Landing Page Best Practices

There's no question that your standard multi-level website menu is an essential element of your website. While It helps users navigate through your website more efficiently, it's a conversion rate killer. Remember, the goal of your landing pages to convert visitors into leads right on the spot. Anything that's not helping you to achieve the goal is merely a distraction. That being said, consider omitting the top and bottom menus on your landing pages. That way you're not giving your landing page visitors more reasons to bounce by creating unnecessary distractions.

Did you know that unnecessary scroll is another landing page conversion rate killer? Don't get us wrong though - your landing page doesn't have to be super short. But you should consider putting your key value proposition, screenshots, call-to-actions, key benefits, features and other key elements closer to the top of your landing page. These days people don't read the content, instead they're quickly "scanning" it with a very short attention span. Be sure to take this landing page best practice into account.

If you're asking for too much commitment from your landing page visitors, it might negatively affect the visitor-to-lead conversion rate of your landing pages. We always recommend giving users a chance to experience your products or services during a trial period that does not require a credit card or other payment methods to be added upfront. Depending on your business model, the no-stings-attached free trial can last anywhere between 7 and 30 days. So, if you do not require a credit card to get started, don’t forget to let your users know about it. On the other hand, if you do require a credit card to get started, the landing page best practices you should consider is clearly telling your landing page visitors that even though they must specify their preferred payment method upfront, they won't get charged until after the trial period comes to an end.

The quality of leads is just as important, if not more important than the quantity, right?  However, unless you're dealing with the in-market audience 100% and don't spend your time and budget capturing the top-of-the-funnel prospects, it is very likely that the sign-up forms with many fields will decrease the landing page conversion rate. The best practice here is to get rid of the nice-to-have fields and focus on collecting the key data points instead. The additional intelligence can be collected through data enrichment tools in an automated fashion.

One of the most important landing page recommedations is using the principles of storytelling when crafting the landing page content. Consider staring your story with a statement of a problem that your product helps address. To support the story, be sure to add relevant features and benefits, screenshots, customer success stories, etc. The only thing that you need to be careful with is the amount of content. Don't go too far and keep the focus on just a few strongest aspects of your offer.

With the avalanche of data breaches that has been going on in the last few years, it is utterly important to reassure your landing page visitors that the information you're collecting about them is properly secured, and will remain confidential. The best practice here is to explain the precise steps that your organization is taking to secure the data of your prospects and customers in your Privacy Policy. Consider putting a link to your Privacy Policy on your sign-up forms.

Right after your visitors take action on your landing pages, show them a “Thank You” page. The best practice here is to put some more details that could be valuable to them.  For example, if you are promoting a free trial of your product, you could put a quick video demo, invitation to an upcoming webinar or an eBook on your thank you page.