Landing pages are essential to any digital lead generation effort, but are you creating landing pages that drive conversions or act as a repellent? If you want to see landing page success, you need to get these 7 things right:
1. Your forms
Don’t ask too many questions. Your white paper isn’t worth signing away a kidney for, so keep it short and to the point. The Marketo school-of-thought is to keep your form at 4 fields or less, and there’s a significant drop-off in form fill outs when you ask for more information than this. If you still have more information that you want from your leads, use progressive profiling to slowly capture more data OR get a lead appending service to pull in additional lead information.
There are two exceptions to this rule – demo requests and Contact Us forms. Leads will be willing to provide more information with these because they’re receiving something more substantial.
Only require fields that are really necessary. First name, last name, email address, job title, and company are pieces of information people generally feel comfortable providing. If you want to know something more specific–-like the company’s revenue or its phone number–-we recommend not requiring those fields initially because they may test the limit of a lead’s boundaries. The last thing you want is the dreaded abandoned form.
2. Your CTAs
Think outside the box. Did you know that different verbiage and even different colors can make a big difference in conversions? The key to a good CTA is short, simple, and eye-catching. Our team has worked with a variety of businesses and industries over the years, and you would be surprised how much of a difference a simple change made to a button’s color can make! Don’t be afraid to try out a bunch of colors in order to see what generates the best conversion rates for your company.
3. Your white space
Keep it clean and clutter-free. Landing pages work best when their design adheres to minimalist principles. Think of it in terms of your own home–-you don’t want random pictures plastered everywhere or trinkets tossed all over the place. Keep your landing pages simple and clean, and allow white space to visually guide the viewer to what’s really important on the page.
4. Your copy
KISS (or “Keep It Simple, Silly”). Internet readers typically don’t have the attention span or the general interest to sit through a never-ending block of text. Using bullet points and keeping your landing page copy short and concise will work wonders for your conversion rate.
5. Your data analysis
Use the right reports and set up program correctly. If you are not tracking metrics and evaluating your progress, you will never be able to test successfully. It is important to make sure you are utilizing the right reports (i.e. landing page performance) and setting your programs up correctly so that you can get the full use of Marketo Analytics.
6. Your mobile optimization
All of your landing pages should be mobile optimized. Roughly half of all emails are opened on a mobile device, so if your landing pages aren’t responsive, half of your recipients won’t see them display correctly! Luckily, Marketo has made this process a lot simpler with Guided Landing Pages.
7. Your testing strategy
A/B testing needs to be part of your routine. We saved the biggest tip for last. The very best way to see landing page success is to test different variables. Put a test plan together (we recommend a spreadsheet of all the different items you want to test), and start performing A/B tests one-by-one to see what the winning formula is!
