5 tips for building incredible landing pages

Knak landing pages are here!

In honour of our brand new enterprise landing page builder – Knak Pages – we’re sharing some tips and tricks for building world-class, on-brand landing pages that enhance your campaigns and look good doing it.

Designing an effective landing page is a bit of a lost art, with the average page converting fewer than 6% of visitors. Clearly, there’s room for improvement, and with some slight tweaks — or possibly a major design overhaul — you can clear out the clutter and move conversion rates in the right direction.

Here are some best practices for building landing pages that convert

1. Make it Match

Consistency is key, so make sure the content and images are consistent across emails and landing pages. Your landing page should feel like a natural extension of your email – similar content, similar images, identical branding.

When we launched Knak Pages, we hosted a live virtual event to introduce it (watch it on demand if you missed it!).

These two pieces complement each other without being a direct copy, which guides readers through the process to our CTA.

The benefit of using something like Knak Pages is that we only had to create these assets once. The person who built the email in Knak was able to pull the same elements into the landing page easily. We didn’t have to wait for someone else to do it for us, and we were able to get both pieces built and approved in one step instead of waiting for a coder or an agency to help.

2. Drive the Focus

When a prospect gets to your landing page, their job should be simple: quickly evaluate your offer and click the CTA button.

Your job is also simple: make it easy for them to do their job!

That means you need to limit your content to the bare essentials. Don’t include in-depth info about your company or add links to other parts of your site. We’d even suggest you get rid of the navigation bar and any social sharing links so they can focus solely on your offer without being distracted by other content.

Your landing page should have four core elements:

• Headline
• Benefit Statement or Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• Form
• CTA

The most important part is the headline. Your prospect will decide within seconds if they want to stay on the page. If they leave, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the content is, but if they stay, good news: 90% of visitors who read your headline will also read your CTA.

We’ll talk more about CTAs below, but here’s one critical instruction:

Resist the urge to include more than one CTA. You may think that giving visitors more options will increase the likelihood that they’ll convert on at least one of them, but research conclusively proves the opposite.

Too many choices lead to frustration and indecision, both of which negatively affect conversion. Make it easy for visitors to move forward by focusing on one compelling CTA and driving them to take action.

3. Highlight Benefits, Not Features

It’s tempting to focus on what your product does, but you’ll have more success if you highlight what your prospect will gain by using it.

Do you make the world’s best noise-cancelling headphones? Great. But instead of telling me, “Our headphones are the best,” tell me I can, “Eliminate 98% of background noise and participate in that Zoom call even if my kids are having a wrestling match in the background.”

It’s all about the benefits, not the features.

Your unique selling proposition (USP) should feature heavily here, and it should be easy to identify: Put it in your headline, reinforce it in your benefit statement.

4. Keep it Simple

Your landing page should be a study in simplicity. Prospects are not here to read for fun — remember, you’ve only got a few seconds to convince them to stay — so you need to be compelling, and you need to do it fast.

Your page should be:

✔️ Scannable

Can prospects quickly scan your page and still hit the highlights? Large text blocks won’t be read, and they’ll likely have the opposite effect (i.e.: eyes glazing over). Keep paragraphs small; use formatting to call attention to key items.

✔️ Cohesive

Landing page content should be consistent with the rest of your campaign (another reason it makes sense to build them in the same platform). The content can vary slightly, but it should be cohesive enough that your landing page feels like the natural next step in the process.

✔️ Built with conversion in mind

Every piece of information you ask for is another chance for your prospect to navigate away, so keep your form simple and only ask for what you absolutely need to know.

We guarantee you that you need less than you think. You may want to know their marketing budget or company size, but if you don’t actually need that info, leave it out. 

Also:

• Eliminate guesswork – if something is answered incorrectly, make the error message clear. If passwords need to be a certain length, spell it out. 
• Skip placeholder text – label fields clearly, and make sure labels don’t disappear when prospects start typing.
• Clearly label optional fields – if you want info that isn’t strictly needed, make sure the prospect knows it’s optional

A lead enrichment service (LES) like Clearbit can be really helpful here. An LES can backfill missing company data which helps keep forms short, and in some cases allows you to ask for just an email address. 

5. Design Thoughtfully

Any design should contribute to the simplicity of your landing page. It should be visually appealing and easy to follow, designed to keep prospects moving forward.

Your design should be:

✔️ Simple

Font size and colour matter! Resist the urge to over-design: choose a font that’s easily readable in a smaller size (hello, mobile devices), and keep the overall look clean and beautiful.

✔️ Responsive

B2B mobile purchasing is up 22% in the past two years, so design a landing page that looks great no matter where it’s being viewed.

✔️ Compelling

The CTA button is another opportunity to drive home the benefits of your offer. Things like “Click Here,” “Download,” and “Process” are not compelling and feel spam-y.

Customize the CTA language to underscore benefits, and be specific.

Are you offering an eBook about productivity? Instead of “Download Now,” try “Be More Productive!”

Build Smarter Landing Pages

Your landing page is a preview of the kind of interaction customers can expect from your company. Make it a positive one by building pages that drive conversion and keep the focus where you want it: on what they have to gain by taking the next step. 

If you want to learn more about building amazing landing pages with Knak Pages, we’d love to chat! Reach out to us and we’ll set up a time to show you how this powerful new tool works.