What makes a good search marketing landing page that will lead to conversions? Landing pages are the first pages users see when they click on your offer. Although it may be tempting and easier to direct customers to your homepage upon clicking on an ad, this is not a recommended best practice as it does not provide the customer with a direct conversion path or any focused content. Two rules to remember when designing your landing page are relevance and layout:
Relevance
Since there are millions of pages that exist online, people are forced to pick and choose what content they spend their time reading. They won’t devote their time on content that isn’t relevant to them. Therefore, landing pages should be standalone web pages that contain specific information about the offer being advertised. E-commerce professional, Angie Shottmuller, states that customers look for content that matches three criteria in “the triangle of relevance:”
- User Interest—The content is significant to the user due to their personal interests, hobbies, values, etc.
- Business Objective—The content promotes the company’s goals, products and services
- Time Significance—The content is current and aligns with the season, weather, current events and trends happening at the moment
When designing your landing pages, you should try and integrate all three of these criteria in order to create content that users want to take the time to read. Your page might emphasize your business objectives and be current, but if it lacks user interest, it won’t be effective. On the contrary, if content on your page states your business objective and also generates user interest, but is not timed right, it will fail. Due to these reasons, it is important that you try and balance these three aspects of the “triangle of relevance.” If your content is relevant and sparks interest, it will increase the chance that your landing page will convert.
Layout
The second rule to remember when creating your landing page is the importance of the layout and structure of your page. Although there are users that will read every word on your page, more often than that, users will read the headline and skim the rest of the page to determine if the content is interesting to them. There are also other users that will read the headline and jump to the end of the page to read a summary of the content. Due to the varying types of viewers that visit your page, you will want to organize it in a way that caters to these different traits. Below are some helpful points to remember when designing your landing page:
- Use a bold headline that conveys your message clearly and focuses on the benefits you provide to your customers
- Include informative subheadings to keep readers interested and allow for easy skimming
- Incorporate bullets points and lists, which are easily scannable
- Add a conclusion, which sums up your message and emphasizes the beneficial services you provide
By remembering these rules and building a landing page with relevant content, in an easy to navigate format, you will be well on your way to engaging your readers and creating landing pages that convert.
Additions & Feedback
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