Landing pages are easily the most efficient website pages when it comes to improving its conversion rate. Whether they inspire users to make a purchase or subscribe to a newsletter, landing pages are your friend in marketing because they’re focused on one single goal. It’s clear that a great landing page is a key step towards a decent ROI from your web venture. Here are 12 essential do’s and don’ts to help you build landing pages which work for your target audience.

1. Do emphasize your differentiators

You can use a landing page to tell your customers why your offer is better than products or services provided by your competitors. Presenting your differentiators, be brief and to the point — make sure to use short sentences and bullet lists to make the text readable. Choose a central placement to ensure that visitors do read what you’d like to communicate.

2. Don’t ramble

The main goal of a landing page is persuasion, so make sure it’s easily understandable to the visitors. Their content must be easy to make sense of — instead of featuring lots of text and other materials, help users to focus their attention on a single element. That should be your call-to-action.

The main goal of your landing page is converting users into actual customers. If you provide them with lots of copy (even of high-quality), you can be sure that the amount of text will confuse them. Come up with key points you’d like to communicate to your customers and stick to them at all times.

3. Do give exhaustive information

Your landing page should contain just the right amount of information, which is exhaustive and tailored to the preferences of your target audience. Research your audience to learn what type of content they prefer — that’s how you’ll find the right medium to convince them that your product or service is the right fit.

If your call to action is about making contact or leaving contact information, make sure to inform your visitors when they can expect to hear from you — will it be two hours or two days? Cater to the expectations of your audience and you won’t make a wrong move.

4. Don’t include navigation to other pages

A landing page should be only about getting visitors to perform a specific action. Including links or navigation to other pages will only divert their attention, consequently leading them away from the landing page.

The more confused is your audience, the less powerful your landing page becomes when it comes to its conversion. Browsing through other information pages, users will easily change their mind about following your call-to-actions.

5. Do test your landing page in different browsers

This is a practical way to check whether your landing page is rendered correctly to every possible user who visits it. Check how your landing page looks on mobile and when accessed through different desktop browsers. That’s how you’ll ensure that your landing page works perfectly on every browser, device and operating system. This step is essential for delivering a great experience to your customers.

6. Don’t make users scroll down for call-to-action

Your call-to-action messaging should be placed in the right section of the landing page — after all, this element is crucial for its conversion rate. Locating it at the bottom of the page, you risk losing on many customers who simply aren’t willing to scroll the page down further than the first screen.

Those users might never get a chance to even see your call-to-action buttons and respond to them. That’s why all such messages and buttons should be located at the top and upfront so that visitors have a clear idea about what action they need to take at a first glance.

7. Do communicate your intention

A significant factor ensuring the success of a landing page is the way in which you specify what happens after users fill out the form — a standard feature in the majority of landing pages. Will they receive a call or someone will contact them via email? Perhaps you’re organizing a contest and they’re entering in a draw? Inform visitors about your intention and specify possible courses of action.

8. Don’t try to be universal

Your landing page won’t work if you’re trying to appeal to every possible preference and taste. A functional landing page should be perfectly targeted to your audience — if you haven’t learned about their expectations and needs, it’s time to do it now. All your messaging should appeal to this select group of users who might become your customers.

9. Do be consistent

A well-designed landing page will only help you to efficiently deliver the message and provide a seamless user experience. Make sure that your marketing visuals have a matching theme and are consistent.

The landing page should resemble the ad visitors clicked on or the visual content of the email newsletter. Using a completely different theme is confusing to users, will cost you additional time and money, and can potentially ruin the campaign’s results.

The structure of the landing page should be clear, copy polished and visuals chosen for their high-quality — otherwise you’re showing consumers that you aren’t serious and might in fact be a dodgy deal.

10. Don’t treat users as if they were naive

Today most users know how to move around the web and can easily pick up on cues which question the professionalism of a business. If they suspect you’re not professional or might not be entirely trustworthy, they won’t be interested.

One way to deal with it to be authentic and credible. Avoid making promises you know you won’t be able to keep. Always deliver to promises which you’ve made to the customers.

11. Do your AB testing

A fair share of AB testing is a must if you’d like to make sure that both your copy and all call-to-actions engage your target audience. That’s why you should test your landing page — send users who click on the link to an AB tested page.

By splitting them and displaying two different versions of the landing page you’ll be able to find out which one has a higher conversion rate. Once you know the winning formula, you can easily apply it in other landing pages.

12. Don’t ask for too much information

Sometimes you build landing pages to collect specific information, but asking for too much at a time will seriously affect its conversion rate. Stick to data that you really need and ask for information that makes sense in the context — if you’re offering a free trial, consumers will be surprised and even deterred if you ask them about their credit card information.

The length of a contact form directly influences the number of users who decide to fill it out. In their essence forms should be short and sweet. Clarify information you’re after to make sure customers know exactly how to answer your questions.

Following this list of key do’s and dont’s for building killer landing pages, you’ll radically improve the conversion rate of your website and secure more leads which will take your online venture to the next level of success.

Torri Myler works for bankopening.co.uk — an online UK bank branches finder. She combines her experience in content marketing with her passion for writing.