For B2B marketers with long, complex sales cycles, landing pages are an essential tool for generating new leads. However despite being very straightforward tools, landing pages are rarely optimized to their full potential. The typical landing page loses over half of its visitors immediately. This leaves a company with only a tiny portion of visitors being converted to leads. So how do you not only keep visitors on your page, but successfully convert them into leads.
The key is to optimize and Convert.
Website Design – Keep the look and feel of the landing page consistent with your brand. This will help capitalize on familiarity and perceived value.
Forms – Forms can make a user uncomfortable. Creating forms with the user in mind helps minimize this feeling and maximize lead generation.
Value – Users have to be enticed to provide their information. You will know that providing an appropriate incentive will dramatically increase conversions
Analyze – Perfecting a landing page can take numerous tweaks and revisions. Spend time finding out what works and adjust accordingly.
Design and Layout
When you have only a few seconds to capture a prospects interest, a well thought out and optimized layout can make all the difference to a page’s perceived success or failure. This means you must take care to ensure the following.
• All branding, colors and styles should be consistent with the full website
• A call to action and value proposition should be clearly visible to visitors
• Forms should be simple, easy to complete, and displayed prominently
• Navigation around or away from a landing page should not be provided
On the web, always understand that less is more. It should be clearly visible to visitors which action a company would like them to take. A short paragraph or list stating the value in providing information would provide a clear incentive to visitors.
Form Essentials
Although simple, the structure of a form effects a visitor’s perceived notion of value, risk, and even credibility. It’s enough if you make sure you’ve ensured the following:
• The information collected by a form should be valuable and relevant to a specific goal.
• Limit your fields as minimizing the number of fields will aid in completion
• Email delivery helps as sending an offer via an email instead of a redirect helps you begin to build a relationship with the customer.
Finally, Analyze and revise. Tracking usage statistics and adjusting strategy are key to achieving page success. This involves identifying key metrics and continually revising and adapting to the needs of the industry.
