 What are the elements that I need to have in place in order to have a highly converting landing page? Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where you'll learn marketing agency insights, best practices and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist at Slam Agency. We have offices in St. Louis and Miami and clients all over the world. And today I want to share with you some tips for how to create, how to build a landing page that converts. You know, we've all experienced a bad landing page. It is obnoxious, it's boring, it's just way too cluttered. It has information that's probably not relevant in terms of what you need right here and right now. And so those are the things that make a bad landing page but I want to tell you what you absolutely must have in order to build a landing page that converts. You have to understand, you know, what are the elements that I need to have in place in order to have a highly converting landing page? To know that, you know, I'm going to have a better chance of achieving my goal rather than just like throwing it all out there and seeing what sticks. Okay, so what I'm going to share with you today are nine absolutely must-haves when it comes to building a landing page that converts. Are you ready? All right, first and foremost, you have to know what it is that you want people to do. Okay, if you don't understand what it is that you want people to do, then more than likely, the people that are visiting your site or your landing page aren't going to understand what you want them to do either. And so it's important, number one, to have a goal and to understand your goal, to be very clear on that goal. A landing page should never have more than one goal, okay? Now there might be some times when you are going to take people down a path through a journey to get to the goal, but there's always one ultimate goal and you need to be very clear in your mind what that goal is and then you need to be very clear on the landing page what that goal is as well. So the number one must-have on a landing page, a landing page that converts is your goal, is your offer, and you have to be clear on it. Okay, number two, an attention-grabbing headline. Here's the secret. People are scanners. Most people and by most people, 90% of people don't read on the internet. In fact, what they do when they land on your page is they're going to scan that page for keywords that match the intent of their search. I mean they obviously ended up on your page most likely through search and because they ended up on your page through search then they were searching for something. They were trying to determine an answer to their problem, a solution to their problem. And so the first thing that you have to do is you have to let them know that they're in the right place and you do that by writing an attention-grabbing headline. Ideally this is a headline that makes it super obvious that they're in the right place but also increases their interest just a little bit because what's the purpose of any good headline? The purpose is to get the reader to the next line, the subhead and then the next line. So you got to continue to get them deeper into the funnel and sometimes the funnel is not a series of pages or a series of email nurtures. The funnel is just a copy on the page. So you have to take it each step at a time. Where are they coming from? Make sure that that attention-grabbing headline captures their attention, generates interest and pushes them just a little bit further so that you can create that demand for your product or service. The number three must have that your landing page should have if you want it to convert is what I call relevant photos and videos. This is key. Now of course you don't want your page to get too cluttered. You don't want to put too many things on there. But you always want to put some sort of image of a person on your landing page. People are important because people buy from people. We connect with people better than we connect with gadgets, right? Rather than showing a picture of the gadget, show a picture of someone using the gadget. And in a perfect world, if you really want to level up your marketing messaging, then show a picture of somebody that looks like your buyer. You're able to generate a feeling of trust more quickly when you show on your page an image of somebody that looks like your buyer. So for instance, if you're selling a product to doctors, then you obviously, number one, you don't want to have stock footage on there. All doctors know when they see stock footage of a doctor that that's not a doctor. So that will eliminate or degrade your trust factor there. But what you want to do is you want to have a picture of a doctor, a real doctor, right? A real doctor, ideally using the product or service. Somebody that they know is just like them because if they can see themselves in that doctor's position on your page, then your pitch, your offer, will be a little bit more believable. One way with video, you want to show people that look like your buyer. If you're selling to school teachers, you want to show school teachers so that you can build that empathy and grow that trust factor. So pictures, images, videos of people that look like your buyer, that's a huge key for building landing pages that convert. Number four, clear and concise copy. You've all been on those landing pages where the copy just seems to go on forever, where you could just get lost in it. And if you are already interested and you want to buy the product, you're probably just going to scroll all the way down to the bottom and click add to cart. And the more difficult they make it, the more likely you are to suspect that it