Effective Lead Capture Pages (Landing Pages)

If you have ever done a search for “auto insurance quote” and clicked on any of the sponsored ads, you may have noticed that the sites have a lot in common. These type of pages are called landing pages, or lead capture pages.

In online marketing a landing page is a page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement and displays content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link the visitor clicked on.

In pay per click (PPC) campaigns, the landing page is often customized to measure the effectiveness of different advertisements. By adding a parameter to the linking URL, or using multiple landing pages for different ads, marketers can measure effectiveness based on relative click-through rates and resulting conversion rates.

There are two main types of landing pages, reference and transactional.

In general, a transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the page. Since this is the most commonly used type of landing page when it comes to online marketing, this is the type I will be discussing in this post.

The ultimate goal of a transactional landing page is the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service. If information is to be captured (a lead capture page), the page will usually withhold information until some minimal amount of visitor information is provided, typically an email address and perhaps a name and telephone number as well – enough to “capture the lead” and add the prospect to a mailing list.

When designing a lead capture, or transactional landing page, there are five main factors that must be considered. These are the headline, offer, attention getter, content, and forms.

Headline
The main headline on the page must be “attention getting.” You want to paint an picture and energize the visitor. Think of your headline as the main “hook” of the page – the offer. Visitors must immediately understand what you have to offer them. Going back to the auto insurance example, the headline is generally a simple call-to-action, such as “Get Your FREE Quote Now!”

Offer
The offer is essentially the “what’s in it for me” statement. The bigger the offer, the greater the chance that your visitors will contact you. The offer should be along the same lines as the ad the visitor clicked to get to your site. In the auto insurance example, the offer may expand on the idea of getting a quote. This may be something like “Get your insurance quote in 10 under minutes, or we’ll deduct our offer by 5%!” In this example, the website is playing off of the fact the person visiting the site has done so in order to receive a quote. They are already looking for a free price quote, and they are likely to visit many more sites than just one, so the offer must stand out. The visitor must feel a need to contact you.

Attention Getter
When your visitors hits your lead generation page, you have about 15 seconds or less to catch their attention. This makes your design, use of colors, and overall style of the site very important. Many sites make use of a promotional video or flash animation to catch the visitor’s attention. A great benefit of using audio and video is its ability to keep people on your site long enough to get hooked. Video can also make certain that your site stands out from the rest.

Content
Text content on a lead generation page must be kept short and sweet. Try evaluating a handful of landing pages by looking at them for only a couple of seconds. Where does your eye go? Do you find that you are drawn to bullet points? If you answered yes to that question, you are not alone.

When a person sees bullet points, their eyes will naturally jump to them. People like to get the main idea quickly, and bullet points by nature are expected to summarize and get strait-to-the-point. Using bullet points to quickly explain the competitive advantages of your offer is a great way to go.

Forms
If everything on your site is perfect, but the form requires a visitor to enter in too much personal data, you will loose contacts. People need to see the form quickly, and not be threatened by it. Do not use big red letters, or red asterisks, all over the place requiring fields to be filled out completely. This signals immediately that you will be asking for a lot of information. Instead, I recommend keeping your forms as simple as possible. Include only the fields that you really need. Get the person to contact you first, then collect the information you may need. Don’t try to require everything up front.

By putting in place the above strategies, your lead capture page will be far more effective than a standard landing page.

If you feel this topic has gone over your head, contact me today for a consultation. I will evaluate your needs and design the perfect lead capture page for your business.

Welcome Back!

Now is your chance to join our growing community! Be the first to know about great new articles like this one. Register for my Email Updates or RSS Feed today!