What Are Visual-Friendly Landing Pages And How To Create Them
Landing pages are grabbing the attention of a lot of businesses these days. Since a lot of website managers are investing time and resources into MarTech products, PPC campaigns, and organic outreach efforts, missing on landing pages would not be advisable. A broad majority of marketing managers use home pages, about us, or contact us pages of their websites as landing pages. Assigning these pages as the visitors' post clicking destination is not a good practice.
This is because they are not optimized to serve the purpose behind an email or advertising campaign’s promotional link. Today, I am going to discuss how to build visually enticing landing pages that reciprocate the visitor intent of clicking through your email or advertisement.
Let’s dive in deeper to learn more about building attractive landing pages:
What Is A Landing Page
It is the page where users land after clicking on a link in your email or your ad or hyperlinks to your website provided in blog posts, social media posts, and product listing portals. They receive the traffic and convert the visitors into either leads or paying customers.
You should always use a stand-alone webpage that isn't (necessarily) a part of your website site map and is built specifically to target the inbound traffic. These web pages are created and optimized for conversion, prompting action, and attracting SEO algorithms.
There are two types of landing pages:
Reference Landing Pages: They are designed as an advertorial or a brief summary of your solution.
Transactional Landing Page: They are aimed at driving conversions and exchanging information. They also act as lead capturing tools.
With all of this being said, it is noteworthy that using too much wording where the visitor is supposed to take action results in low engagement rates. Instead of using word-heavy landing pages, building customized landing pages with compelling visual storytelling helps to echo visitor sentiment.
The Right Approach To Building A Visual- Friendly Landing Page
When it comes to building stand-alone landing pages, you need to design them with specific goals. Using visually appealing elements can help you boost engagement if done correctly. In this section, I am going to point out a few tips to help you in the process:
Define Your Purpose
First of all, define the goal of building a customized landing page for your audience. It could be prompting them to make a purchase, download your gated content, fill an opt-in form, subscribe to your newsletter, or drop an inquiry. Defining the purpose behind building your landing page helps in determining the UI / UX and reader journey.
Determine Your Competition And Audience
When it comes to digital marketing, knowing what your competition does is very important. In most cases, replicating what they are already doing saves your time and efforts or at least gives inspiration to what should be done. This allows you to learn tactics that are already working for your direct competitors.
On the other hand, you should also define your audience demographics and their intention behind landing on your page. Based on these two aspects, you can move ahead with the copy and its design.
Map Your Traffic Sources
When you are running marketing campaigns on multiple platforms along with organic inbound traffic generation activities, it is necessary to map your traffic sources. This is because some of your visitors would click through a Facebook ad; some may click on your Google Ad while others may have read your email and clicked through. It would be best if you always use customized landing pages against each individual traffic source that fits into the purpose of your respective campaign. Hubspot finds that a website using 40 or more landing pages bags 120%more leads than the ones using five or fewer.
Use Colour Schemes To Differentiate Page Elements
Using different colours to instil a specific thought process is essential for creating visually enchanting destination pages. You should use colours according to their effect on our mood and thoughts associated with them. Using colour gradients/radiance is an effective way of differentiating the page elements in a lucid manner. The colour schemes help your visitors in focusing their attention towards the significant highlights and your CTA.
Shape The Reader Journey With The Help Of Visuals
Giving visual hints to your visitors on what action they should perform is another smart use of graphics. For instance, you can put up a GIF around your CTA button to prompt the visitor into clicking the button. Giving subtle hints is an effective way of driving conversions as a lot of marketing activities are directed towards producing the hammering effect.
Use The Visuals For Holding And Directing The User's Attention
When it comes to holding and directing the attention of your visitors, it is wise to use visual storytelling instead of words. You can use images, vectors, or videos to convey more data within a short period in an engaging manner.
Harness The Power Of Data Visualisation (DataViz)
As far as landing pages are concerned, they are the final stage of any sales funnel regardless of the traffic source. You can consider that the visitor has already agreed to your point and they have arrived on the landing page for completing their decision. Accordingly, reaffirming their choice is a vital part of increasing your conversion rate. Graphics tend to be excellent visual storytelling tools as they help audiences in going through multiple data sets in an approachable manner. You can also use graphics to describe your reader's problems or the solution apart from the statistical data. Also, GIFs are among the latest innovations in the industry when it comes to DataViz.
A Few Important Tips
Keep your visual easy going and simple
Stick to a minimalist approach when it comes to using multimedia combinations
Choose your colour scheme in accordance with the purpose of your CTA
If you are building a visual landing page, go for the responsive design scheme
Use day visuals to complement your copy and CTAs
Instead of explaining or narrating your solution, try using visual storytelling and use words only as required.
Don't forget to optimise your landing page multimedia for on-page SEO to avail better visibility on the search engine.
Lastly, always create landing pages as an extended part of your digital marketing efforts.
Landing pages are a great way of creating your brand persona and confirming your marketing goals. Adding a visual touch helps you in grabbing, driving, and commanding the visitor's attention. One of the significant advantages of using a custom visual-based landing page is that you can localize them. Using visuals helps cut through the clutter and improve your campaign ROIs by leaps and bounds.