might be kind of spammy and if that's the case or let me just rephrase that, scammy. And if that's the case, then what's going to happen? You might actually bounce. So I don't recommend pages where there's tons of copy saying the same thing over and over and over again. What I do want you to do is make your case very clear and concise. We did an episode last week on copywriting secrets. If you haven't tuned into that, if you haven't heard that one yet, do me a favor, go back and listen to that. That entire episode is on how to write copy in a way that's compelling and in a way that drives results. So that's last week's episode. I think it was called Top 5 Copywriting Secrets. So go look that one up. We'll also put a link to it in the show notes. But the key is here, you have to be clear and concise. No one has time to sift through all the noise. If your page is too cluttered, whether that be with graphics or words, whatever the case may be, people are going to click the bounce button, you know, attention. Our attention is so fragmented that you have to be super careful in how we approach, how you approach your potential buyers. And you have to be respectful of their time. You have to give them the information that they're looking for, make sure that it's relevant, and make sure that they get it quickly so that they can get what they want quickly. Okay. Number 5. Along the lines of getting to what you want quickly, I want to talk about landing page forms. Okay. Number 5. Obviously, you have to have a landing page form. But what is it that makes a good form and what is it that makes a form that people just don't want to take the time to complete? Well, it's obvious. Study after study has shown that the longer your form, the less likely people are to complete it. And also, if you have a form where there's lots of detail, very difficult to grab information. If you're asking me for my business license number or some sort of number or calculation that I don't necessarily have at hand on my desktop or on my phone, if it's not in my head and I can't actually type it into the phone, then that's a form that I'm going to, if I'm super engaged, maybe come back to when I have the right information. And if I don't come back to the form just because I maybe forgot or it was no longer front of mind. If that's the case, then you lost me as a lead. Or if it's just a long form and you're asking for way too much information, you know, when we think of like a high threshold and a low threshold offer. The high threshold is you're asking for so much information that I'm not ready to give you. And because I'm not ready to give it to you, I'm going to click the back button and go to a competitor's site to go to another site that offers a similar product or service that's not necessarily asking for all that information. I'm just not ready to give you all that information yet. That's a high threshold and I'm not ready to jump over that threshold yet. Your landing page forms have to have to exist in this world of low threshold. Low threshold means that I just need from you, Mr. Buyer, just basic information. Name, email. You know, I'm online, so don't ask for my phone number. I'm going to your form. I'm completing your form so that I don't have to call you. So there's all of these elements that make a form more likely to be completed. And what I want you to know is that at the end of the day, the longer the form, the less likely it's going to be completed. The more difficult the information on the form to complete, the less likely it's going to be completed. So make these things simple. Remember the acronym KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. This is when it comes to landing page forms. This is what you want to do, KISS. Number six, your call to action button. Now of course, you have to have a call to action. Now some landing pages are at the end of this journey, if you will, the end of this user journey on the website. And so they maybe have gone through, you know, a couple of ads, a couple of different pages and they've landed on a page where you're asking for their information. How do you get them there? Well, you get them there with the call to action button. And the thing that I want you to keep in mind when it comes to calls to action is that you always need to make sure that your call to action stands out. I prefer contrasting button colors to whatever your main site colors are. OK, so if you go to slamagency.com, what you'll see is that we have, you know, our site is mostly like navy and blue and gray and there's some greens in there. But our call to action is magenta. And so it definitely stands out. And when it comes to a call to action, I also believe that you should only use that color for the call to action. OK, because you don't want to confuse your users. You don't want to confuse them. When they see that color, that's the call to action. When you go to our site, slamagency.com, and you look at the user experience, anytime you see that magenta button, you know that that's the call to action. OK, there's no confusion there. I prefer the contrasting, like I mentioned, because I've tested it. I've tested it over the years, many, many, many thousands of times. And always the contrasting colors are the ones that get clicked more. OK, and the other thing I want you to keep in mind is that no matter what form provider you're using, there's an area to change what it says on the button. OK, so get creative with it. Test out some different phrases and see how people respond. Perfect way to A-B test. And finally, when it comes to buttons, remember that the placement of your button can make a huge difference on conversion rates. OK, so test that out as