The Anatomy of a High-Converting Landing Page

A landing page can increase your leads and get your business tons more sales.
Whether it is a form embedded on your website or Facebook landing page it remains the channel to capture your visitors’ information.

But, there’s a number of fundamental basics to building a landing page that converts. If you don’t have them, you business is likely losing conversions. And that means that all your online advertising and social media marketing is for nought.

Here’s the five essential building block elements you need to build a landing page that converts.

#1. Landing Page Unique Selling Point


Your unique selling point is, well, just as it sounds – your very own and unique reasons for a landing page visitor to convert. You USP convinces your audience that you’re the best place to get your stuff. It’s one of the most important aspects of your online marketing campaign.

Show your USP upfront on your landing page.

Craft enticing USP copy for your headline. Your header USP should be a short and catchy marketing line. It should be short as it’s best to use the matching phrase in your PPC ads, and even your Facebook ads too. (The more cohesively your ads match your headline, the higher your conversion rate).

Include a secondary USP in your landing page subheader that supports and convinces your visitor how great, trustworthy, irresistible and needed your offer is.

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Remember that you’ll be using your USP in your online advertising and most of your inbound marketing efforts. Make it effective!

To get the most out of your landing page marketing, brainstorm out 10 to 50 different selling points you have. List out:

  • What makes your offer unique from your other products or deals?
  • How are you better than your competition?
  • What are you giving your consumer?

Narrow it down to the top three. Then write out your USP copy. Rewrite it 10 times. Use the best ones on your landing page headers and subheaders. Always, always A/B test your headlines to get the best results.

Here’s a few examples of enticing and awesome USPs:

  • Design a landing page in 15 minutes
  • Voted #1 landing page builder
  • Increase conversions by 78%

#2. Landing Page Images and Videos


The image or images you use on your landing page can make or break the interest level of your promotion.

For most of your visitors, the image is the first thing they actually see on your page. It’s also the most relatable. People are people are we naturally interpret visuals much faster than we process the written word. (Hey, blame it on evolution, but we could see wild predators a lot earlier than we could interpret language.)

The faster you can capture interest, the longer your visitor will stay. This is particularly true in today’s online “multi-tab open” world (uh, how many tabs do you have open right now? 26, like me?). The best images show your selling points, and convey the positive emotional benefits of using your offer or products.

The tried and true photo of smiling faces is effective. We tend to naturally react to people’s faces. If they’re happy and we feel like we could relate to them, we subconsciously become happy too.

Note the subtleties of the smiling woman’s eye direction in our example.  By having your subject look at the product you’re promoting, you drive visitor eye traffic towards the product too.

Show a photo, image or video of:

  • Improved lifestyles
  • Easier problem solving
  • Relieving a stress point

I’d highly recommend you stay away from stock images. Use real life people (who might be slightly more good looking than average).

As always, A/B test your images. What resonates the best with you and your marketing team may not have the same impact with your specific market.

#3. Landing Page Benefits or “What’s in it for me?”


Speaking of your specific market, a landing page is not effective unless you include your list of benefits. That is, what will your consumer gain by converting on your offer?

Your benefits should relate and expand upon your USP with more detailed specifics about your page promotion. But, think about your offer from the perspective of your targeted buyer. They might have thousands of options as to where to buy your particular product. You’ve captured their attention with your USP and images. Now you need to make them stay – and convert.

Speak to your customer and write landing page copy that answers their biggest question: “What’s in it for me?”.

As a minimum, list out bullet points of your benefits, such as:

  • Our easy-to-use landing page templates give you more time to watch cat videos (or whatever it is you really want to do)
  • Give your clients 78% higher conversion rates – without the hard work
  • Use our WordPress landing page plugin and watch your lead-generation grow

Take it further by including short boxes exuding the virtues of your campaign:

#4. Landing Page Call-to-Action


Every landing page should be built and designed around one single conversion goal. In other words, your landing page needs to be built for a purpose.

Landing page conversion goals include:

  • Generate leads through an ebook download
  • Generate warm leads through a free quote
  • Sell a product

For your visitor, your conversion goal is presented as an ask – more commonly known as a Call-to-Action (CTA).

A good CTA motivates your traffic to act on the conversion goal of your campaign. Hey, you can get a clickthrough, generate interest and show how great your stuff is – but if you’re not closing the deal with an actionable ask, your landing page fails.

Whether we realize it or not, we generally react to some of the most minute physical and emotional cues. You know, when you meet someone for the first time, and within a few seconds you decide if you want to take the relationship further or not? Well, the same is true of the CTA on your landing page.

In your CTA design, use eye directional cues (such as arrows, or subtler cues like eye direction), colour contrasts and whitespace. Use a prominent CTA button to make your ask the most obvious element in your design.

Use customer-centric copy by writing in second person pronouns like “my” and “you”, and please avoid the common and low converting terms like “buy now”, “click here” and “submit”. Get creative with terms like:

  • “Create my free account”
  • “Yes, I want my free ebook”
  • “Send me more info”

Check out 7 Landing Page Call-to-Action Formulas for Higher Conversions for more CTA tips.

#5. Landing Page Social Proof


People look to other people to determine whether to buy your stuff – or not. This is especially true online when your customer can’t walk into your store and people your customer sales staff in person.

Social proofis one of the most persuasive marketing tools, and it can be extremely effective on your landing page. It shows that other people (just like your customer) have taken part in your offer/ used your product/ engaged your service and they’ve had happy results. If makes your visitor trust that you could make them happy too.

Getting some social trust factors on your landing page is a must in these days of social connections.

Social proof on your landing pages can be:

  • Customer testimonials
  • Number of social followers
  • Awards
  • Trust symbols
  • Customer reviews
  • Simple social share buttons

Customer testimonials, for example,  tend to increase conversions the most when they are:

  • Personal – Even if your testimonial is from a business, there is always a face and a single person making that kudos to you. Include a nice happy face of your customer as well as their title and company.
  • Realistic – Make sure your quotes aren’t over the top or promise way more than you actually delivered. Studies have shown that over-promising loses you more customers than under-promising and over-delivering.
  • Specific – People like to see the details. Use customer testimonials with numbers. Get testimonials with relatable and specific stories too.

Conclusion


A great landing page is not complete without these five essential elements. So, go check your landing pages to increase your conversions with:

  • Unique Selling Point
  • Images
  • Customer benefits
  • Call-to-Action
  • Social proof

If you liked this article, check out these additional landing page articles:

What do you think? How do you build an optimized landing page? Share your comments.

Written by Krista Bunskoek @ Wishpond

Be sure to check out your FREE Complete Guide to Landing Pages:

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