OmniKick Blog

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Michael Akinlaby who is a content strategist and SEO consultant at RankRain

According to a study conducted by HubSpot, more landing pages means more leads.

If leads generation is important to your business, then you’re at the right place.

In this article, I will show you the exact steps you can take to create a powerful landing page that converts.

While there is no standard process of creating a landing page, this article will show you the exact steps to creating the perfect one.

It doesn’t matter if you are an internet marketing beginner, or you’re creating your first landing page.

So, let’s begin.

Where do you start from when creating your first perfect landing page?

1. Write A Catchy Headline

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”—David Ogilvy

The headline is the first most important phase of your landing page. The headline is what determines if people will actually read the landing page.

If your headline sucks, your landing page won’t get read. It’s simple as that.

Web users are exposed to a lot of contents these days as we are seeing more businesses putting more budget into content marketing.

There’s a common advice that says a writer should spend half of the entire time it takes to write a piece of persuasive content on the headline.

Well, I’m sure you’re wondering that this is not a piece of content, it’s just a landing page.

Do your prospects even know the difference?

I believe most of your prospects may not even know what a “landing page” means. To them, your landing page is just like any other piece of content on the web.

Your headline is the first impression.

Psychologists have long known that first impressions really do matter.

What we see, hear, feel, or experience in our first encounter with something colors how we process the rest of it. Landing pages are no exception.

Here are the four rules you should keep in mind when writing your headline for effective landing pages:

1. Your headline should be unique
2. Your headline should be ultra-specific
3. Your headline should convey a sense or urgency
4. Your headline should be useful

By creating your headline based on this four rules, you’ll have a catchy headline that the reader can’t resist.

2. Write Killer Sub-Heads

It’s one thing to get someone to read your article because of a catchy title, and another to get the reader to continue reading your article.

There are many tactics you can employ to do this, but one of the best ways is to simply use subheadings (or subtitles).

Subheadings are basically like a subtitle which presents a new idea to the reader. They are usually in a slightly larger text than the rest of the article.

Sometimes, they are only in bold text, but they are made to stand out from the rest of the text.

Most web users skim contents online. They don’t have enough time to read a huge amount of text. They quickly want to get the important points and move to another page.

By writing killer sub-heads within your landing page, you’ll be able to grab web users attention and keep it.

For example, here’s how Copyblogger is using sub-heads on their landing page:

Does that sub-head grab your attention?

3. Use Attractive Images

Humans love visuals.

In fact, 90% of the information sent to the brain is visual.

You should also consider the fact that 93% of all human communication is visual. This has made pictures an important tool for marketing.

When you visit the home page of Freshdesk, a customer support software company based in California, you’ll see faces of smiling kids which conveys the message of customer delight.

4. Add Beautiful Educative Videos

According to the statistics released by Invodo, 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI.

The sudden rise of Periscope is a proof that web users love videos.

In fact, the same Invodo study shows that shoppers who view video are 1.81X more likely to purchase than non-viewers.

When you visit the home page of Basecamp, a web-based project management and collaboration tool, they have a video that shows you how their product works.

When you also visit the home page of Groove, a help desk software company, you’ll see a video that shows you a sneak peek of their dashboard.

These companies use videos on their landing pages because it increases their conversions.

5. Pay For A Decent Design

According to Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, “Design is half the battle.” It is true.

What can you achieve with a website that looks like it was designed in the early 90s?

Nothing!

You need a decent but attractive design.

You could get thousands of eyeballs to your landing page, but what really matters is what happens when they get there.

If your web design makes visitors vomit, they won’t spend more than a second on your landing page, talk less of getting them to buy your product.

Good design is important to the success of your landing page.

A good design creates value and drives positive outcomes.

A good design helps branding.

A good design also helps your business look more trustworthy.

For example, axisrooms is one of the worlds leading hotel management software that provides a complete solution for hotels both online & offline. The site has an attractive design.

A design such as this will get the attention of anyone out there.

Evernote is another website with a killer design.

6. Write An Explanation Of What Your Product Does

Whether you’re using text or videos, or both, you must explain every aspect of your product so that customers can fully understand how it’ll help them.

People are always doubtful when buying a particular product for the first time, or dealing with a company for the first time.

Even if their friends or network had recommended your site to them, they still want to see enough explanation that tells them everything they need to know before they give you their hard-earned cash.

When explaining your product on your landing page, make sure it is thorough. Don’t just put a form here and there and expect people to give you their emails. They won’t!

For example, AerServ explains to you what their product does.

7. Emphasize The Pain Your Product Solves

There’s a common marketing advice that says your product should be an aspirin rather than a vitamin. I agree with this statement.

Before creating your landing page, you should list out the pains your product solves.

When you emphasize the “vitamin” side of your product, customers think it’s “nice to have” not “a must have.”

When you write your landing page based on the vitamin side of your product, customers won’t feel compelled to drop their emails on your landing page.

But when you emphasize the “pain-killer” side of your product, customers think “they must have it” instead of thinking “it’s nice to have.”

Don’t emphasize pains or problems your customers may have in the future. Emphasize pains they have right now and how your product would help them solve those pains.

LeaseRef does a good job in emphasizing the pain-killer side of their services on their landing page.

8. Emphasize Your Value Proposition

As soon as customers land on your landing page, they want to know what makes your product different from your competitors. They also want to know the benefits you offer which your competitors don’t. That is your value proposition. It is the key thing that separates you from the competition.

Your value proposition or unique selling proposition (USP) should be emphasized many times on your landing page.

For example, Shopify establishes itself as the #1 ecommerce platform because it offers all the features an online store owner might need.

Shopify emphasizes this value proposition on its landing pages.

9. Use Trustworthy Testimonials On Your Landing Page

Testimonials have been proven to increase conversions on landing pages.

For example, WikiJob increased sales by 34% by including customer testimonials on their landing page.

Endorsements from users of your products and services can actually do most of your selling for you.

Customers want to hear directly from people who are currently using your product.

If you can display testimonials on your website, it will boost visitors’ confidence that you’re the right company they should go with.

When you visit the home page of KISSmetrics, for example, you’ll see this wonderful testimonial from Brandon Woolf, the VP of Marketing at Lucidchart.

An amazing testimonial such as this would surely boost conversions.

10. Offer Live Support

A study called “Making Proactive Chat Work” that was conducted by Forrester Research found the following:

“Many online consumers want help from a live person while they are shopping online; in fact, 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer.”

It’s impossible to address all the objections a customer might have while on your landing page.

Many customers would love to chat with a customer representative directly.

While a live chat support isn’t necessarily part of your landing page, it should be visible on every page on your website.

For example, when you visit Ahrefs, a tool that lets you track your backlinks and see what competitors are doing, you’ll notice that they have a live support option on the right side of their site.

With this option, visitors can quickly get their questions answered, thereby increasing their chances of becoming customers.

11. Write Persuasive Call To Action

What’s your goal for creating the landing page in the first place?

Is it to collect leads, sell your information product, or app?

As you create your landing page, you should craft your message based on your goal.

Your CTA could break or make your landing page.

Even if you get all the above right, and your CTA doesn’t get visitors clicking, then every other thing you’ve done is a waste.

There’s nothing like a perfect CTA. Your CTA needs continuous a/b testing. You must continually test, refine and tweak your CTA button.

In a case study mentioned by Unbounce, a B2B website owner increased conversions by 38.26% after replacing just one action verb with another.

Related articles: design a high converting landing page, A/B testing, top marketing channels, customer behavior analysis