It may not be that easy, however. Harnessing the power of technology and the internet may prove perplexing.
Competition, pressure, the sheer mind-boggling ‘where do I begin’ pathway of possibilities can all come together to sweep you off your feet (and not in a good/romantic way either).
Now, that’s not necessarily how it has to go. First of all (a wise man probably once said) don’t dive into the ocean if you don’t know how to swim.
Instead, focus on something small. Baby steps. If you’re thinking of launching a website and stressing over the many levels of pages you’re gonna have to sort out, double down on something manageable first. The face of your website. Landing pages.
Creating and optimising a landing page can be a great way to test out ideas and quickly pivot according to responses/feedback received from the market. With a nicely done landing page, you could increase conversions exponentially and get tremendous traction (with a fraction of the effort). It’s time to not just work hard but work smart!
Here are 5 things you should pay attention to when optimising your landing pages.
Images
You know what they say, right? “a picture paints a thousand words.” In the online world, this seems to be even truer than you might think, particularly on popular social media platforms. Images can make a huge difference and result in your page getting more engagement/conversions. Clever use of images can also help to accentuate your message or even provide new depth, different perspectives/meanings and enhance communication/messaging.
Create great content
So, a picture may paint a thousand words but it might not fully express exactly what you want to say. You may have heard that most of the content on the web is in good old written language. Yup. It seems that no matter how sophisticated video and image processing technology has become, good writing is still in. Great content can begin with great writing. Make it easy for your visitors to understand what exactly it is that you do/what you stand for. Synthesize your brand into a core value proposition and communicate that as concisely as possible.
Search and Social
Alongside your content, you should aim to incorporate relevant keywords and keyword phrases in titles and text. Social share buttons should be highly visible because pages that are frequently shared can get ranked higher by Google. You should also include relevant meta tags in your titles, descriptions, images…etc. as these can have a bearing on search as well.
Keep it clean, neat and easily navigable
It may not be a good idea to pack your page with too much information. Remember the previous point about saying things in the most concise way possible? Keep it neat/pleasing to the eyes. Visitors could withdraw and shut down the second they’re hit with clutter. Colours can also be very important when it comes to landing pages. Aside from establishing an identity for your brand through a colour scheme, leaving clean, empty spaces on your page can help make things much easier to navigate/understand. White space can bring focus to important parts. Dieter Rams may have a thing or two to say about focusing on the necessary. Using bullet points to highlight certain snippets of information can also catch the eyes of the scanners and skimmers out there on the World Wide Web.
Highlight your Call to Action buttons
Contrasting colours can make certain parts of your page more prominent, such as your Call to Action (CTA) button(s). On your landing page, the CTA should generally be the most prominent feature and the part you want people to focus on the most. Use the right colours and the right words, make your audience an irresistible offer. Combine these with a targeted product for a targeted audience and you could have yourself a winner!
*We are a UX-focused team of developers and designers. Our goal is making our products understandable at any level. The result is web and mobile applications that take minutes to learn and are easy to implement in any company, big or small. Find out more about Soda In Mind here
