4 Tips for Mobile Landing Pages​ That Sell

By now every business knows their site should be mobile friendly. Not only are more users surfing on mobile devices, but Google actively penalizes mobile-unfriendly sites in mobile search results. For many companies, just getting the site to load properly on a small screen has been a struggle. Once you reach that point, though, there’s a lot more you can do—and doing it will improve your sales rate.

That’s because most “mobile friendly” advice is just about design. The goal is to make sure users can access your page easily on their handheld devices. But once they’re on the site, what do they do next? It turns out that users respond to different types of landing pages on mobile versus traditional browsers. By optimizing mobile-specific landing pages, you can increase your conversions and capitalize mobile traffic.

Actionable Tips

In a recent column, Mona Elesseily offers some easy-to-implement tips on improving mobile landing pages. Here are three of her tips that are easiest to do yourself, plus a little advice of our own:

#1 Keep It Short: Mona emphasizes concision, and so does anyone else who truly understands mobile. Modern technology is closely tied to a trend toward shorter, more digestible copy. Mobile is the latest and newest generation of technology, and people expect mobile web copy to be the shortest of all—they’re seeing it on a small screen, with limited data, often for just seconds at a time while doing other things.

Tips to keep it short include:

• Remove adverbs.
• Use short sentences written at a 7th-grade level. (Microsoft Office can check your readability.)
• Focus on a few key benefits. Don’t list every feature you offer.
• Consider drafting your copy in Hemingway App.

Or, here’s a fun shortcut: write your sales copy on your mobile device itself. The pain of doing serious writing with just two thumbs will automatically force you to be brief.

#2 Simplify Forms: In general, don’t force mobile users to fill out forms at all, as you will lose many potential customers along the way. If you can let them complete a transaction without creating an account, you’ll have one less barrier to checkout.

Sometime that’s not possible, however, and Mona instead recommends keeping forms as simple as possible. Remember that even power users find it annoying to do a lot of thumb-typing, and are prone to make mistakes on web forms. To make their lives easier (and make sure they complete the purchase, stick to a few rules:

• Use as few fields as possible.
• Don’t make users type email addresses twice.
• Keep password rules simple. State them clearly on the form.
• Allow one-click payment from Paypal where possible.

#3 ONE Call to Action: What exactly is your landing page trying to accomplish? Choose one objective and make a clear call to action for that purpose (“sign up now,” “tap to download,” “buy now”). A mobile page is not the place to have multiple calls to action.

At least, not in general. Mona says that B2C businesses can get away with a main call to action—clearly positioned at the top of the page—and a fallback call to action farther down. (Even then, I would choose one for the landing page and offer the other after they complete the first one.) Offering other suggested products at the bottom of the page is also a viable option.

B2B landing pages are where Mona says to be merciless. Business customers are unlikely to have patience for meandering copy, and only have one specific product or service in mind. Usually it’s best to get them to request a quote or “call now” and leave the actual sales pitch for later.

Last, I want to add one tip of my own, that’s essential to making the others work:

#4 Keep it Separate: Digital marketing companies often emphasize “responsive” design, meaning that a single webpage rearranges itself to look right on any screen. That’s helpful, but it’s not always smart to use the same page for both mobile and non-mobile users. All the tips above apply mainly to mobile pages, and might not be meaty enough for traditional users.

The answer is to make separate versions of landing pages for mobile pages. If you’re a technical type, you can the site to detect whether a user is on a mobile device or not and show them the correct copy. But for a quick and dirty solution, give your mobile landing page its own URL. You can now use that URL as the destination for all your mobile ad campaigns. This won’t catch 100 percent of users (organic mobile traffic could find the wrong page) but it will let you make the most of your paid mobile clicks.

Here to Help

Optimizing for mobile can seem like an agonizing process. It doesn’t have to be. Let the marketing masterminds of EverSpark Interactive improve your SEO, optimize for mobile, and make all your landing pages top-performers. Call for a free consultation today.