Landing page is a very important part of website marketing. A bad landing page can result in no or few sales, whereas a good and a tested landing page can dramatically improve the conversion rate of a site.

However if you are just starting and have little experience in designing landing pages for lead generation, it might be a good idea to research this topic before telling your designers to design your landing page.

You will get thousands of tips to design landing pages however there are some basic methods that have been tested time and again and have proved to be working. The following pointers can be a starting point for designing your landing page.

Read and try, they should work:

1. The “Call to Action” should be as near and clear on the page as possible.

For example. If the “Call to Action” is a form that needs to be filled by the visitor then let the landing page have the form itself. There is NO need for an extra “Click Here” button for the visitor to reach the call to action page. Some may be too lazy to click. How many times we have seen that the page has a button “Click Here To Apply Now” which takes the visitor to the form after clicking. By creating a middle page you are only increasing the distance between the visitor and the Call to Action. Taking visitors directly to call to action page almost always improves conversion.

2. If possible keep the call to action portion in the above-the-fold of the page. Above-the-fold portion of the page is the top visible portion of the page in a computer screen.

3. REMOVE the unnecessary navigations from call to action page. If you can’t remove, then shift them to the bottom of the page. The idea is the visitor does not see any other link to click on top and while filling the form. Some may just click while half way filling the form and go away never to come back and fill the form.

4. White background with Black text works best.

5. Sense of urgency works well too. For example you can create a time-ticker. If you buy before Midnight (date) then you get a 10% discount. Please make sure that this actually works else there may be credibility issues with your site. This can be done easily done through JavaScript using cookies.

6. REMOVE fields that are not required. For example many websites keep this field: Alternate Email, Alternate Phone etc. When you don’t need it why keep it? It will make the form look shorter and more people may end up filling the order form.

7. Let the form be as small as possible and in ONLY ONE PAGE. Half way while filling the form if there is “Click here to continue” – many will just not click and leave the form unfilled.

Please understand that these are only some basic tips to keep in mind while designing a landing page. While these have worked for many webmasters there in no guarantee that it will work on your site too. Therefore it is very important to test what is working and what is not and keep a record of that.

It is also important that you gather enough data before concluding any result – this is known as statistically significant result. One way to get a statistically significant result is to make sure every page has had at least 100 call-to-action completed.

Thus if version A required 1000 visitors for completing 100 call-to-actions and version B required 1200 for completing 100 call-to-actions, it means version A is better than version B.

Fortunately Google Website Optimizer will help you to test your landing pages. Its easy and free. Why don’t you start today?

Those who follow website analytics know how important it is to reduce bounce rate.

What is a bounce rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits. If a visitor arrives at any page of a site and exits (either closes the browser or visits another website) without visiting any other page of the same site it’s a bounce.

For example if 65 out of a total of 200 visitors, visit only a single page of a site, the site has a bounce rate of 32.5%.

65/200 = 0.325
0.325 * 100 = 32.5%

Why reducing bounce rate is important?

It is important because:

1. The visitors will stay longer in the site, and (therefore)
2. Conversion rates will improve.

How to reduce bounce rate?

Frankly there is no hard and fast rule to reduce bounce rate. If there was, all websites would have implemented it. However, there are certain steps that can be tested to see if bounce rate reduces.

I will discuss some of them, and some you may have to find out yourself.

It is important that you know the pages that have a very high bounce rate. If you don’t know how to get it, ask your webmaster or login in your analytics account and look at the bounce rate section and arrange the pages in decreasing order of bounce rate.

If you use Google Analytics here is how to get it:

Go to Content -> Top Content. Now click on bounce rate. You should see the pages with high bounce rate on top.

If these pages are getting few pageviews don’t bother. You should be concerned with the pages that are getting good pageviews but having high bounce rates.

Scroll the list, get to the bottom and choose a few pages that are getting good pageviews and low bounce rate.

Now, compare the two section of pages i.e… pages with high bounce rates vs. pages with low bounce rates.

Do you notice anything? Can you find anything that’s not matching to the overall standard of your site? What do you think is good in low bounce rate pages and what do you think is annoying in high bounce rate pages?

Here are a few pointers:

1. Compare the overall feel of both the pages. Do you notice any difference? If yes this could be the reason that is driving visitors away.

2. Look at the navigational structure. Is there some difference in these two sections?

3. Compare the copy. Is the copy boring? Is it too big or is it too small?

4. Have a look at the headline. Are you missing something? Is it compelling? If not you may need to re-write your headline. It may be that people are reading your headline and calling it off.

5. Show the high bounce pages to your friends/colleagues. Ask them what they find annoying. Listen to them carefully. Better still write down what they say. If you think there is something common most of them are saying – implement it and see if there is a change in bounce rate.

NOTE: In fact point 5 can be done for the whole site. You may be surprised with the comments of your friends.

Basic idea is try to implement all those factors that are there in low bounce rate pages in the high bounce rate pages.

Hope you will find some help in lowering your bounce rate. If you feel I have left something please leave a comment.

Recommended Reading:
 
1. How To Decrease Bounce Rate And Increase Time On Site - Vedio
2. How to Improve Bounce Rates to Get More Action