Four Keys to Building a Landing Page That Works

When building a landing page (LP from here on),
some people wonder how to make it an effective one.

People build LPs for all sorts of reasons, but most often it is one of these.

“We want document requests.”
“We want sign-ups for the free trial.”
“We want user registrations.”
“We want people to buy the product.”
“We want people to subscribe to the service.”

An LP is a bit like a tool that sells for you automatically,
so lifting its conversion rate alone can grow revenue substantially.

So this article covers four points for building an effective landing page.

1. Defining the target

Start with defining the target.
You need to be clear about who your service or product is for.

For example:
　・Women in their 20s to 30s, office workers, single
　・Men in their 40s to 50s, keen golfers

A more detailed picture of a person built out from this is called a persona.
Here is an example of a persona.
　・25, female
　・Works in a clothes shop
　・Lives alone in Nerima
　・Annual income of 3 million yen
　・Enjoys browsing vintage clothes shops
　・Constantly checks vintage shop accounts on social media
　・Sells things she makes herself online

Making the picture of a person this concrete is what persona setting means.
By picturing how your target lives and behaves, you can work out what would go through their mind before they click.

2. A page that is understood at a glance

2.1 The first view

An LP essentially makes the case for a single service or product, so
at a glance, “this is the page for this service (product)”has to be clear from the design.

The first view matters most of all.
The first view (FV) is, as the name says, the part shown first when the LP opens.
It goes by several names, including main visual (MV) and key visual (KV). This article uses first view throughout.
If a visitor looks at the first view and thinks “this page is not for me” or “this does not grab me”, they drop off. That makes the first view a critical point.

Here is what the first view should include.

The service or product
Use large text, photos and illustrations so it is obvious what the page is about.

Track record
Figures that build trust, such as “90% satisfaction” or “tens of thousands of cases”, put visitors at ease.

Enquiry and purchase buttons
Placing several buttons through the page works well.
Putting one in the first view too helps you avoid losing opportunities.

2.2 A page that is easy to follow

Even with a good first view, if what follows is hard to follow, visitors drop off.
You need photos, illustrations and layout, not just text, to keep people engaged and make the page easy to follow.

3. A structure that leads to conversions

Structure matters enormously if you want to lift the conversion rate.
And what you need when working out the structure is to picture how the visitor’s state of mind shifts.

• How does the visitor feel on seeing the first view?
• Will they want to read on?
• Will it strike a chord with them?
• Will they believe this page can solve their problem?
• Have their worries about signing up or buying been cleared away?

Putting yourself in the visitor’s position and picturing those shifts will make the LP structure better.

Here is the structure and flow of an LP in concrete terms.

3.1 Raise the desire to buy

The desire to buy, the need, differs from visitor to visitor.
You are lucky when you reach someone thinking “this is exactly what I wanted” or “this is the service I was looking for”, but not every visitor arrives with a strong need.
To bring in people who are only vaguely curious, you have to raise that desire. (This is also called lifting the need.)

People subscribe to a service or buy a product because they have a problem they want solved.
They want to improve their life, get over an insecurity, worry less about the future, or do better at work — there is always a problem behind it, so structure the page so it raises the expectation that the problem can be solved.

3.2 Make it convincing

However often you write “this service (product) is good”, without evidence it is hard to be believed.
To put visitors at ease, your service or product needs to come across as convincing.

Specifically,
・Show your track record
・Use authority
・Show reviews
are what we recommend.

Show your track record
Spelling out your record in figures — “tens of thousands of deployments”, “No.1 in the Amazon rankings”, “tens of thousands sold”, “winner of such-and-such award” — makes visitors feel plenty of people use it, which puts them at ease.

Use authority
Showing that a well-known or high-standing figure has endorsed you can also work well.
For example, “skincare praised by a leading actress” or “a system whose effectiveness is recognised by a professor at a well-known university”.

Show reviews
Putting up a few reviews works well too.
Most people have leaned on reviews when looking up a restaurant or buying something online.
Visitors want to hear from people who have actually used it.
If you can collect reviews for your own service or product, it is worth doing.

Points to watch
We have given a few examples of how to be convincing, but lying is obviously out.
Falsifying a track record can break the law, so only publish a record that is true.

3.3 Clear away worries and give a nudge

Even once the need is raised, worries can remain.
“Will they hound me with sales calls after I enquire?”
“What if it does not work?”
Those are the typical ones.
Anticipate those worries and build in content that clears them away.
Lines such as “no pushy sales calls after you sign up”, “a full refund if you do not see results” or “first use free during this campaign” work well.

And even with the worries gone, without a reason to sign up (or buy) now, people may never reach the button. They want it, but they park the decision.
So it helps to include something that nudges them.
For example, “30% off if you sign up by such-and-such date” or “special price for the first 50 people”.
Conversions come more easily when the visitor starts to feel they might miss out by not signing up (or buying) now.

3.4 Buttons that are easy to press, forms that are easy to fill in

Say you have managed that final nudge.
There are still hurdles ahead.
A poorly designed button or form is enough on its own to pull the conversion rate down.

Buttons
The wording on a button changes the click rate.
A button reading “buy this product” gets a higher click rate than one reading simply “buy”.

It would be a waste to build a carefully structured LP and then lose visitors over a single button, so put effort into the button design as well.

Forms
Document requests and purchases both need the visitor to enter their details.
If the form feels like a chore, they may drop off.
To avoid “do I really have to fill in all this?”,
keep the number of fields to the bare minimum.

You have probably seen forms that fill in most of the address once you enter the postcode.
If you can put in a form that light on effort, we strongly recommend it.

4. Testing and improving

So far we have covered the points for building an effective LP, but checking whether it is actually working matters just as much.
Building an LP along the lines of a design or structure said to perform well does not guarantee success.
Depending on the service, product, brand or audience, you may not get the result you wanted.
That is why you need to test whether it is working.

4.1 Run an A/B test

One way to check whether an LP’s structure and design work is to run an A/B test.
An A/B test means preparing version A and version B that differ in one specific part, then comparing results to find which performs better.

For example, you prepare two versions of the LP, A and B, differing only in the first view, and show them at random. If A has the higher conversion rate, you go with A’s design.

Repeating A/B tests like this — changing the button design, changing the copy — sharpens the LP over time.

An A/B test compares two versions; there is also multivariate testing, which tries many versions at once.

4.2 Use a heatmap tool

Using what is called a heatmap tool also works well.
It visualises what visitors do on the page.
It depends on the tool, but you can typically see things like this.
・Mouse movement
・Click rate
・Time spent on particular areas of the page
・Where people drop off

This is shown in heat-map colours, so it is easy to read at a glance.
A heatmap may show that a button you meant to draw clicks is barely being clicked.
Finding problems like that is how you improve the LP.

5. In summary

This article covered four points for building an effective landing page.
To recap, the four points are these.

1. Defining the target
2. A page that is understood at a glance
3. A structure that leads to conversions
4. Testing and improving

Keep these points in mind
as you build towards an effective LP.