3 Secrets To A High Converting Landing Page

3 Secrets of a High Converting Landing Page

If you are looking to buy mortgage leads, assuming you are trying to sell some loans, an effective landing page is one of the best tools in your marketing arsenal. “Effective” - that’s the key, though. In order to qualify as effective, your landing page has move leads through your mortgage sales funnel, and in order to do that, there are some key elements you must have to improve your mortgage lead conversion rate.

Let’s break down the 3 most important components of an effective mortgage landing page and give you some tips on how to make the most of them.

First, let’s compare two landing pages and dissect their structure and how it impacts effectiveness:

Take a look at the image below from LendingTree, a mortgage lead generation company:

This is LendingTree’s home page. Many marketers launch campaigns and use the company’s home page as the landing page for leads, which is a huge mistake because it is not optimized for converting LendingTree mortgage leads, here is why;

Looking at the above screenshot, the visitor to the page is given seven obvious choices represented by the big graphics, plus who knows how many more once they click on that “More Options” icon or the menu at the top.. Very quickly, we can see that there are just waaaaay too many options to choose from. Not an effective landing page in any case, we can't guarantee where in your mortgage sales funnel your traffic is being directed. 

Here is an optimizing LendingTree landing page after a search for “best mortgage rates in (city of choice here)”:

Now instead of limitless choices for LendingTree leads to get lost in, they have 4 direct options:

1. Purchase loans inquiry

2. Refinance Inquiry

3. Home equity loan inquiry

4. If those three are too difficult to figure out, just call them at the phone number at the top!

We can even say the choices are even fewer: 

• a) apply online for your desired mortgage loan 

• b) call the organization

That is the contrast between a home page and a landing page. Landing pages are very narrow in scope and intended to direct LendingTree leads the visitor down the mortgage funnel.

Two KPIs to measure how effective your landing page is

There are two indicators the effectiveness of a mortgage landing page:

1. Did they complete the objective? Did a visitor answer all the questions, input their contact information and become a lead?
   
   

2. What is the bounce rate? How many people came to your website, and left before taking any action?

Those are the two most important measures of the effectiveness of a landing page, and it all traces back to whether or not someone has moved forward in your mortgage lead funnels (or mortgage lead flywheel!). If we look at LendingTree leads conversion for their home page vs their landing page, we’ll see a stark contrast in favor of the landing page.

You can even drill down deeper into that process, for example, how far into the process did they go? Did they answer 3 of the 7 questions on the landing apge form? That’s an indicator that maybe that question scares people away and should be reworded, removed, or placed further down the funnel. At the very least, though, #1 and #2 should be measured. 

“What gets measured can be improved”

-Author unknown -

 

Now for what we promised you:

What key ingredients does a landing page need to be as effective as possible?

The most effective landing pages have the following core elements:

1. Limited Navigation Options

2. One Strong Value Proposition

3. A Single, Clear Call to Action 

Limited navigation options: It is critical to limit the number of choices visitors have to make on the landing page for a few reasons. First, your mortgage funnel should have made clear what they were going to get when they visit the landing page. Things such as “get your instant rate quote”, “book a call with a loan officer,” etc. 

When the visitor ends up at the landing page, don’t confuse them with too many options. Most of us are busy, and if we can do things in 3 seconds or less, we're in.. any more than that, and we “bounce”, hence the bounce rate metric that has become so useful in conversion tracking.

One strong value proposition: A succinct and clear statement of what the visitor gets when transacting with you is fundamental to establishing trust and credibility and improving conversions.  

Your value proposition must clearly convey the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) principle. It is ALL about benefits, not features. 

A single, clear “Call To Action” (CTA): Your call to action should be in the active voice and offer a benefit for taking that action. This is usually encapsulated in 5 words or less and overlaid on a button of the right color so the visitors can click and be on their way to get what they came here for.

Let’s look at a landing page that exemplifies good use of these three elements of an effective landing page:

If we look at this page, we can see it does a great job of implementing the three elements we discussed.

1. Navigation is very limited above the fold. There are no obvious distractions for the visitor to wander about.
   
   

2. The value proposition is clear, albeit a bit wordy, but it is clearly articulated: “Turn your dream home into a reality…” Easy for the visitor to grasp.
   
   

3. The Call To Action is actionable and succinct with the promise of instant gratification: “View your rate”.

To the untrained marketer, these concepts may seem super simple. Make no mistake about it; by the time a landing page is launched by an effective marketing and copywriting team, there has been a ton of work put into it to make it a productive tool for moving leads through your mortgage funnels. The majority of the work is in pruning and taking away anything that is not absolutely necessary on the page.

Effective landing pages are to always be tested against a control. A/B testing is used to measure the efficacy of variations to the core elements. It is an ongoing process.

The good news is we've already been through many iterations and know what works to create mortgage landing pages that convert and generate mortgage leads. 

If you’d like us to help you set up your own landing pages, mortgage lead funnel, or mortgage lead generation, you're in good company! Reach out, shoot us an email, and we can get started strengthening your mortgage business today.

 

With that, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you at the top.

Michael

P.S. If you still have a question, reach out to me. I’d love to help you, but I won’t know what to help you with until you tell me what’s going on.

So, shoot me an email or click here to book a call, and let’s get your questions answered and your problems obliterated so you can reach your goals…all of’em.

Talk soon.