A good landing page can make a world of difference for your marketing — for both good and bad. A poorly-designed landing page can work against otherwise impeccably put-together campaigns and, on the other end, a great landing page will effectively close on all the other marketing efforts you’ve put in.

Here’s some of our thoughts on what a good landing page looks like and what it can do for you.

How does a brand benefit from a great lead-generating landing page?

The benefits of a good landing page will manifest themselves in a handful of ways. Done right, it will generate customer information allowing you to do more outreach, while providing you with the means to do more informed retargeting for users further down the conversion funnel. Furthermore regarding insights, you’ll get improved time-on-site reflecting engagement; heat mapping of visitor cursors can also help inform a further improved page layout.

Plus, as far as results go beyond insights, a good landing page will better convey your brand’s selling point and through extension result in more sales and/or conversions. And by being clear and easy to navigate, customers will be more satisfied and more likely to return to your business and recommend you to others.

What makes a great landing page layout?

Both the copy and the design are crucial in landing pages. You should have concrete unique selling points, and those should be in a location where they’re immediately accessible — humans have super short attention spans, especially on the internet. You don’t want to make visitors to your landing page have to work harder than necessary to get what they want from it; benefits, features, and other information that will help your target audience should be clear and never buried down the page.

When appropriate, it’s also worth considering including awards your product or business has received, business associations (for example, the BBB), or genuinely written testimonials.

It’s also important not to neglect design factors; it will pay off if you take into account font, color, and negative space, as well as how the page is laid out. Generally, avoid large areas of negative space, which force users to navigate further and often look unprofessional. We also generally recommend against using stock imagery, as that doesn’t tend to convey brand legitimacy.

Source: SMX Event “Building PPC Landing Pages that Boost Conversions” by Brian Massey, Conversion Sciences

At the top of the page should be an offer if applicable, or some other action for the visitor to take. Below that in the middle is usually the ideal place to include those selling points — what’s in it for the visitor to your landing page if they buy from you (or otherwise convert)?

Lower on the page — often below the fold — is where you can go more in-depth on informative or pathos copy. How does your product work or, implicitly, how will it make them feel?

At the bottom of your landing page is a good place to implement a “drip tray.” This is an action button or form fill aimed towards a consumer who’s already more invested in the product or service; because human attention spans are so short, you can infer that those who have stayed on your landing page long enough to read and scroll to the bottom are much more invested and likely to convert or take action than the average user.

Source: SMX Event “Building PPC Landing Pages that Boost Conversions” by Brian Massey, Conversion Sciences

Testing optimizations for your landing page (and why that matters)

Because website work can be expensive, it’s critical that the changes you make will measurably improve performance. You can — and ought to — measure these impacts via controlled testing.

When you test, first you should start out by identifying which specific changes you want to make to optimize your page, the anticipated impact for each of these changes, and the costs associated with making them. From there, rank which changes are your priorities and measure their performance through controlled A/B testing.

Learning which changes improve your landing page’s performance is obviously important simply for the sake of understanding what makes one successful. But beyond that, it will help you combine the best parts of your changes together to improve current performance. This results in, among other things:

• More leads generated by your landing page
• More purchases or general conversions due to reducing the time between when a user arrives on your page and when they convert
• Potentially decreasing your PPC costs over time as Google recognizes your page’s increased performance
• Cheaper CPA from more relevant keywords in improved landing page copy

Overall, these and other factors combine to both lower your costs and increase the effectiveness of your landing pages. By being clear and helpful for the visitors to your page, you’ll end up with more satisfied customers that are more likely to make a purchase and have a favorable experience that leads them to return.