What are the 3 KEY ingredients your landing page HAS to have if you want it to convert at the highest rate possible?
Before I give you the 3 ingredients, know, it’s highly recommended that you DON’T add anything else but elements.
Why?
If you do, you seriously risk ruining your conversions even if you have the 3 key ingredients I’m about to give you.
Ok, so, pop quiz…
Look at the image below.
This is LendingTree’s home page.
If this were a landing page, meaning a page whose sole aim was to get a prospect to convert and move closer to a sale, how effective do you think it would be?
If I were putting money on it, I’d bet this page doesn’t do the conversion thing well.
Why?
Too many options.
The prospect that lands on this page has at least 9 different actions he can take.
He could:
- Sign in (top right… sign in to what?)
- Read more about home financing
- Read more about purchasing a home
- Find out more about personal loans
- Get info on Home Equity
- Learn more about Auto Loans
- Find out about business loans
If you remember back to one of my prior lessons (there are tons, I know), a website can meet a bunch of objectives.
It should help reinforce your brand, it should provide valuable and informative content, and it should help you generate leads.
While not every page on your site has to do everything I mentioned, the truth is the STRUCTURE of your site should help facilitate the movement of the sales process forward.
Depending on how ready your prospect is, the page they’re on should help them take the next step forward in your sales process.
If they are prospects looking for information, we want to give them a lead magnet that not only gives them what they want but in exchange gives you something valuable from them.
A small ask would be an email address, right?
If you’ve already got their email address, and they’ve consumed your content, maybe you want them to book a call with you, so the page they land on should help you facilitate them booking a call with you.
Did they already book a call with you?
Ok, well maybe they’re at the point where it’s time to get them to fill out an application.
The point is that at every stage of the buyer’s buying cycle, the way someone designs your site AND the landing pages you’ve got set up should help your prospects move measurably closer to completing a sale with you.
People call the pages that do that landing pages and the 3 KEY ingredients and only these 3 ingredients alone done well will help you achieve this goal.
What are the key ingredients you need to have to make your landing page as effective as possible in moving prospects further through your sales process?
Every powerful landing page includes:
- Limited Navigation Options
- One Strong Value Proposition
- Clear Call to Action (Ideally, one but the fewer the better)
Now, you saw LendingTree’s home page in the last image, but contrast that with where LendingTree sends traffic from a paid ad to their landing page and you’ll see a huge difference.
Can you guess what type of prospect this landing page targets?
A person interested in buying a house and who is curious to find out how much house they might afford, right?
This isn’t the right landing page if they’re looking for an auto loan, though.
However, if the ad was for an auto loan, then you could replace “home loan” with “auto loan” and “house” with “car” and Voila….
Perfect landing page for someone interested in seeing how much of an auto loan they might qualify for.
Here are more examples of landing pages that show and use just the 3 Key ingredients effectively:
See here this Quicken Loans landing page is for people who are already interested in getting a home loan, the company conveys that its number one value proposition is as America’s largest mortgage lender (and trust them because of it), and the call to action is to “start” with an arrow instructing you make a selection then go on to the next step of the process.
While you might note the other buttons along the top, I want to put emphasis on their reinforcement of conversion.
Hopefully, you agree the headline and the start call to action are much more attention-grabbing than the lesser calls to action, and, it’s also worth noting that the other call to action is trying to move the prospect closer to more personalized engagement.
So, they don’t detract so much as offer another chance to move the prospect closer to an actual sale as opposed to inviting them to wander around the site some more.
Now, as you might suspect, I’m a fan of breaking conventional rules in marketing (I do it all the time), but you should first know what the rules are and how to break them effectively to your advantage.
Until that happens, stick with my recommendations, get more wins under your belt and then test as you like.
With that, thanks for reading and I’ll see you at the top.
Michael
P.S. If you still have a question, reach out to me. I’d love to help you, but, I won’t know what to help you with until you tell me what’s going on.
So, shoot me an email or click here to book a call, and let’s get your questions answered, and your problems obliterated so you can reach your goals…all of’em.
Talk soon.