Making Landing Pages Better

What is a landing page and why is it important

If a user is visiting your website with the intent to buy then you need to make that process as simple as possible for them, optimising your landing pages does exactly that. The landing page is where users start their journey on your website; users find your websites through several channels so there’s no guarantee that they’ll start at the homepage and follow the path you want them to take. When a landing page is at its best it becomes a win-win scenario; the user gets a more enjoyable experience while visiting the website and you get more conversions and leads.

How to improve landing pages

Layout and images

The design and layout of the landing page is crucial and needs to be a priority when it comes to developing the website to begin with. However if the website already exists then you need to review the landing pages to discover the best way to optimise them.

An immediate quick fix is the amount of ‘copy’ on the landing page; short, high quality and to the point pieces of information are best. Get friends and family to read through the page; if they don’t think something is relevant or the copy is too long, then you need to get rid of it. Users will get bored if they have to read an essay when they first arrive to a website, they’re not invested yet so you have about two seconds to convince why yours is the website they should be using.

A picture is worth a thousand words; not just a clever idiom, it’s proven that people are more likely to take in an image than a block of text. Keep this in mind when you’re considering the layout of the landing pages; the image needs to be big and supports the topic of the page. Users are naturally more drawn towards images so make sure that first impression is a good one.

Relevant content

Now more than ever it is important to have high quality, relevant content throughout your website and the landing pages are no exception. As I’ve previously said; avoid the large blocks of text, nobody is going to read all of that when they first visit a website. Instead the focus should be on short-snappy and to the point pieces of information. As the search engines improve they’re aiming towards viewing a website more like users than machines, so it’s important to create your content with a user in mind and not a search engine. Know what you want the landing page to say and say it, it sounds simple but lots of websites seem to miss this point.

Call to action

Let the user know where they need to go next, like a series of sign posts you need to guide them to the pages you want them to visit. Having an obvious and straight forward call to action means that the user won’t get lost as easily; if they need to see a particular page, let them know. Remember the user has come to you, guide the way for the rest of their journey.

Going forward

Now that you’ve spent some time optimising your landing pages; did the changes actually improve the website? How do you know that the changes are for the best? And are there any more changes that need to be made? Luckily there are several options you have in front of you; some are free and other’s you’ll need to part with some money for. What I’m talking about is tracking and analytics; you can track almost anything to do with your website and since you’re making changes to it, this becomes vital.

The first piece of tracking software everyone with a website should be using is Google Analytics. A free and very useful piece of software can track anything from user location to what they’re clicking on and so much more. This resource is something that the more time you spend on it the more you’ll get out of it. All you have to do is put a small piece of code known as a ‘script’ into the header on the homepage of the website. Google Analytics will report on all demographics it can, this is a good start of tracking and analysing your website and the changes you’ve made to it.

Once you’re comfortable with Google Analytics there are several more options for you to use. There are more free Google services to enlist and several more paid services that can provide even more information; it all depends on how much money you want to invest and how much return on investment you’re getting from the optimisations of the landing pages.

If you’d like to know more about optimising your landing pages or tracking the performance of your website; get in touch with us today and see how we can work together to optimise your website.