Landing Page Optimization: Best Practices for Educational Enterprises

In internet marketing, conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization (CRO) is very crucial. This reflects the percentage of visitors to a webpage that actually convert into customers, or at least take any desired call to action on that webpage.

Marketers in academic institutions spend major portion of their working hours in planning and implementing campaigns to get the best marketing outcomes. Educational institutes have conservative marketing budgets. So ROI for an academic entity is of crucial importance.

This blog talks about some of the best practices for landing page optimization because it’s one of the crucial steps in generating qualified leads for driving conversions..

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a standalone page that allows marketers to capture a user’s contact information via a lead form. This page carries key information about your business so that the user is not overloaded with superfluous information.

Landing pages are developed for running specific marketing campaigns with specific objectives to achieve from that campaign. For re-directing traffic to your landing, targeted campaigns on specific data set is run. This allows your college or university to convert a higher percentage of users into qualified leads since it targets interested audience group.

Types of Landing Pages

Web pages that capture user contact information are the most common landing pages. These pages typically contain a form to be filled by the users. Thereafter the user is engaged through lead nurturing activities to close the sales drive. This type of landing page is a good medium to generate emailers.

Another type of landing pages are click-through pages where users are provided information about key benefits of your product or service. The information shared is used to convince prospective customers to purchase. These pages contain a call to action button that directs users to your website to complete the transaction.

For making landing pages successful it is important that they address the needs of your target audience. In making your landing pages attractive, the design aspect is very important. Your landing page should have smooth navigation of information so that the user is motivated to submit his or her contact details. It should always offer some insight or value to the user.

When is the Need for a Landing Page

These are some of the reasons of using landing page:

• When you want to run personalized campaigns for your target audience.
• To promote an eBook or guide.
• For increasing subscriptions to your newsletter etc.
• To promote some event.

Traffic can be directed on landing pages through several ways such as paid ads on google or social media, links shared on blogs or emailers etc. For users to take desired call to action, your landing page must of engaging content.

You should keep testing the performance of your landing page through A/B testing methodology which allows you to better gauge which elements on your landing page do or do not connect well with your target market. The purpose of creating a landing page is lead generation. Regular performance check of your landing page will ensure that you get qualified leads with better conversion rates. This ultimately improves overall performance of your online marketing initiatives.

Landing Page Optimization : Tips to Improve Your Conversions

Optimizing your landing page is user driven in a sense that it is based on his / her experience.

You can follow these simple tips to ensure that your landing page is designed to provide maximum conversions.

1. Landing Page Layout

Landing page should always be simple in design. It should be easily readable and the user must be able to navigate smoothly through information given. The layout should be neat and easy to hover along paragraphs. Your users should remain focus while navigating through the information and must be inspired to take call-to-action.

2. Prioritize Information

Make sure that the information at the first instance is the most captivating and relevant so that it arouses curiosity of the user to read further. This would mean that your landing page must have following elements in order:

• A clear Headline
• A watchword or a subtext offering some kind of value proposition to the user.
• A clear CTA
• A neat form

3. Avoid asking too much details in the form.

 The form should have only relevant fields to capture leads. Too many fields can result in traffic drop outs.

Remove superfluous fields from the form. Make sure that the form or the landing page itself is mobile responsive. Sometimes the form doesn’t open properly when used on a mobile deice.

The information asked by the user to fill should offer value to the user. For example, if your offer is a top-of-the-funnel eBook you need to ask for nothing more than a name and email address. However, if your offer is a free consultation you require more information from leads such as a phone number, company name, and job title.

4. Designing elements

Use soothing colors. Avoid gaudy look. Call to action buttons must have a contrasting color background so that it strikes out from other elements of the landing page.

While using color, it is highly recommended that it should be in consonance with your brand image. It is important to maintain consistency in the use of your brand colors. Treat your landing pages as if they were an extension of your website.

5. Visual appeal

Images and videos play a crucial role in enhancing the visual appeal of your page apart from use of colors. Your content should create an emotional connection with the visitor. This image in your header must be catchy to attract the visitors.

Videos on the other hand can be used to increase the engagement on a page. They can optimize the performance of any landing page drastically.

6. Testimonials

Your college landing page should carry testimonials to build credibility. Prospective students or their parents are more likely to trust your academic brand if it is supported by those who have already experienced it be it existing students or alumni.  It can have bytes from parents of those who are studying in your college or have already passed out.

7. Optimize landing page using SEO

SEO matters a lot when your campaigns are run for longer period of time.  They need to be search engine optimized like any other page on your website for users to track it.

So use keywords in your title, meta description, and URL. Use keywords and semantics in your landing page content. You need to let Google and other search engines know exactly what your page is all about.

8. Loading time

Loading time of your landing page is very crucial to reduce bounce rate. Page speed plays a key role in engaging visitors. If your landing page takes too long to open, chances are that users might drop and leave your landing page.

This will ultimately affect your conversions. So, the faster your page loads the better the results for you.

9. Are you testing performance of your landing page regularly

Keep testing your landing page frequently. You can use A/B testing. To see which elements of your landing page helps boost your conversion rates. Use heat maps to get a better insights into how users are interaction with your page. You can also use Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your landing page.

Last Word

Use these helpful practices them to improve your landing page(s) so that you can start getting more leads and finally more admission conversions.

By the time you end your campaign, it should be one of the best efforts worth doing for driving marketing results.