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Landing pages are a vital component of effective inbound mobile marketing. Generally, many internet marketers view these pages as landing pads for prospects. Whether lead generation or collecting data, landing pages are where the action kicks off. With the ever-growing challenge of attracting and holding internet user’s attention online, it’s more crucial than ever to have app landing pages that trigger instant conversions.
Image Credit: simpleicon.com
So, What Is a Landing Page?
Generally, a Landing Page is essentially a webpage aimed at converting users into sales leads who can then be targeted with other communications. Typically, landing pages need to stand apart from conventional websites where visitors may get distracted by other messaging.
Landing pages are traditionally clean in their design and easy to use. As such, they are the ideal place to include a form for capturing visitor data as visitors can instantly see what is being offered, and what you want from them.
Using landing pages, marketers usually persuade people to leave their data by offering them rewards they cannot get anywhere else. For instance, the opportunity to download and access exclusive content like white papers, e-Books or webinars, or even tailored discounts on products or services.
What Is an App Landing Page?
An app landing page is a landing page dedicated to a particular mobile application. Typically, it’s not a webpage accessible via a website’s navigation; but instead can only be “landed on” by clicking on a headline or link on a search engine, or a link from another source like a social media ad or post.
Image Credit: cash.app
It’s prudent to remember that an app landing page isn’t a splash page, home page, gateway page or a microsite.
The Origin of Landing Pages
Landing pages have strayed from their original meaning. Landing pages were initially meant to be the key focus of marketing efforts. As such, most websites would sustain a few of them for various campaigns in addition to a home page. The idea was for users to come to the customised landing pages, then click through to the specific content selected for those pages, or opt-in to an email list or perform whatever action was intended.
However, later on, search engines switched things up by turning any page with relevant content for a specific query into a ‘landing page’. This ideally forced websites to focus on creating a cohesive feel and spreading marketing campaigns site-wide, rather than nicely dressing up a few pages and driving the traffic there.
Benefits of Landing Pages
There is so much one can do with landing pages, for example:
- Increase leads
- Grow their email list
- Sell products and services
- Get more clients or customers
- Grow their income
Best Practices for an Effective App Landing Page
The purpose of an app landing page is to drive users to download the mobile app. For mobile marketers, conversions are their number one, as visitors should somehow be compelled to download and use an app. However, there are multiple ways to build a successful app landing page which thousands of marketers have trialled through iterative experimentation, trial and error to understand what works and what does not.
Here are a few foundational elements you can consider when designing your app landing page:
Keep It Simple to Reduce Cognitive Overload
Have minimal content on your app landing page, so there is less cognitive load on the user. In practice, the more the content, the more a user gets confused about the intent of the landing page. Remember, that one of the most significant conversion killers is confusion.
As such, your app landing page should take a minimalistic approach with sidebars, navigation menus, graphics, buttons and text. The same principle should be filtered to the page design. Your aim should be to run a mobile business, not an art gallery.
Better Me weight loss app. Image Credit: betterme.world
Content with Clarity
Do not attempt to be overly clever with the app landing page’s written copy and graphical elements. There are subtle ways to channel your message and ideas without sounding like you are trying too hard.
The thrive app landing page. Image Credit: get-thrive.app
Always ensure to be very clear with what you want your customers to do. For example, ‘CLICK HERE’ or ‘DOWNLOAD NOW’. Avoid using phrases like “Please” or ‘Maybe” or “We would suggest”. Instead, ensure to always tell your visitors exactly what you exactly want them to do. In simple terms, dedicate your app landing page to one goal, if you have another goal, then create another app landing page for it.
Avoid Direct Sells
Resist the urge to immediately complete a sale, especially if you’re an e-Commerce app, or one linked to a particular service. A sales driven approach can turn down visitors to an app landing page.
Typically, the sale of goods and services requires a few back and forth encounters between the company and the prospect first. Remember, visitors will not read all of your content on the landing page, and will most likely need additional information and interaction with your brand before making a purchase.
In practice, do not ask a person to buy 5 acres of a Dairy Farm. Rather, sign them up for a free webinar on Dairy farming, then follow up with the lead after the webinar to continue the sales process. Again, the idea is to build trust, not immediately getting the sale.
