There is a real art to building the perfect landing page. You can’t have too much or too little information, you need to be persuasive but not pushy, and you need to offer something a visitor would go through the trouble of filling out a form for.
I recently sat down with Jennifer Pepper, Head of Content Marketing at Unbounce and speaker at Experience Inbound 2019, to learn about how to build a landing page masterpiece.
What does Unbounce do? What is your role?
Unbounce is the leading platform for creating landing pages for marketers. We provide a drag and drop builder where you can build up your landing pages without having to ask a developer to help you out.
I am the head of content marketing, with a team of four incredibly talented writers.
What would be your response to marketers who say “Why isn’t my landing page working?
It's very common, don’t worry! Not every landing page is going to knock it out of the park right away when you put it up. This is your opportunity to optimize. One of the first things I would start to look at is what’s that form like. Is there any friction in the form? Maybe your audience isn’t comfortable giving away all their information up front. Consider what you’re asking for, and how you’re asking for it. Is your offer of equal value to the information you’re asking of them? Maybe your offer isn’t that great and you’re going to have to up the ante a little bit.
You can also look at the copy on the page and consider how persuasive you’re being. Maybe your page is too long, and you’re offering details that don’t persuade people. So go through that information hierarchy and ask “Have I given them too much?” “Did I not give them enough?” or “Are there leftover questions I’m not addressing?”
A good thing to consider trying is adding a little quiz that pops up on your landing page and asks “Do you have all the information you need?”
Does the number of fields on your form depend on what you’re offering?
Absolutely 100%. Your form fields depend on what you’re offering, it’s important to have the balance of what you’re offering vs what someone is willing to give. What you can do, something I’ll be covering more of at Experience Inbound, is to look at multi-step forms. This allows you to delay sensitive information for later in a progression of questions. This helps a lot of people with high-commitment offers.
We’ve been taught or best practice when building a landing page to only have one thing on that page that you want them to do, does that still hold true?
I think that does still hold true, some people try and fit way too much on a landing page. Visitors want you to maintain the same conversion message from an ad, to email, to the landing page. Whatever journey you’re taking them on, it’s best to keep them focused on one thing. You’ll have higher conversion rates this way.
It’s important to leave them with one very clear next step once they convert, and provide them with links to further information where appropriate.
Does video have a place on a landing page?
Yes, but it’s a lot more nuanced than people think. You’re definitely going to want to experiment with video, but only so far as it supports the offer. So again, don’t give people too much to do on your landing page. You’re really going to want to consider two things:
- Is this adding to the persuasion of what I’m asking you to do?
- Does the page really need it?
What we are seeing with page load times, is that pages are really bloated. The more you add the heavier your page gets and the longer your load time is and your visitor won’t have the patience to stick around. So just be sure your video supports your offer and doesn’t bloat up the page.
What should we be looking at to measure the success of a landing page?
Great question! First off, conversion rates! How well are people taking up on your offer? That’s something you can track in both Google Analytics and tools like Unbounce. I think people mistakenly think they have to watch for bounce rate, but that’s actually less important with a landing page. What I would look at is the quality score Google is giving your page, what relevancy score Facebook is assigning your page if you’re doing social ads and your page speed.
All of these factors also influence your cost per click in a paid campaign and are important to keep in mind.
Your topic this year at Experience Inbound is Your New Secret Sauce for Growth: A Recipe for High-converting Landing Pages. Without giving too much away, what can people expect from this session?
I’m really excited about this talk! We’re basically going to go through a lot of customer examples where people are converting massively and get tactical tips on seeing similar results in your own campaigns. You’ll see real life offers, what they are doing on their pages and learn things you can take right back to your office.
We’re going to cover five or so different tactics that you can walk away with and start implementing on your pages right away.
Do you have any resources you’d like to share with our readers and listeners?
Probably too many! Many of you are probably familiar with Ann Handley’s newsletter, it contains a lot of resources that I think writers will find very useful. So if you want something to help fuel your team that’s a good one.
There is also a newsletter called Recomendo, I don’t know where it comes out of, but basically, it’s where a bunch of people recommend things. That one’s pretty interesting I always find things there whether it’s to buy or to recommend to others.
Have you been to Wisconsin before? And what do you know about Wisconsin?
I’ve never been to Wisconsin. But I feel like the movie Bridesmaids may have maybe been set there?
We always like for our attendees to know a little about our speakers. So what’s something we may not know about you?
I’m super nerdy, my partner Matt and I like to do the New York Times crossword puzzle on the iPad as a nightly thing. We graduated from Mondays to Tuesdays, which are a little bit more difficult, but our Monday record is under seven minutes.
You can attend Jennifer Pepper’s Experience Inbound session to learn more about how personalization, dynamic elements, videos, and even Easter-egg surprises can prompt conversions on your landing pages.
