What would you do if your goal was some much-needed increase of leads and email subscribers and some even more needed revenue?
If your answer doesn’t include landing pages, then you’re wrong. Landing pages are a great way to push some offers, create benefits and entice prospects to become buyers.
A landing page is a page designed for one thing and one alone: Conversion.
This is why plenty of email marketing and marketing automation platforms, such as Moosend -which is one of the best Constant Contact alternatives, by the way-, offer the option of a super easy landing page builder.
However, a builder is not enough if you don’t follow through with the trends and tips of each year. And lead generation can be stressful. So, in this guide, I’ll give you all the tips and tricks you need to know about landing pages in 2020.
Which is one less thing to worry about. Or several, depending on your standpoint.
So, let’s begin!
Brevity is the soul of wit
In other words, when it comes to your landing page, less is more. Your landing page needs to be simple and to-the-point, as there is no place for babbling in it.
Your main two groups of buyers are Millenials and Gen-Zers. Both born into eras of significant technological change and both not easily perplexed by the wonders of modern technology.
This means that you will need to be a little less overbearing to capture the already minimal attention span, both in terms of copy and in terms of design and offers.
You need something clever and minimal, with clean lines, easy to read and most of all fast loading. Of course, it goes without saying that the less the elements, the less the loading time a landing page requires.
And, since your target audience is the main reason behind this “trend” -in my opinion, what should be the standard train of thought from here on out-, Google is already on it, making sure that, if your website is loading slow, or your landing page in our case, it’s not going to rank well on SERPs.
There’s a pretty simple explanation behind that: Slow loading times show zero benefit to the users. And whatever is not beneficial to the users, according to search engines, needs to go.
This means that you’re going to miss out on a very important aspect of SEO. You see, when you practice SEO, you need to make sure that you optimize in order to satisfy user intent. And no user intends to wait for more than a couple of seconds for a page to load.
So, a landing page with a minimal design is not only something that will be easy on the eyes, it can help with your SEO efforts as well.
Go mobile
Here’s why:
(Source)
The stat above shows the increase in mobile visits to web pages, from 2009 to 2018. As you can see, in just about 10 years, traffic has increased dramatically.
However, the prospects’ attention span is not what it used to be. And remember what I already mentioned about the bounce rate?
People won’t hit the back button just because your page was loading slowly. They’ll also do it because of the broken elements of the page, which make it harder to experience.
For example, let’s say that someone’s browsing Facebook and bumps into one of those Facebook ads that pop up more often than not.
If one clicks on those ads, they’re taken to a dedicated landing page. If this page is broken, they won’t even bother remembering your brand’s name, let alone look for your website a little while later, when they’ll be able to use desktop.
And since prospects’ actions are impulse-driven, you’re missing out on a whole lot of conversion, if you decide to skip the adaptive design part.
Test your images, fields and of course, size and color of texts and buttons. Make sure that none of those elements look too stretchy, too “foggy” or too out-of-place on mobile and/or tablet view.
Go big, go bold, go simple
Okay, “go big” may be a very brave statement, as you wouldn’t want your background image, for example, to be too large for the space available, but I’m talking about typography here.
So, invest in oversized typography. You see, sometimes even the best copy can go unnoticed if it’s not right there where your prospects can see it. You need something that will grab their attention and will hook them straight up.
And being the visual creatures us humans are, we see the object first and then realize what it is. In our case, we see the letters first (in sheer size and color and all) and then go ahead and check what they say.
Of course, it goes without saying that this doesn’t mean that your typography needs to be the only thing you invest in. Be clear on what your CTA is, and use actionable verbs through and through to urge prospects to do what you want them to:
(Source)
You see what happened here. “Drive” – “Sign up to drive”. There is no doubt about the action to be taken and the correlation behind driving and signing up is more than clear enough.
The letters are big. The verbs are bold. The background is simple. And that’s all you need, to create an easy-on-the-eyes but, at the same time, not boring landing page.
Hook ‘em sooner rather than later
Show value right up front and center and be clear. Not in what your prospects can save if they trust in you, nor in how fun your content is and how your prospects will love your newsletters.
Invest in showing your prospects exactly who they’ll manage to become if they trust in you:
(Source)
For example, if you sign up with Masterclass and take classes with, say, Helen Mirren (pictured above), you will learn from the best in the world. In other words, you will become at least half as good as an iconic, award-winning actress.
And all that for as little as $15/month that’s billed annually.
See where the major value lies? Not in the billing, not in the fact that the price is paid annually.
The major value lies in the fact that we’re talking about a platform with top-notch professionals as teachers.
And here’s an uber-pro tip: Use FOMO.
If your landing page is created and optimized to promote a special, limited-time-only offer, go ahead and use timers. That way, you’ll create urgency easily and without much fuss.
And if you’re unsure whether your prospects will fold under pressure or not, A/B testing and customer segmentation are here for you.
Video will rule all – almost
Landing pages that utilize video will definitely see a great rise in 2020 and beyond, and the reasons are way simpler than any marketer would like to claim.
It’s mainly because videos can do all the work, explain things that would need a whole lot of text to be explained and -let’s face it- they’re interactive, where copy and images are just… Plain.
But here’s what video can do for you, in absolute numbers:
(Source)
The above numbers can be roughly translated to higher conversion. Understanding will lead to prospects realizing why they need the product and demonstration videos can create the need to purchase.
But videos -whether they’re explainer videos or customer testimonials- come with some added benefits, both for your SERPs and, down the line, your ARR and overall conversion rate.
Fist of all, a video on a landing page cannot be too long, otherwise the page itself won’t load. Not to mention that people will just bounce if they realize it’s just too lengthy. And your ranking will suffer for it.
Secondly, short content practically screams “keyword use” and “SEO”. Provided you’ve made sure to satisfy your users’ intent, of course.
A short video will answer the key questions and solve key problems for the prospects, and the prospects will interact. This means more time on your landing page, which will benefit your SEO efforts.
Third and final: Videos don’t have to be expensive. Ergo, you can make more for less.
Ask your content team to create as many videos as possible and test them all. With some stellar segmentation and AI tools, you’ll know which one is the one to use in each and every case.
Finally
I’ all done with my favorite trends for 2020, so let me recap and provide some extra tips, but also refresh your memory.
First of all, don’t ever lose A/B testing. This could easily be the most important tactic for you to use, along with segmentation.
Secondly, personalization is what will probably help you win the game, so invest in your data. Utilize the data you get from your website and see where the main pain points of your prospects lie.
Heatmaps will help a lot in that aspect and AI will create customer segments that will almost be one-per-prospect, giving you a wide range of personalization options and, ultimately, targeting options.
And lastly, remember that your landing page is not a homepage. Don’t include too many links, don’t explain too many features. Keep everything short and to the point, the only thing you want from this page is to help you convert.
