When running a lead generation campaign, landing pages are one of the most important elements to have.
Unfortunately, it is not all business that uses them for their lead generation campaign; they prefer to drive their lead generation campaign traffic to their website homepage.
After all, it is the first impression of your business.
Surprisingly, the average conversion rate for a website is between 1% and 3% which is lower than landing page conversion.
Your website will only convert a small portion of your lead generation traffic, with such a poor outcome, you shouldn’t rely on driving your web traffic to your homepage if you want to have success in your business.
Another name for a landing page is a lead capture page, it is an essential must-have page for any type of business website because it is a targeted web page that is set up to convert higher percentages of website visitors into leads.
While website homepage conversion rate is 1% and 3%, lead capture pages have a higher conversion rate of 5%-15% on average yet they are most times overshadowed by the website homepage and other product pages.
The reason for this is that marketers have focused on driving traffic to companies' websites for many years without having a clear idea of how they got there and the next destination to take them.
With the technological advancement we have today, marketers now use email marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertisement, and other digital channels to drive traffic to lead capture pages containing the right messages designed for each audience.
With the presence of your website lead capture page, you can visitors exactly what you need them to do and the reason why they need to do it.
Dribbble is a visual design website that has various landing page design templates that will give you the inspiration to create yours.
Having a Lead Capture page does not mean your website homepage is not useful, your website homepages’ are still very important to your business but instead of focusing on converting your visitors, their particular task is to serve the masses.
Your website homepage is only good for driving direct traffic, but when you want your website visitors to take some conversion actions your landing page is the place to send them.
Lead Capture pages have a positive impact on your business if you make use of them effectively.
Although landing pages perform better and have a higher conversion rate of 5% to 15% more than website homepages at 1% - 3%, they can still perform better and have more conversion rate if you follow its best practices.
To get the best out of your lead Capture page you need to follow the following practices, those that have implemented these best practices are experiencing a higher conversion rate of 30% - 45% which is above the average conversion rate.
For example, if you have 10,000 website visitors that visited your web homepage, you will barely receive estimated leads of more than 300, but if you drive that same traffic to your targeted landing page with an average conversion rate of 30%, you will be able to generate 3,000 leads.
Which one do you think is best for you?
If you want to generate more leads for your business and you are pondering how you could create a lead capture page with a higher conversion rate then follow the landing page best practices I am about to show you below:
Ten (10) Landing Page Best Practices
1. Never Use Your Homepage as a Landing Page
The first thing you should never do is to never use your website homepage as your landing page, with too much messaging on your homepage your visitors will feel lost and they will not concentrate on taking the action that you want them to take.
Even if you have an awesome homepage and sub-pages, you will perform better when you use a landing page that basically built for conversion than when you use your website homepage.
A Lead Capture Page is only focused on one task and that is lead capturing, driving your visitors to your landing page will help acquire more leads for your business.
2. The Following Elements Must Be Included on Your Landing Page
3. Limit the Use of Navigation
Lead Capture Pages only have one purpose, and that is the purpose of capturing leads.
When your web visitors land on your landing page, you are supposed to keep them there until they perform a conversion action.
Having so much navigation will stop them from paying attention to the necessary details and they will keep wandering on the page.
You should not add your main site navigation to your Lead Capture Page so that your website visitors will pay attention to the details on the landing page.
4. Your Objective Should be Simple and Clear
The information on your landing page should be clear and concise; you shouldn’t stuff your landing page with too much information.
Be direct about what the page is about and the actions you want your visitors to take.
The amount of copy, images, media, and links should only be limited to what is necessary; your content should also be organized in a proper structure so that your objects will be logical in order.
The call-to-action (CTA) button should also be clear and big enough for visitors to see, you can use red color to border the call-to-action (CTA) button.
5. Your landing page Content should resonate with a Visitor’s Previous Source.
Whether your visitor comes from a social media ad or PPC ad, or from a call-to-action (CTA) button of another source.
You should make sure that your message resonates with their source of traffic throughout the entire conversion path.
For example, If the PPC ads you run say “Get a free trial,” the objectives of your landing page must also resonate with your PPC ads so that your landing page won’t look like spam in the eyes of your visitors, and if they feel you are trying to waste their time, they will bounce out of your website.
6. Reduce Friction
Friction is caused by objects or missing objects on a landing page that inhibit your website visitor from taking the required action.
These objects can include the provision of too much information complexity, animation that is distracting your visitors, lack of customer proof or security, etc.
Let your visitors be confident enough to provide you with their personal information.
To reduce your page friction you need to keep the page simple, you shouldn’t require your web visitors to read too much information, and you should also include proof elements on your page such as customer testimonials and reviews, ongoing number of downloads/sales (to indicate acceptance from others),
You should also include security badges if you’re dealing with customers' sensitive data such as credit card information, and as mentioned above, you should make sure that your messaging resonates throughout their conversion path.
7. Focus on VALUE
When you create your landing page you should also focus on creating value.
Your landing should not be created to download a fact sheet, but it should be created for a valuable whitepaper.
Your landing page should not be used for ‘Contact Us” option, instead, it should be used to create a valuable guide, free trial, and many more.
Offering something of value to your visitors will enable you to generate more leads for future marketing purposes until they start buying from you.
8. Only Ask for What You Need
When running a marketing campaign, there is no straight answer for the number of required form fields that should be added to your lead capture form.
But here is one simple truth, only ask for information that your business needs. If you don’t need their cell phone number, don’t ask for it.
You should try to stay clear of sensitive and confidential information, and you should also avoid using the generic word “Submit” for your form button.
You should use language for what they will be getting in return.
For example, you can use “Get Your Ebook Now,” “Download Your Free PDF,” “Get Free Evaluation,” and many more.
9. Create a Lot of Landing Pages
For you to make your campaign a success, you need to create a new landing page for every new lead generation campaign you run, doing this will let you have segmented leads for a different marketing campaign.
The more landing pages you have, the more leads you will get from your traffic.
10. Make Your Landing Pages Shareable
This option is not often used by many marketers, but it is also another great way you can drive more traffic to your landing pages.
You should include your social media sharing widget or links on your landing pages so that it will be easy for your visitors to share your content with their family, friends, a colleague at work, and many more which will open you to opportunities for getting more leads.