Todd Bertsch, President, and Owner of Evolve Marketing, explains what a landing page is and when you should use one in our previous video.
In this video, he'll teach you how to create a great landing page that converts visitors into leads and sales. By the end of this video, you'll understand the items that should be present on a landing page, where those items should be, and what they should say. If you have any questions or feedback please leave a comment below.
In one of our previous videos we talked about what is a landing page. Well, in today's video we're going to talk about how to create a great landing page, and that all starts with a great strategy. Just like anything, with us online marketers, it all starts with a good foundation, right? So we're talking about what we are doing. What's the full plan, here?
If we're going to be doing a custom landing page, we're going to have some other type of marketing, online paid marketing advertisement out there, right? It may be a Google pay-per-click ad. It may be an email blast, right? So what are we doing on those pieces? What's the message, what's the goal, what's the target, and then what are we driving them to? What's the goal and strategy of this landing page?
Are we trying to convert people to fill out a contact form? Are we trying to get people to subscribe to our e-newsletter? Are we trying to get them to buy a product? What are the goals? What's the call to action? What are we trying to do with this thing?
So, first and foremost, you've got to formulate a great strategy. Second of all, we're going to always kind of rely on the old KISS method, right? Keep it simple, stupid. So, in landing page design and construction, very, very important. It's all about reducing the noise, reducing the distractions, right? I don't want a deal. I don't want to go to your homepage. I don't want to be distracted by ads and flying banners and this and that. I'm just focused on what I search for, right?
So if I'm up here searching for men's watches, I just want a landing page about men's watches. I don't want any other distractions. I don't care about pants or belts or women's stuff at this point. I just want that watch. So, again, keep it simple. Basic, you want to code the page. We want the right away establish brands, logo, colors, the tone, the voice of your business. I want to make sure that where I came from, this matches. It's relevant, okay? That starts with the brand and the messaging.
I want a great photo. Draw me in. Get me interested. Maybe it's a sales price, 20% off or a Thanksgiving Day sale, and then what's the call to action? Keep it focused. What am I trying to do here? It goes back to strategy. What do you want them to do next? Fill out a contact form, buy the product, subscribe? So those are kind of the main elements that really make up a very focused and simple landing page.
One of the things, too, to talk about, I know we mention it down here is trying to keep things above the fold. You may or may not have heard of that term. That really, if you're talking about a scroll bar, if we're on a PC and we're scrolling up and down, you want to try to keep things, at least your call to action... If your main goal is to get people to fill out a contact form, you want that to be above the fold or above the scroll line. So keep that in mind when you're working out your designs or working with a marketing design firm.
Fourth we want to talk about speed, and really this should coincide with keeping it simple. Keeping it simple means there probably won't be a whole lot of really fancy interaction, jQuery, JavaScript, Flash. It's going to be pretty basic, and the images that you have, make sure that they're really slimmed down. You want this to be quick. When people, they've already searched for something, they only have a few seconds to really get what they want. They don't have patience. We know how we are. We just want to get to the action that we want, all right?
Next we want to talk about being very targeted and I think we talked about it here, and it goes back to strategy. Keeping it relevant, I search for men's watches, great. I come to a landing page. It's a detailed page. Maybe it's in your shopping cart. It's all about those watches. So let me choose the brand I want. Maybe it's a Fossil, and then I buy it right there. I'm happy. Good, you gave me what I look for.
Then we want to talk about the layout, being very simple. Again, few elements, you don't want too many distractions. Some people say, "Don't have any navigation elements at all." I don't know. I guess it depends on a product. I don't know if I agree or disagree with that. You don't want too many distractions, but depending on the sales cycle, the type of product or service you're offering, you might have people that, they're not going to make a decision right here.
Again, you want it focused, but they might leave. They'll come back later. They'll go visit some other pages on your site, and they may come back to this page. But again, you just want the layout to be simple, above the fold, and keep it very targeted.
Last, but not least, certainly not least is test, test, test. You'll see this. If you do a search for this topic, or pretty much anything in terms of online marketing, it's all about testing. That's really - yeah, you might be a great web design firm, the best marketer out there, and you've read, you've done all the research, you've read everything, and you know how to implement a pretty good, solid foundation. But until you know your audience, until you start testing, that's when you're really going to make a very focused and great campaign, and that's where the ROI is going to continue to go up, up, up.
So even testing small, little things, changing this Buy button to Go or Shop, just the language of the button, the color of the button, the actual location of the button. Small, little iterations that you can make are going to really make the campaign a lot more solid. So this is really how to create a great landing page.
