Whether you’re running Google AdWords, social media ads or email marketing campaigns, if you’re not guiding your audience to an engaging landing page, your budget isn’t going to go very far.
There are several factors that determine whether a landing page is going to work for you and your potential customers. Our web designers have put together a list of the most important things to remember when creating a landing page for your business.
1. Make It Mobile
Some 18 months ago TechCrunch reported that the number of mobile internet users had outpassed desktop internet users for the first time – worldwide (StatCounter, 2016). If you take a look at your website, AdWords or social media analytics, it’s quite likely that a high number of your audience are viewing your content from a mobile device. In spite of this, many companies still don’t seem to prioritize mobile when developing websites and landing pages. A good web design agency will know that a fully functioning mobile site is just as important as a standard desktop site.
2. Test Load Speed
Research by Google last year found that the average mobile landing page takes a whopping 22 seconds to load. Imagine waiting that long! It’s no surprise that their research also found that 53% of people will leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. The same goes for desktop too. Nowadays, humans are not patient beings, so it’s down to advertisers and web designers to make things as quick and easy for customers as possible.
Having images and videos on a landing page is great for engaging visitors, but if they’re not uploaded properly, they could significantly slow your landing page’s load time down. We’ve previously shared some great tools for file optimization but to save you time, you could speak to your web developer, or a web design agency, about coding your website so that it will automatically deliver the most well optimized images.This way, even if you upload a reasonably large file, it shouldn’t affect your page’s load time.
3. Make It Clear What People Should Do On Your Landing Page
You’ll know what you want people to do on your landing page, but is that clear to the user? If, for instance, you want people to add an item to their cart, make sure the button to do so is very clear. Especially on mobile. Users shouldn’t have to scroll far to reach the call-to-action (CTA).
4. Craft Your Copy Carefully
The technical side of a landing page is of course extremely important, but your copy, could also be the make of break for turning a landing page visitor, into a customer.
In fact, your landing page copy could even affect whether people land on your page in the first place. With Google AdWords, Google will evaluate your landing page to give your ad a relevance score. The more relevant Google thinks your ad is for your keyword, the more your ad will get shown. If the copy on your landing page is completely different from the copy in your ad, and your keywords, you’ll receive a very low relevance score.
Test Your Google AdWords Knowledge
For example, if your ad copy was “Voted Vancouver’s Best Italian Restaurant” but your landing page was just a map of where your restaurant is, it’s unlikely you’d get top relevance scores. If however, you included some copy above the map, that talks about who voted you to be Vancouver’s best Italian restaurant, Google will likely see you as a far better result to show to people who are searching Google for “best Italian restaurant”.
Google AdWords aside, landing page copy should be well crafted. Most marketing and web design agencies offer copywriting services for customers who feel more comfortable outsourcing marketing copy creation.
5. Analytics, Analytics, Analytics
Once you’ve created your fast loading, well optimized, persuasive landing page, it’s vital you keep track of analytics to monitor its success.
Tracking analytics on your website itself, and the platform you are running ads on, is important.
If, you notice on Google AdWords, your ad relevance score is a 2, you could consider changing your landing page copy to improve that.
If you notice that people are landing on your page, but aren’t taking action, you can think about improving your CTA to make it as easy as possible for users to do what you want them to.
Many of our marketing and web design clients have been extremely successful in launching a profitable business, but their strengths don’t lie in growing their marketing, making sense of the data and implementing website changes. It’s for that reason that many companies turn to us for support. Earlier this year, our Director of Freshness, Helen, shared her insight into why hiring a marketing and web design agency may be more beneficial for you, than expanding your in-house team.
To find out more about some of the services we offer, send us a message, give us a call or stop by our marketing and web design agency in Downtown, Vancouver – we always have chocolate!