well. Where are people? And you should know this as a marketing director. Where is their mouse on your page? Where are they spending a little bit more time reading or scrolling or pinching and clicking down the page? You should know these things. Why? Because that might be a good place for a call to action button. Number seven, social proof. Now, social proof really at the end of the day is testimonials. OK, this is what I want to see on your landing page. Anytime you're asking for information, anytime you're looking to collect lead capture, I want you to have a testimonial nearby. No longer should testimonials be relegated to a testimonials or reviews page. You've gone through the hard work of collecting testimonials. You've gone through the hard work of collecting reviews. What I want you to do is I want to take your best reviews, the ones that really fit the profile of that buyer persona that is landing on your page. Remember, people want to see people that look like them, that are in their same situation, their same predicament, and they want to see how those people have overcome or have transcended. Well, believe that and know that the testimonial, the review, is a great way to include those types of people. So what I like to do, I always like to have a video reviews, video testimonials. If you're not able to do that, the next best thing is a real picture. Just ask your customer to send a picture in with their review. And then the next best thing is just a name in a city, right? You got to do what you got to do. But here's the thing, testimonials are a great way to provide social proof. And social proof is what you need on a landing page to take people to that next step. Now, number eight, number eight along these same lines is trust indicators. Trust indicators, Google it. It's anything that you can put on your landing page that increases the trust quotient. People, by nature, are skeptical. And you can't blame us, right? We're skeptical because there's so many scams on the internet. Matter of fact, funny story, I bought something from China a few weeks ago and I was expecting something in a box like this big because it was a fire pit. It's fall. And I was expecting like a 28 inch fire pit. And I actually ended up getting like a three inch toy. And it was the first time in probably 15 years that I've been scammed on the internet. And my wife and I, we just had to laugh about it. And of course, file claim with PayPal. We use PayPal for overseas transactions so that we have that sense of security. But here's the thing, there's a lot of scams out there. And because of that, people go to sites. And if they're not willing to take the risk like we took in that case, obviously, then guess what? You have to reassure them. You have to build up that trust. Let them know that you're a trustworthy business. And there's many ways that you can do that. Just go look, Google trust indicators. We'll put a few in the show notes. One of my favorites is BBB accreditation, but also 100% satisfaction guarantee. Of course, your security certificate. All of these things are trust indicators that make a huge difference in helping you to stand out as a trustworthy, incredible business. Okay, number nine, the number nine thing that you absolutely must have when it comes to developing, building a landing page that converts analytics, you would not believe how many marketing directors come to Slam agency, pick up the phone and call me and say, I want to do this, this, this and this. Give me a quote, give me a bid. And then I go and I look at their site and they don't have any data. They haven't installed analytics correctly. They're not tracking user movements. They don't know what people are doing on their site. There are a lot of amazing tools like number one, Google analytics. It's free. You know, put it on your site so that you know where people are coming from and where they're going to make sure that those conversion goals are set up so that you can kind of see what works and what doesn't. Especially if you're spending money on paper click or some sort of advertising to bring people to the site. Analytics is key. Don't just jump into the advertising. Make sure that you have it set up and don't just, you know, put the cookie on you. Don't just put the tracking code on your site. Test it. Make sure that it works. Make sure that, you know, when you hit the completion page, that it's tracking the way it's supposed to be tracking. If not, there's a problem that you need to figure out. But beyond analytics, there's a lot of really amazing tools that you should be using to kind of get a sense for what people are doing on your site. One of my favorites is Crazy Egg. It's, you know, I've been using it for, I don't know, probably 10 plus years at this point. But there's others like it, Hot Jar and others. But what those do is they allow you to kind of get a visual look into how people are navigating your website, whether that be heat-macking, click-trapping, or, you know, even video, like where they just take a video of random people using your site so you can kind of get a sense for how long they spend in certain parts of your page, you know, where they click, where they click back, all of these different things. Crazy Egg, it's amazing. So what I'll do in the show notes is I'll make sure that we include some of the other tools that we're using when it comes to landing page design. And then, you know, some of the ones that we've heard good things about if you're looking to, you know, kind of take it to that next level when it comes to landing page optimization. Tools are key. So you have your tracking code installed correctly. You're using some tools to kind of see what people