As of writing this we’re halfway into 2016 — congratulations for making it this far! If you haven’t already been deported by Donald Trump, killed by a new super virus, or shamed on the internet, I’d say you’re winning.
As you may know, we here at Wishpond eat, sleep, and dream landing pages.
We’re always in a mad rush to bring the hottest technologies and trends to our landing page builder and lead generation tools to maximize the ROI our users get from their marketing. The more value you’re able to provide to your landing page visitors the higher conversions you’ll see.
Since we spend countless hours staring at, building, and optimizing landing pages we thought it would be cool to tell you about the hottest landing page trends we’ve seen in 2016 so far.
Landing Page Videos
The impact a video has on the conversion rate of your landing page could be huge. A video explaining your product is the next best thing to having the product directly in your consumer’s hand.
Videos are effective on landing pages for a few reasons:
- People are inherently lazy. Watching a video is easier than reading a long description. A landing page video will save the viewer time and provide an added element of entertainment.
- They’re entertaining. People have been watching TV for ages for a reason and this makes it a comfortable format to consume.
- High quality production raises the credibility and legitimacy of your company. Nothing compares to a well produced video when it comes to building confidence in your consumers.
Let’s not forget that videos can also be displayed in other formats. Many business now use video backgrounds on their landing pages that play automatically upon entry.
SquareSpace is known for their beautiful website templates and the landing pages they use are the same. They’ve created a video background for their landing page to show off their easy-to-use website builder as soon as you land.
Airbnb shows off their flair for design and community building with a background landing page video.
Free Tools on your Landing Page
Having a free tool on your landing page for visitors to instantly test a small portion of your software is a hot trend for companies that deal in software. It gets your visitor’s foot in the door and helps them to clearly understand your business and the value of engaging with you.
CoSchedule, a scheduling tool for content marketers, has a free tool that lets creators test their headlines for effectiveness. The free headline tester tool attracts their target audience — content marketers — and prompts them to upgrade to a paid plan to take action on their headlines.
BuzzSumo, everyone’s favorite content discovery tool, allows visitors to perform free content searches but locks out list items beyond the top five as well as the advanced features unless you’re a paid user.
Landing Page Popups
There is no debating the effectiveness of popups in the modern age of the web.
Agreed. But why are they so effective?
Now that many web users have become accustomed to browsing online, we’ve developed what is called “banner blindness“.
Banner blindness describes the fact that we now, totally subconsciously, ignore the advertising and calls to action placed around the content we read. We’re bombarded with ads all day so we’ve developed the tendency to ignore everything that’s not immediately important to us.
Ready to start ramping up your email collection strategy? Check out Wishpond’s new Popup tool with a 14-day free trial today.
To fight banner blindness and the new desensitized nature of users we have popups.
Popups are so effective because they demand the attention of your visitors. Whether it’s to claim an offer or to close the popup window, popups force visitors to act in some way — snapping them out of their tunnel vision.
Jeff Bullas has a visually effective entry popup, also known as a welcome mat, that visitors are presented with right when they land on his blog. He offers up a free ebook filled with tactics and tips to grow your web traffic. This welcome mat allows him to present his demonstrated value right away (5 million visitors a year) and collect emails for his email list.
Popular global menswear retailer, Frank & Oak, employs an entry popup to let their visitors know of any current sales and promotions. This is effective because provides immediate value to visitors before they begin their shopping experience.
Interactive Design
Websites and landing pages are no longer ugly Frankenstein-like entities built with basic html and styling. They’re now fully interactive experiences meant to take visitors on a journey through a brand’s story.
A basic or poorly designed site is increasingly a sign of a brand which doesn’t care. It leads to high bounce rates and poor user experiences, not to mention penalization from Google. Modern web users value fast response time, appealing design, and refined functionality on the websites they visit.
Freelance designer James Barnard observes: “Users are far more web-savvy than marketers tend to give them credit for. It’s a given that a landing page should be well designed, meaning that poorly crafted sites stick out like a sore thumb.” If good design is assumed and users are wise to the standard trend of big and bold call to actions, “then we have to appeal to them at an emotional level.”
We’ve seen that web users make decisions based on their current mood, so the more your landing page can do to get a visitor into the right mood, the more conversions you’ll see.
BEOPLAY, the portable speaker by Bang & Olufsen, uses a completely interactive product landing page with moving parts and incredible imagery to present their new speaker.
The BEOPLAY website takes visitors on a visual journey to explain the form and functionality of their new speaker. Bang & Olufsen, a brand known for their eye catching design and flair for the minimalistic, aims to create a landing page experience akin to the portable speaker they so excellently designed.
It’s now commonplace for brands to create unique buyer experiences from discovery to checkout so that their customers are fully invested in their purchasing journey.
Thank You Page Optimization
After visitors have converted on your landing page they should be presented with a Thank You page outlining the next step in your sales process. Thank You page optimization is an often overlooked opportunity to further your relationship with visitors.
Your Thank You page has huge potential for your visitors to…
- Gather more information on your audience
- Share your website/product/service with their friends and family
- Increase your sales with upsells and conversion prompts
- Gather customer service feedback
Social Media Examiner optimizes their Thank You page for further conversions by:
- Having a video that explains how to allow their emails to reach your inbox and avoid spam filters
- Suggesting other content they produce, like their podcast
- Having calls to action to share their website with your friends
- Having links to blog posts you might be interested in
Wrapping Up
As the web continues to evolve and become a more complex system of communication, user behavior will change as well.
The smarter and more aware users become, the more they will be skeptical of what is presented to them online.
The fact is, most of the online population are impulse shoppers (I can’t tell you how many useless things I’ve bought late night on Amazon). The more you can do to keep your landing page looking up to date, clear, well-designed, and engaging, the more your visitors will convert.
Experiment with these six hot trends today and bring your landing pages into (the second half of) 2016.
Have you been noticing these trends on landing pages?
Are we missing any that you’ve seen this year?
Vote for your favorite landing page trend and let us know your thoughts below!
Ready to start generating new leads for your business? Check out all of Wishpond’s marketing tools with a 14-day free trial today.
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