How to Build a High-Converting Video Landing Page

Directing your audience toward your landing page is akin to inviting first-time guests to your house.

The experience and value you give them will determine whether you’ll become long-term friends or if the relationship will fizzle out.

When the audience visits your landing page, you want to make sure that they get a clean, intuitive experience and maximum value for their time.

The purpose of landing pages is to drive that one action that will strengthen your bond.

And just like pulling out the fancy china, you need to display the best content form that will entice that action.

Video content reigns supreme when it comes to attracting and converting audiences into customers. See the results of our survey:

 

 

So why not use it to fire up your landing pages?

Here’s how you can do that in the best way.

 

Video landing page best practices

 

Create a wireframe

First things first, carefully decide which elements of the landing page will go where.

Try to keep things uncluttered and avoid big blocks of text. Negative space is your friend! Usually, a bulleted list of your key propositions works best for landing pages.

Since you want to delight and convey value through a video, it’s best to keep it above the fold.

Similarly, your call-to-action button should also be placed above the fold for quick access.

Here’s the thing though, audiences like to learn about the offer before clicking the CTA. So your UX should lead to your CTA after your copy and video.

By keeping these three elements up top, you minimize scrolling time and maximize conversion potential.

Moreover, if you’re using a lead form experiment with its placement above and below the fold and see what works for you.

 

Use a purpose-driven video

Repurposing is a great way to extend the life of your valuable content. However, for your landing pages, it’s best to create exclusive videos that serve a specific purpose.

The video placed on your landing page is meant to urge the audience to take a specific action. It should reflect that intention. Putting a generic promotional video can prove to be a waste of space and cause confusion.

A key to creating purpose-driven videos for your landing page is to keep the audience journey and your marketing funnel in mind.

 

 

Is your audience in the awareness stage and you’d like them to download an e-book? Or have they progressed to the consideration stage and you want to interest them in a product demo?

Mold your video’s content accordingly.

Related: How to Utilize Videos for the Buyer’s Journey

 

Use an attractive thumbnail

A thumbnail is a window to your video. You want to make sure that the audience gets the best view. It’s a small but highly valuable opportunity to show your audience your brand personality.

Don’t use ambiguous frames like a screencast for your thumbnail. Consider using a scene that’s engaging and easy to understand.

Read more: How to Create Thumbnails That Drive Clicks

 

Embed the video to the landing page

You make videos the star of your landing page because you want to delight your customers and make them spend more time on the page.

So, embed the video to your page rather than making it a clickable thumbnail that takes the audience to a video hosting site like YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia.

While you might be tempted to use a pop-over embed, it can become distracting and you may lose precious seconds while the audience figures out what’s happening.

A pop-over embed, as the name suggests, makes the video ‘pop’ over the rest of the content which may get you the attention but prove to be overwhelming.

Related: Tips for Creating a Successful Video Landing Page

 

Keep it snappy

I wouldn’t want to use the cliché ‘humans have the attention span of goldfish’ example (because it’s actually false) but the landing page bounce rate is extremely high.

So keep it short, keep the meat up top, minimize fluff, and focus on conveying value through each second of your video.

Remember, your video’s content is the difference between clicking the call-to-action button or the tiny cross button.

 

Optimize loading time

In the race against time to grab and hold your audiences’ attention, you naturally want to minimize technical difficulties.

There’s nothing that makes today’s audience bolt faster than delayed gratification. Akami claims that a delay of one second in loading time can drop conversion rates by 70%!

Ensure that your landing page doesn’t comprise heavy files.

To avoid delayed loading times due to heavy video files, upload your video on a video hosting platform and use the embed code to display the video within your landing page.

 

Make the landing page responsive

Another way to optimize your video landing page is to make it responsive for multiple devices.

Most of the time, your audience will be accessing your landing page through their smartphones.

 

 

Nevertheless, people often use multiple devices to access the internet. So, you wouldn’t want to lose the authentic leads that visit you from a laptop, desktop, or even a tablet.

 

Decide about auto-play

There’s a debate about whether or not to auto-play videos on your landing page. Some argue that self-playing videos can overwhelm the audience. It doesn’t give them enough time to settle in and bombards them with the information they might not be ready to take in.

On the other hand, the race against audience attention span demands that you get their attention—fast. An auto-playing video brings the audience directly to the point and could reduce the bounce rate.

Nevertheless, it’s best to experiment and resort to good old A/B testing to see what works best with your audience.

 

Make your landing page accessible

Some of your audience might be differently-abled, or might not be native speakers. When you create video content, it’s always best to include closed captions.

You might want to create a landing page with ‘just a video’, but it’s prudent to add a clean and concise copy as well. That way audience can refer to whichever form of communication they prefer.

