The landing page is a crucial tool in increasing conversions for your small business website.
While blog posts, About Us and FAQ pages serve a variety of purposes, a landing page has one goal and one goal only: to trigger an action.
Because that’s the case, however, setting up a great landing page for your small business website is vastly different than creating other pages on your site.
What Is a Landing Page, Anyway? (And What is It Not?)
A landing page is a hyper-focused marketing asset: It exists to make a sale, entice newsletter signups or download gated content. Notice we used the word “or.” That’s because you want your landing page to focus on making your reader take one action and one action only.
On the other hand, a blog post might help increase traffic, educate your audience and encourage visitors to explore the rest of your website. There might even be sections where readers can sign up for your newsletter.
It’s also a standalone asset: Unlike your homepage or blog posts that contain numerous links to other parts of your website, a landing page will have one link at the most, and none in a best-case scenario.
Landing pages typically are used in conjunction with a campaign. For example: You want to offload last season’s swimsuits with a 40% off promo to make room for the coming season’s sweaters. You use ads, post about it on social and send out emails.
All those missives you sent out? They need to link to the said campaign’s landing page, where the visitor will then hopefully make the purchase.
But how do you turn “hopefully” into “likely” or “certainly”? Read on as we explain.
What Makes an Effective Landing Page?
It Has a Crystal-Clear Goal (And Therefore an Obvious Call-to-Action)
The nice thing about setting up a landing page is that you only need to focus on one thing. However, focusing on that one thing might actually be trickier than it looks.
Back to our example: You want to promote your 40% off swimsuit sale. But wait! All your other products are really great, too, and your would-be customers would probably buy them if they saw them.
It’s tempting to stuff a lot of goals in there, but you must do your best to resist.
In this example, you might want to list all the items included in your 40% promo into your landing page, and no more. Place a clear “Add to Cart” button (your call to action) under each item.
If you can set up a landing page for a single item, that would be even better. Admittedly, it might not work for everyone. But let’s say you have a bike shop and want to offer 35% off on one particular model, just add an “Order Now” button and you’re all set!
The Messages Match
The language in your ad or email needs to match your landing page’s. If the “meat” of your ad is the 35% off promo, you should make that same phrase prominent on your landing page.
In fact, your ad’s headline should match your landing page’s headline. If you include a list of benefits in your ad, that needs to appear in your landing page, as well. In other words, the page should almost be an expanded version of your ad.
Message match matters because your missive has set very specific expectations for your visitor. Your landing page has to meet those expectations. Otherwise, your visitor will immediately leave your site: You will have lost a sale, wasted a paid click and increased your bounce rate.
There’s a Sense of Urgency
You have a great product, you’re offering a screaming deal and your messages match. Is there anything else you can do to increase the chances of a sale?
Absolutely: You can (mildly) scare them into thinking that the deal might just slip through their fingers. In other words: Use FOMO, or the “fear of missing out.”
Copy such as “Today Only,” “While Supplies Last” and “X Pieces Left” are all good ways to remind your audience that this particular good thing won’t last. If you can, install a counter that indicates how many days/hours/minutes are left for customers to take advantage of your deal.
Need a landing page that pulls in the sales? Mischa Communications can help! Get in touch with us today.