At First Glance: Tips On How To Improve Your Landing Pages

Your landing page can do a lot for your promotional activity. If not, it will do nothing and will just be a complete drain in your wallet. Designing and improving a landing page should be an important part of your job as an internet marketer. Your landing page not only speaks for you, it also convinces your visitors that they should stick around, browse, click, subscribe or buy. Furthermore, the landing page is a good indicator of the success of your internet marketing campaign. Ready to make more money? Here are tips on how to improve your landing pages:

Determine your landing page's goal.
Of course, your main concern is conversion. However, before you can get there, there are certain elements that you need to take care of before anything else. Theoretically, there are hundreds of elements that may be included in your landing page. If you're not careful about choosing which, these elements might work against each other. To avoid confusion, make sure you list down what you want your landing page to do for you.

To do that, you must decide what actions you want your visitors to perform. Do you want your visitors to fill out forms or just give their e-mail addresses? Do you want them to buy something or just read what you have to say? Do you need them to subscribe or just want some of their personal details? If you know exactly what you want your visitors to do, you have an idea of what your landing page should look like.

Know your visitors.
No matter what type of product or service you're promoting, expect to have different types of visitors on your landing page. You'll get first time visitors, regular visitors who buy, regular visitors who browse but don’t buy, recipients of your e-mails and newsletters, paid search visitors, etc.

Use a strong landing page.
From the design to the content to the usability, your landing page should be of top quality. Why? Amateurish and badly designed landing pages are less likely to be trusted by visitors. Make sure your landing page is usable and easy for visitors to read. Graphics and pictures must load easily and when visitors click on a button, it should be able to deliver as promised. Spending too much on a landing page that will not give you a return on your investment within a reasonable period of time is a waste of money and effort.

Maximize the landing page above the virtual fold.
You and I both know it's a little bit frustrating to scroll down a page just to read content or find something. In fact, most of us don’t bother at all. That is why many websites try to place as many essential elements as possible on the area above the bottom of the screen.

Make sure your landing site tells the visitor that he is at the right page. If you want a visitor to sign up for your newsletter or download your e-book on organic gardening, for example, don’t display links of plasma tv deals just because you're an affiliate of another site. The visitor will think you're trying to trick them. Relevance of all the elements on the landing page is key to improving it and ultimately making it successful.

Remove unnecessary links, navigation bars and other distractions.
Your landing page has to contain nothing but the content and links essential to a conversion. Otherwise, you will be giving your visitors a reason to go somewhere else. Every button and link you provide that has nothing to do with the purpose of your landing page is just one more diversion that will cost you a good number of your potential customers.

Keep your landing page dedicated solely to selling or promoting a product, service or action. It's tempting to give in to your creative side and offer animations, links and other clickable areas but remember you want your visitors to focus on what your site offers. If you want them to fill out a form, encourage them to do so and don’t try to divide their attention by enticing them with something else.

Promote, promote, promote.
If you have other promotions or offers, they are often best displayed on your landing page. Any activity that promotes something on your site should be featured on the landing page, even if it can also be found on your home page. Promote them in such as way that they appear attractive and compelling, even if they just supplement your main product.

Test it!
Once you have decided how you want your landing page to behave and know what kind of standards you want it to meet, test your page. Ask for the assistance of a user group to see how well the landing page will perform. Take note of which element works and what doesn’t. Take note of how certain elements appeal to a certain group of people and how they behave toward a content or graphic.

Don’t be afraid about making adjustments. This is the best time to improve on your work. By first testing your landing page, you can try to iron out glitches and improve on bad design and style. You will also be able to prove whether or not your landing page has the potential to succeed.