leads or interest in an expensive product or service you’re offering, you will definitely need more content. The idea here is to justify the cost of your offering. In this case, providing too little information will likely hurt your attempt to get some qualified leads.
Add Testimonials
These days, you can convince more potential customers to buy something by finding out that others have used the product and found it to be very beneficial. Social proof can go a long way toward persuading a user to convert and become a paying customer.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to include testimonials on your landing page. Especially if you can provide a video testimonial.
In the same vein, quotes from satisfied customers are very effective, especially if you include a name and headshot photo.
