How to Build the Perfect Mobile Landing Page

If desktop landing pages are like a job interview (plenty of time and space to explain what you’re all about), mobile landing pages are like elevator pitches. You only have a few seconds for your page to load, grab your users’ attention and encourage them to act.

Building the perfect mobile landing page is no easy task, and it’s necessary to have a strong mobile strategy in place and leverage all opportunities for conversions. How can you do that? By using these essential tips for mobile landing page optimisation.

Headlines for Mobile Landing Pages

Headlines should be short. Four words or fewer is ideal. Once you think you’re done writing your landing page copy, go back and edit it down. Cut out every single word that doesn’t need to be there. Some companies have even had success with landing pages that are primarily image-driven, so you could consider this strategy as well.

Mobile Landing Page Layout

Make sure that your CTA can be seen instantly on your page by your potential customers. Think about your mobile landing pages from your customers’ perspective. Would you spend several minutes pinching or scrolling around a screen to learn more about a product? Neither will your customers. However, the normal best practice of keeping your CTAs above the fold can be difficult with all the different screen sizes. This can be handled by creating a smaller version of your CTA at the very top of the page, typically below the logo.

Keep your landing page free of distractions. Do not fill it with unnecessary text or anything else that might get in the way of a conversion. If you choose to use mobile landing pages templates to help you during the design phase, bear this in mind and think minimal. Remember, white space is your friend.

Clickable Phone Numbers

It is quite normal for prospective customers to want to gather more information before making a buying decision. Therefore, it is important to make it easy for people to phone in. If you want customers to call you, include a phone icon or make your company’s phone number a clickable element:

• Ensure your phone number is in HTML and it is ‘Click to Call’ ready, meaning you can tap on the phone and it will dial for you.
• Test having a clickable phone number versus a ‘Click to Call’ button. This button functions the same as clickable phone number, but it’s a button with call-to-action text that says “Call Now – Click Here.” This could lead to a 10-20% increase in phone calls.

This tactic is only effective if you have the bandwidth to actually field calls. For many marketers, optimising your lead generation forms for mobile may be a more sustainable route.

Mobile Landing Page CTAs

Even if you have a mobile responsive landing page, receiving calls may not be your primary goal. You may also want to capture leads via a form. However, you don’t want to ask prospective customers to complete a lengthy web form. Keep forms as short as possible: one field for their name and another for an email address.

Time is of the essence

When it comes to mobile landing pages, speed is everything! The longer your customers have to wait for a page to load, the more likely they are to give up and go elsewhere. Don’t use technologies like Flash and other plugins that can take forever to load or may be incompatible with your customers’ devices. Ensure that images are in .jpg format whenever possible. Optimise your mobile landing pages to keep the number of HTTP requests to a minimum. Although the ideal page size varies depending on content, aim to keep your mobile landing pages around 20 kilobytes.

Bear in mind that not all of your visitors will be accessing your page using the same kind of connection. Some will be using Wi-Fi, others might have 4G access, and some may be on 3G connections. A mobile landing page that loads in less than five seconds on a strong 4G connection may not load as quickly on a 3G connection. If you optimise your mobile landing pages to load quickly on terrible connections, they’ll be even faster on high-speed connections.

A/B Test Your Mobile Landing Pages

Use A/B testing extensively when creating mobile landing pages. Start with major variations before refining your changes at increasingly granular levels:

• Test substituting your CTA with a click to call button.
• Test the click to call button against a clickable text phone number.
• Test removing any optional fields.
• Test multiple versions of your copy.
• Test using a social login instead of a form.
• Test the phrasing of your calls-to-action and customer incentives.