are doing and not doing on your site, how they're experiencing your site. The last thing I want to talk to you about in this analytics topic is attribution, okay? There's a fallacy when it comes to attribution and it's that there is this idea of whatever they clicked on to get to your page, that's how you should attribute the, you know, the goal completion. And this is not necessarily true because how many times have you clicked on a, for instance, on a pay-per-click ad, went to the site and converted right then and there? When that pay-per-click ad was the first time you ever came across that company. It's actually, it's pretty rare. Matter of fact, you know, studies have shown that it takes 77 touches for somebody who is not familiar with your brand to become familiar so much so that they take an action on your site. 77 touches, if they are already familiar with your brand, then it takes seven to 10 touches, okay? So that makes the case for building brand and market awareness, but that's a topic for another time. At this point, I just want to point out that it's never just one touch. And if you prescribe to the idea of last-click attribution, what you're gonna do is you're gonna get just a piece of the story, analytics tracking is important. It's important because it kind of fills you in on what's happening all around you. It fills you in on how people are coming to your site. And if all you're looking at is the last-click, the last-click attribution, and you're not looking at that whole story, you're not looking at those other 76 touches, and you really have no idea what's working and what's not working when it comes to advertising and how you spend your advertising dollars. So beware of last-click attribution. Make sure that you look at the entire buyer's journey. If you're able to, whether that be through like a Facebook cookie or Facebook tracking or something like that, but include other sources. I know Adobe Analytics does a really good job of bringing in more attribution sources as well. So check those out. But if you have to start somewhere, do that with Google Analytics and be sure to install some cool tools so that you can kind of get a sense for those individual cases and be sure to get a bigger view than just last-click attribution. So these are my nine absolute must-haves to building a landing page that converts. At the end of the day, you're in business to make sales. And so you wanna make sure that the pages that you put out on the web are doing exactly that, that they're accomplishing the goal that you have for them. That is landing page optimization. Now, there's a couple of things that I didn't mention. They didn't make my top nine, but these are things that I couldn't, in good faith, in this show without sharing these with you. Number one, what you never want on a landing page is a way for people to go somewhere else. So never, ever, ever have an external link on your landing page. However, it is okay to put links to content on your site knowing that you're giving people, perhaps, the information that they need to firm up their decision to do what it is that you want them to do. So provide that information. You know, one of my pet peeves is when I get to a landing page and there's no way out. You know, I try clicking the X button and there's pop-ups saying, are you sure you wanna do this? And you know, I click back and it just takes me immediately back to the landing page and there's no button to go home or anywhere else. Don't do that. That's how you piss off a buyer and lose their trust instantly. But what I do want you to do is I want you to make sure that you're not putting links out there to other sites that people can click on and kinda just continue in their journey while forgetting you. So that's number one. And number two, I wanna make sure that you have an automated follow-up system. You know, back in the day we called these auto responders. But anytime somebody completes your lead capture form, you gotta be ready to follow up. Number one, if I complete your form, I wanna know that you received it. Have you ever filled out a form and then you didn't get an email and you're like, okay. Was I successful in filling out that form? It makes you wonder. So make sure that you have an automated follow-up email that goes out as soon as I enter in my contact information, as soon as your buyer enters in your contact information. And then use that auto responder system to begin an email nurturing campaign, to begin a marketing campaign, where you can nurture them from wherever they are in the buyer's cycle to where you want them to be to generate interest and create demand for your products or services, okay. So these were the top nine absolutely must-haves when building a landing page that converts with a couple other bonuses. So thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this show, do me a favor and let me know wherever it is that you're listening or watching or reading this content, whether it be email, if it's email, click reply. If it's on Facebook or Instagram, put it in the comments. If it's on YouTube, put it in the, whatever the case may be, let me know because number one, I wanna know who you are so that we can continue to build content that's relevant for you, but also, you know, I just get a kick out of knowing who's watching, who's listening and who is receiving value from this show. Thank you for tuning in. Subscribe, rate and review on iTunes and I will see you next week. Thanks for watching. If you like what you saw, subscribe and hit that bell. You'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that, you can watch more videos from Slam Agency. 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