*The following is a guest post by Jodie Pride from Veeqo.

Landing page optimization isn’t the easiest of tasks. It might seem complicated, and there are a lot of things you should take into consideration when creating landing pages, but there are plenty of things you can do to convert your visitors into customers. We’re going to look at a few things retailers can do to create a truly optimized landing page.

Make sure your landing page is relevant

Make sure that customers land on a page that makes sense after clicking a call to action. If you’ve positioned yourself as the leading slogan T-shirt design company and direct them to a page about bird seed, it’s just going to confuse visitors and they will go elsewhere. Your content needs to be consistent with your positioning, because if it’s not, you will probably lose the ability to convert that visitor into a customer.

Design

A carefully laid out design goes a long way. It needs to be functional, clean and elegant with well-thought out images. If your landing page is cluttered with too many images floating around, your visitors might leave, so if you’re not a pro at design, seek the help of a professional. Also think about things like colours, which ones compliment each other and which ones clash, and so on.

You would also do well to check that you’re not behind the times in terms of what platform and style you’re using – outdated websites look a little shady, which will lose the trust of your potential customer. They may even be led to believe that your old-fashioned site isn’t secure enough for them to give their personal information to.

Let’s look at Graze as our example. They use a simple colour scheme of white, green and brown – possibly to convey that they are earthy, “natural” producers of food – and let the bright colours in their products add a pop of colour. They also feature an image of their product/service (subscription snack boxes) right at the top of the page with very obvious calls to action (“Get Started Now”) throughout.

Graze has also provided plenty of information on what exactly they do, as well as a handy guide on how their service works just below the main image.

They’ve very cleverly managed to pack their landing page with all the necessary information without cluttering it with too much text or too many images, which is what makes this design great.

Be Interactive

Create a landing page that gets your visitor doing something: have them sign up for something, whether it’s a weekly newsletter, a free trial, or just for emails letting them know about new products, get them to follow you on social media. Even a carousel of images which they can control – like Graze has done here – can help engage the visitor, pique their interest, and convert them into a customer.

Your actions should be high up on the landing page because a call to action placed further down the page has a lower chance of converting browsers into buyers. Give them a reason to be excited to be on your site, and keep interacting with them.

Be clear on what you want visitors to do

When someone comes across your landing page, it should be really obvious what you do, and what the next step is. Are you trying to get them to sign up to something? Buy a product? Make it obvious with your call to action buttons. Try including a sign-up sheet right at the top of your landing page – there’s nothing more off-putting when you have to click through more than one page only to be confronted with a large, complicated sign up form which asks everything from your birthday to your great grandmother’s maiden name. Just include a short, simple form asking for their name, email address and maybe their age/gender if it’s important based on what you’re selling. Remember, you can always ask for more information once they’ve signed up.

Graze failed a little on this aspect. After clicking “Get Started,” you are directed to another page asking which type of box you would like, then another to fill out your payment details, and another to input your delivery address. It all seems a little too lengthy. It would be much easier if you could simply select a few snacks and input your address, then sign into PayPal to pay.

Avoid using a flash page

Although a flash site might look great, they rarely deliver the conversion rate you’re looking for. People don’t tend to have a great attention span when it comes to something they’re only slightly interested in, and if they’re met with a page which fails to load, you’re just giving them an excuse to leave your site and never return (they’ll probably even remember you as that frustrating site which wouldn’t load). Instead, you should make your site, simple, clean and easy to navigate.

Make your sale

You don’t want to send your visitors to another site unless you really, really have to. “Click here to…”, “Follow this link” blah blah blah…no one wants a complicated, lengthy process to buy their items , so make it simple – a “Buy now” button which instantly adds an item to their shopping card and takes them to the checkout will do nicely. If you’re looking for signups, registrations etc, then make sure the sign-up form is right at the top of the page and is simple and straightforward to complete. Each additional step you’re making your customer take provides another chance for them to abandon you all together.

Give these tips a try, and your landing page should become a success. Remember to A/B test your landing page as there’s no one perfect recipe for success – but these things certainly help.

Jodie Pride is Content Manager at Veeqo: A cloud based inventory, order and shipping and shipping management software provider for retailers who sell on various marketplaces such as Amazon, eBbay, Tmall , Etsy etc.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

About Wiser

Wiser provides a complete suite of solutions to give retailers, brands, and manufacturers the edge to stay both competitive and most importantly, profitable.

Want to learn more about what Wiser can do for your business? Sign up for a free 14-day trial here.