When constructing your campaign, one of the most important elements is the landing page itself. You can do all the hard work you like on your initial channels (email, Facebook, Twitter, above-the-line, etc.) but if the landing page doesn’t quite hit the mark, the campaign itself can fold quicker than Leicester’s title challenge.

During our webinar on Delivering Effective Campaigns, we touched on some of the basics associated with constructing your landing page in Kentico EMS. The aim of the landing page is to convince your visitor to click the call to action or fill in the form and deliver that all important conversion.

From a technical perspective, building your landing page is a straight forward task within Kentico. However, making sure the landing page delivers the conversions you expect actually relies on much more. There’s an array of psychological phenomena behind conversions that we need to consider if we want to deliver the best possible landing page.

Over the course of this blog post, we’re going to unearth the top 5 phenomena and how you can tap into them like a digital Derren Brown and deliver powerful landing pages.

Look over here!

The design of the landing page is important, particularly the position of the Call to Action (CTA) button which will deliver your all-important conversions.

To help with the design, you can consider the deictic gaze theory. The theory states that our eyes immediately go to where someone else is looking so that we can see it too. It’s hardwired into our brains.

Using directional cues on the landing page can help you to take advantage of this particular phenomena. The use of a well-placed arrow or an image of a person looking in a particular direction can help draw the eyes of your visitors to the sweet spots on the page and that all-important conversion.  

Read me!

The attention span of your audience is a serious consideration when it comes to landing pages. Our brains are naturally hardwired to recall primary information better than information presented later on – a little something known as the primacy effect. The visitor is likely to pay more attention at the start and then start to drift off later on as their brain becomes bored or tired.

It is essential to capture the attention from the off with a bold and enticing headline that clearly sets out what you are offering to the user. It’s the first thing that the visitor sees and the level of interest you create will determine whether they forge ahead and consume the content or simply move away.

The idea is to grab the attention within a millisecond. You should consider the USP of your offering and fit your headline around this.  

Click here!

The CTA button is the key element in your landing page and it needs to stand out so that people know exactly where to click to get what you’re offering. This is all thanks to the Von Restorff Effect (isolation effect) where if we see a collection of items, the one that differs from the rest is the one we notice and remember more clearly.

However, it isn’t just a case of slapping a different colour on the CTA button. Testing is key and we’d recommend trying out different positions, colours, sizes and shapes to see what resonates with your audience.  

Everyone else is doing it

No matter how much freedom we are given, we are still drawn to “herd behaviour” (informational social influence or social proof). We want to fit in so if others are making particular choices, we’ll often follow their lead.

Testimonials or reviews are key to tapping into this particular trait. We value the opinions of others, particularly fellow customers (think about the importance of reviews in Amazon). By leveraging honest and descriptive testimonials (and avoiding one liners!), we can provide a little extra encouragement to click on the CTA.

In addition, the use of social media can be equally persuasive. Displaying social media likes and tweets can deliver similar levels of encouragement to your visitors.  

You need this

We’re all terrified of loss. When you dig down into the psyche, you can clearly see that we value not losing something more than actually gaining something. We will do anything to avoid it. It’s commonly known as loss aversion.

On the flip side we also love a freebie.

The key with the landing page is to tap into the loss and freebie factors. The use of language must be carefully considered. We want to make visitors perceive a potential loss and then put them at ease by reassuring that it is free and easy to proceed.

By combining the loss and freebie factors, we can help steer users towards the CTA button and the all-important conversion.  

In conclusion…

There are many other traits and phenomena that dictate how we behave when it comes to landing pages but by addressing these top 5 phenomena, you can deliver more powerful landing pages and a higher number of conversions.

At MMT Digital, we’re passionate about getting the most out of the Kentico EMS, whether it be implementing the features or the theory behind it! If you’d like to know more about how to maximise the potential of the EMS, you can click here to get in touch with us and we’ll see how we can help!