Dear Reader,
You and I have come a long way. We started our journey when we discussed why Muslim business owners should adapt to Digital Transformation. We then moved towards setting a foolproof online marketing strategy for Muslim brands.
With full confidence that businesses targeting Muslim consumers are going to thrive in the coming years, we set out to learn about 7 simple but extremely effective display ad ideas and increasing sales by 50% via retargeting.
We even went through the pains of learning how to design ad banners that actually work.
Yet all of that means absolutely nothing if the destination of those ads – the landing page – is not optimized to convert. You will have wasted time, effort, and money for nothing.
That is why in this article we are going to look at ways to make sure your efforts don’t go to waste.
So I kindly suggest that you keep reading.
Thank you
Understanding the Impact of Landing Pages
Your landing page is either a well-designed machine that converts visitors to buyers or a humongous waste of time, effort and money.
Ineffective landing pages will strain your budgets and will squander opportunities to make a good impression on your audience. You can call it negative marketing if you want because the negative experience will always come up in the user’s mind when they see your brand.
When your business uses optimized landing pages, it will stand out from competitors and convert well. Remember that competition for your audience’s attention is intense; if you snooze you lose.
If you think that putting landing pages together is not complicated you are right. However, there are many components that need to come together to make them work properly.
Let’s look at 7 quick things you can do today to make your landing pages convert.
1) Manage Expectations
No one likes to click on an ad that promises a 0% interest rate mortgage and land on a page that sells cat food. I am sure you have seen plenty of those on the internet. I am sure you also clicked away really fast with an expression of disbelief and even disgust on your face.
You must fulfill the expectations you create in the ad that gets users to your landing page in the first place. No one will convert if what you are offering is not what your ad promised.
2) Tell Users Exactly What to Do
For the sake of humanity, just come out and say what you want the user to do. There are some pretty good landing pages out there with the most engaging content in the history of mankind and yet once the user has finished reading does not know what action is expected of him.
“Well that was such interesting content, I guess I will be on my way now”.
Keep in mind that landing pages have one primary purpose and that is to drive action. It does not always have to be a purchase, but a newsletter sign-up or a request for a review for example is also a valuable action.
There are landing pages that present the call-to-action (CTA) in a manner that is vague by making the user work to find what action needs to be taken. There are also those who surround the primary CTA with too many secondary CTAs.
What does a user usually do when faced with too many options? Yes, they take none of them and just leave.
So make sure you make your CTA prominent and clear. If you wish to use secondary CTAs use one and keep it on the sidelines. Better yet, use exit pop-ups so that the secondary CTA, like free content consumption that pops up ( Tool: Hushly) when the user is about to leave without taking any action.
3) Use Trust Signals
Most users who land on your page will be first-timers and it means that they do not know much about your business. The problem is that you have only a few seconds to warm them up and show them you are a credible source of information, product, service, etc.
The good news is that this can be achieved quite easily through the use of trust signals such as testimonials, product reviews, seals, certifications, and social proof. Trust signals are an essential part of high-converting landing pages.
So make sure that you have them on your landing page. Below is a list to get you started:
- Case studies
- Testimonials
- Social proof statistics like the number of customers, subscribers, etc.
- Industry association logos
- Customer logos
- Publications where your company is mentioned
- Ratings from industry review sites
- Real-time social proof notifications
- Social media proof
- Partnership and co-branded logos
4) Use High-Level Personalization
At this point, you don’t necessarily have to personalize your landing pages through techniques like dynamic keyword insertion. It would be awesome if you did, but it takes quite a bit of planning to get it right. It is something we could tackle in another blog article.
For now, think of utilizing geographic location, user behavior on your website, and traffic source to optimize landing pages and give them a personal touch. This will be even more effective if you have a thorough understanding of who your audience is.
Take a look at how to get to know your audience and what they are more likely to consume when it comes to content. Or read the original content marketing guide for more insight.
5) Use Directional Cues
This may start to sound like a broken record but your landing page has only a few seconds to get your user’s attention to clarify what action to take. Use directional cues; they are great for pointing people in the right direction. They will help you create a smooth flow in your landing pages that ends in conversions.
You may use arrows as they are simple and effective. A better option would be to include an image of a person looking in a specific direction where you want your users to focus their attention. Humans are inherently curious to find out what other people are looking at, this is apparently true even in a virtual sense.
6) Dump the Clutter
Try not to overload the page with too many things. As mentioned above, there needs to be a clear flow to conversion. Link clutter is one of those culprits that keep your audience engaged but takes the focus away from converting. The more links you include, the more options your users have, the further you take them away from the purpose of the landing page.
Most landing pages today do not have navigation at all for the same reason. A few online marketers recommend them because they help improve the quality score of your Google Ads campaign. However, when you look at the pros and cons of having a navigation bar on your landing page, you might decide not to have one as your primary goal is to convert and not send users to other pages.
7) Keep Evolving
Once you have everything in place and your landing page is running, you may want to take thing to the next level. Keep tweaking the design and layout to get even more and better conversions.
Just don’t do it on the live page and make sure you A/B test so you are sure what works better before committing completely.
Start Your Landing Page Optimization Today
Don’t wait until tomorrow! If you are paying for traffic to your landing page with the aim of creating leads, get your landing page(s) optimized today. It is quite straight forward. Use this article as a guide for your first steps.
Once you have tasted the sweetness of success, you can go all out and have a look at the 101 landing page optimization tips by Unbounce to see what else you can improve.
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