Keep Promises
Your app landing page must fulfil the promise of its Google Ad to avoid annoying potential users. Unfortunately, the biggest failures in online marketing campaigns happen when the visitor clicks a link because they were promised something in the title, and find a landing page that has nothing to do with the title. Keeping your promises to ensure visitors covert by actually downloading the app. Pretty simple, right?
Keep Testing
Despite the multiple “best practices” or “rules of thumb” available that you can adopt, it’s important to keep testing different approaches and elements to improve the effectiveness of your app marketing campaign.
For example, you can add a bigger call-to-action (CTA) button or test using an A/B split test tool to determine which CTA triggers better user action. Here are the main areas of experimentation and Iteration that you can focus on, namely: the lead-In CTA, navigation, written copy, pictures, forms and page load speed.
As you experiment, ensure to measure metrics like: in-page analytics, cost per acquisition, segmented traffic (for example, PPC, organic search, or sites that link to you), bounce rate, and revenue per conversion.
Three Rules of Thumb When Writing Headlines for an App Landing Page
- Focus on the user benefit as visitors want to instantly know how the app will benefit them. So write the headlines to clearly communicate the practical difference the app will make to their life.
- Always consider the wants and concerns of your target audience and shape your headlines around them.
- Start headlines with an active verb like ‘Go’, ‘Own’,‘Get’, ‘Choose’, ‘Save’, ‘Protect’ and ‘Enjoy’. These verbs exude positive energy and complement your calls to action.
The Tinder landing page. Image Credit: tinder.com
In summary:
- Tell visitors precisely what you’re offering
- Tell them why they cannot live without it
- Tell them where they need to go to get it (like the App Store)
What Is a Call-to-Action?
A large part of app landing pages revolves around a call-to-action (CTA). This is a banner, button, graphic or text meant to prompt a user to click it and continue down a conversion funnel. Without a clear CTA, you might have no app conversions at all, as it tells your visitors what you want them to do, for instance, sign-up to your app!
Tips for Clear CTAs
- Be Specific and choose your words wisely. For example, words like “Next” might confuse your visitors and propagate Click Fear.
- Make it sound urgent or exclusive as offers with limited availability can trigger user action.
- Stand out from the crowd by saying what makes your app special and why they should download your app in comparison to available ones!
How the SLOWLY app does its CTA. Image Credit: slowly.app
Why SEO Is Important for Landing Pages
Unlike regular websites, app landing pages must have a specific purpose. However, one thing to be constantly mindful of is that your landing page needs traffic to lead users to the app.
To increase landing page traffic, SEO optimisation is key!
SEO Tips to Improve Your Landing Page Traffic
1. Titles and Meta descriptions
Headlines and meta-descriptions are vitally important factors for SEO as Google leverages them as tags to create search snippets. So, when internet users perform searches on Google, snippets appear, which can be used to capture the user’s attention.
So, ensure your page title doesn’t exceed 70 characters, as this is the limit set by Google for displays (including spaces). Furthermore, ensure your meta-description shows the benefits of the app landing page by including a value proposal. Additionally, insert a call to action at the end of the snippet to avoid click fear and maximise click through rate (CTR).
2. Content Optimisation
Previously, search engines extensively evaluated keyword density to determine how important a web page was. However, over the years, there has been a significant shift to the quality of overall content and its optimisation.
The Google algorithm is far more intelligent as repeating keywords doesn’t cut it anymore. So, ensure to create at least 500 words of copy and well-developed content. Additionally, it’s important to structure your content using HTML header tags that allow you to organise and give different editorial hierarchies to all your app landing page content.
The Netflix landing page and its simplicity. Image Credit: netflix.com
Final Takeaways
In conclusion, app landing pages are widely misunderstood, yet it is a single website page that appears when you search for an app or service related to an app. App landing pages should be at the heart of one’s mobile application to help send traffic to the app.
As you build a successful app landing page, remember to optimise for conversion by using clear titles, descriptions, and layouts to quickly convey value and incentivise visitors to download the app. Additionally, with all the new visitors and conversions, track their statistics and numbers closely to continually optimise your app landing page. So, remember to always enable your site analytics and check them regularly. By following the aforementioned steps outlined in this blog, you should be able to build landing pages to effectively send more traffic to your apps.