 

Call to action

Your call to action doesn’t have to be confined to a clickable button. Use your video content to direct people about the next steps.

Make your proposition enticing and offer value so that viewers can’t resist downloading your e-book, scheduling a call, or requesting a demo.

As for the CTA button design, audiences tend to respond better to bright colors.

 

Optimize for SEO

Last but not least, juice up your landing page for search engine optimization. You should make it easy for search engines to rank your video landing page.

Use keywords in your headlines, body text, image titles, etc. Moreover, optimize your video’s SEO by adding captions, metadata, and transcripts. These help in indexing your landing page and give context to search engines about your video.

Ways to build your landing page

Now that know about the best practices for launching your landing page, it’s time to explore different ways you can create it.

 

Outsourcing to a third party

You can hire a freelance developer or a company to get the job done. A freelancer will not be as expensive as outsourcing your project to a company.

The cost will vary based on the following factors:

• The party’s experience
• The platform you pick to develop the page on
• Page design

Now, if you already have a team that can put the page together, there is another way: the DIY way!

 

Build it yourself

There are a number of reliable platforms that you can use to get your landing page up and running.

Let’s look at a few of the best ones.

 

Mailchimp

 

 

Mailchimp is one of the biggest marketing automation platforms out there. It also allows you to build landing pages. And if you’re already a Mailchimp user, you can create landing pages for free!

Mailchimp also has a ton of other solutions.

You probably already know about their email management system; apart from that, you can also use the platform to claim a domain name, create your website, or set up an online store.

They also provide a solution for social ad targeting.

And the best part… you can sign up and start exploring the platform for free.

Note that customer support for free users is only available for 30 days. The Core plan starts at $10 per month. Plus plan starts at $29 per month.

 

HubSpot

 

 

HubSpot is a household name its landing page builder is one of the tools the company offers under its umbrella of marketing, sales, and service software.

The builder is free. All you have to do to get started is sign up.

 

Convertkit

 

 

Convertkit offers more than 25 templates. You can also bring in your own custom domain. You can also select free photos from Unsplash to customize your page.

Other features include dynamic forms to gather information from visitors. Also, it comes with a responsive mobile version so that it works efficiently on multiple devices.

The cheapest pricing plan starts at $27 per month.

 

Landingi

 

 

Like other landing page builders, Landingi also offers tons of templates, integrations, and analytics.

The templates are categorized by industry and goals.

You can also customize your thank you page with custom branding after a visitor submits a form.

The pricing plan starts at $29 per month.

 

Leadpages

 

 

Leadpages is a simple builder that offers conversion-rate-optimized landing page templates for quick work. There is a wide array of integrations ranging from email marketing to scheduling campaigns.

It also provides analytics and A/B testing to make sure that you are using the right layout and design. It also has a lead magnet feature that lets the visitors see what services you offer.

The pricing plan for Leadpages starts at $37 per month.

 

Wishpond

 

 

This builder has a drag-and-drop editor that lets you create and customize your page with ease. With the platform’s built-in tools, you can optimize your page based on analytics.

If you’re concerned about how your landing page will fit with other tools, don’t be. Wishpond has 300+ integrations and will work seamlessly with what you’ve got.

With Wishpond, you can add and customize forms on your page and ensure that everything is compatible across all devices.

The platform offers three plans and the most economical will set you back $49 per month (billed yearly) or $75 per month for a short-term project.

 

Unbounce

 

 

Unbounce lets you choose your customization from ThemeForest. You can select, compare and preview different themes in the same window.

It also offers multiple integrations, tracking, and conducting A/B testing. There are many templates to choose from that will resonate with your brand.

There is also an AI-powered smart tool that tells you which dynamic text replacement will most likely convert the visitors.

The cheapest pricing plan starts at $79 per month.

 

Instapage

 

 

With design as its forte, this provider is one of the most popular in the industry. The company has built over 500+ customizable layouts and promises fast landing page load speeds.

The tool’s notable features include Instablock, which gives you an easy way to edit your landing page without having to code. You can just drag and drop a block to customize your page.

Instapage can also be a valuable for social media marketers because it offers solutions designed for Google and Facebook ads, along with retargeting ads.

With a building plan priced at $199 per month, this is one of the pricier options on the list. You could also reach out to them with your particular requirements to get a custom quote.

 

That’s a wrap

Get started with building a stellar video landing page and test out the tips and tricks we mentioned in this post and let the conversions begin!

If you need to create a cool video that you can feature on your landing page—a video that grabs attention and gets people hooked to the very end—then contact our video strategists.

Our team would love to create something perfect for your business.