4 Important Elements of an Organic Landing Page

4 Important Elements of an Organic Landing Page Your website may serve several important purposes, but the main goal is to convert visitors and to do that you have to nail your organic landing page.

Whether you’re a digital marketing expert or the owner of a small business, chances are, you already recognize the importance of creating and maintaining a good website. It’s where many of your customers make orders, reach out with questions, and get to know your brand; it’s also a chance to make a lasting first impression on prospective clientele.

But your website may be even more essential than you give it for. According to TrueList, you only have eight seconds to make an impression on a landing page before a user clicks off—so it’s got to be pretty compelling. 

In this post, we’re giving you the lowdown on landing pages, sharing tips to improve your conversion rates, and giving you some high-level design guidelines that will impress your current and potential customers.

1. Create a CTA that stands out

Your website serves several important purposes—it’s a defining feature of your brand, it’s a place to provide information, and possibly spark conversation—but above all, your website should be converting customers. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re making a purchase, but a conversion could also be requesting a quote, downloading gated content, or adding items to their cart.

No matter what your goal is, your messaging should be clear and your CTA (also known as “call-to-action”) should stand out. Think about it this way, the easier you make it for your website visitors to take action, the more likely they will—remember that eight second window?

So, how do you make sure that your call to action is as obvious, effective, and tempting as possible? Here are some tips:

• Focus on one offer only: 48% of landing pages contain more than one offer, which can decrease conversion rates by as much as 266%. It should be very obvious and very easy to your user how they can access the offer, be sure not to confuse them with any additional CTAs.

• Use eye-catching design and copy: Another way to catch the attention of the user is to draw their eye to the CTA using compelling imagery and language. Action verbs like “buy,” “order,” “download,” or “book” are much more motivational than wordy sentences. As far as design goes, stick to clear, bold fonts and colors that don’t contrast, anything else will be difficult to read.

• Leverage FOMO: FOMO, or “fear of missing out,” is one of the most important emotions marketers can target these days. By creating some incentive, like a single day sale or chance to save on shipping, your user has something to gain by clicking on your CTA.

Now that you’ve got some of the basics down, let’s take a look at an example. This page from Undergrads executes these tips very well. 

Let’s break this down:

• The CTA, “Book a Move,” is in a bold color and font that immediately grabs your attention.
• Although the call-to-action exists in two places on the page—on the hero image and in the navigational bar—there’s only one message: book a move.  
• Above the CTA, there’s some additional copy and a Google Rating which signals that they’re a trustworthy organization.

Which brings us to our next landing page tip: incorporate trust indicators.

2. Incorporate trust indicators

Trust indicators are just what they sound like: statements that show your existing and potential customers, partners, and prospective employees that you’re a standup company. Trust indicators can be demonstrated in several different ways. In the example above, the brand used their 4.9 star review rating and copy: “Undergrads are the most reliable and low-cost movers in Charleston, SC. Our movers are delightful college students who make moving as smooth as the ocean breeze.”

Right off the bat, not only does the website visitor see that they’ve got a high customer review rating, but they also learn what to expect when hiring Undergrads—they’re hard working, delightful college students.

Let’s take a look at another example.

This auto repair shop, Carrillo’s Auto Body, employs some other methods to demonstrate trust. First, they highlight why customers choose their shop over their competitors: thorough inspection, careful workmanship, and experienced staff. These are all things that their potential customers want to verify before bringing their vehicle in for inspection. Secondly, they use accreditations, including those from AAA and the Better Business Bureau. Just from a few seconds spent on their homepage, a visitor would be able to gather the caliber of their work and their position within their industry. 

3. Establish an objective and measure it

As we mentioned before, your landing page should always have a clear CTA—buy, subscribe, download—whatever it may be, make sure that you make it your primary focus. By doing so, you’re more likely to see follow through and make progress toward your goals. Once you define that objective though, it’s a good idea to measure its progress. This way, you’ll see what’s working, what’s not, and hopefully find ways to improve your strategy.

There are several tools out there designed to help you monitor your web traffic, check these out:

• Google Analytics
• eLogic
• ShinyStat
• SiteMeter
• StatCounter

With this information on user behavior, you can make more impactful changes to improve your website. Are people bouncing off of your site too quickly? Maybe it’s time to simplify your design or opt for a more modern style. Or perhaps no one is using your contact forms—in this case, you may want to make them more visible and easily accessible. 

4. Be clear + consistent

Your website should be easy to use, no matter who your target audience is. If it’s slow, busy-looking, or not aesthetically sound, your prospective customers are likely to turn around and find a website that better suits their needs. From design and messaging, to user experience and site functionality, your website should always be clear and consistent.

Keep your site clear and consistent by using UX design that is easy to navigate and uses cohesive font and color schemes to give it an authoritative, trustworthy look. This site does a great job of just that. This Snowy Pines White Labs landing page is clear and consistent in terms of its layout, design, and message.

You can see right away that the company really knows a lot about these animals by immediately giving you valuable information about the breed of dog they sell. Additionally, they use two CTAs to get you where you need to go quickly, rather than making you scroll the entire page to see their available puppies.

Another way to make sure that the functionality is up to speed is by conducting regular site speed tests. These tests will give you a better idea of how your website is performing for all users. This is hugely important to consider when looking at how well your landing page is performing.

Wrapping up

Creating a great landing page is simple with these four tips. Did we miss anything? Share your advice for stellar landing pages in the comment section below.

by Chris London of Pixel Productions Inc. The Everything Design Company