By: Ted Vrountas
Source: Marketo
When it comes to converting prospects to customers, a marketer’s most valuable asset is a targeted landing page. Research has shown that businesses with 40 or more landing pages generate 12 times more leads than those with 1 to 5.
But just building more landing pages doesn’t guarantee more conversions. They have to be built right. The trouble is, most marketers still spend most of their time perfecting the pre-click experience than they do the post-click experience.
Demographic reports, surveys, ebooks and tip sheets—there’s nothing a marketer won’t sift through to create a great ad. But too many marketers forget that the ad is only the first impression—known as the “pre-click experience.”
What happens next is what makes a prospect into a lead, a lead into a customer, a customer into a repeat customer. What happens next is called the “post-click experience.”
- The pre-click experience: Everything that happens before a prospect clicks your ad. Logos, colors, headlines, images; relevance; when and where it’s seen. These are just a few examples of what can impact a prospect’s willingness to click your ad.
- The post-click experience: Everything that happens after a prospect clicks your ad. Page load time, skimmable text, usability, informational images, message match. These are just a few examples of what can impact your prospect’s decision to convert.
Most marketers already know what impacts the pre-click experience. But, to many, terms like “message match” and “contrasting CTA buttons,” don’t mean much. Today we’re going to make sense of them, so that first impression turns into more than just a click.
Landing Page Elements That Optimize the Post-Click Experience
From the top to the bottom, here are a few of the most important things to feature on your landing page to optimize the post-click experience and boost the odds of converting your visitors.
1. A 1:1 Conversion Ratio
Attention spans are shorter than ever, and your landing page is competing with countless distractions. Offline there are coworkers, lunch breaks, meetings, and more. Online there are amusing videos, educational content, and social media to name a few.
So the last thing you want to do is add more distractions to your prospect’s situation. When your landing page has navigation links in the header, the footer, or anywhere in between, you give them yet another reason to leave your landing page. That includes links to other offers available from your business.
That’s why you should ensure that the only place to click on your page is the call-to-action button. The only way off the page should be by clicking the “X” in the corner of their browser window, or by converting. This is known as a 1:1 conversion ratio: 1 conversion goal, 1 place to click.