This article was featured in Digital Dealer, and it's a great overview of how the best landing pages work to sell more cars.
Our digital campaigns feature landing pages, and the best practices we put in place will help you capture your ideal buyers. Read on for the steps to get started.
It’s the 21st century where cars and technology constantly surround us. Consumers are car shopping anywhere, anytime and on any device. Mobile landing pages are the online connection between you and your range of users, don’t make the mistake of using a one-size fits all approach. Your mobile traffic isn’t equivalent to your desktop-traffic making it important to optimize for each accordingly. According to Google, 70% of searches for car MSRP and list prices are done on mobile. Attract specific consumers with an effective mobile landing page whether your goal is generating leads or increasing in-store visits. Learn how to give your mobile users optimal access to your dealership’s vital information.
Tips for Building Mobile Landing Pages
Don’t be too Wordy: As any mobile user knows, you’re on the go looking for simple and efficient ways to get things done. If they’re searching for cars, they want a platform that’s clean and easy-to-use. Avoid long paragraphs and endless scrolling columns. A rule of thumb is to design your landing page to attract the shortest of attention spans. Break your chunks of information into brief-easy to read paragraphs or bullet points.
Erase Distracting Elements: We’ve all been there, one thing that causes mobile-users to bounce off your page is a slow-loading speed. Heavy imagery, video, large navigation bars and excessive external links all slow down your site’s speed. If your pictures can’t explain what you’re selling better than your text can, ditch it all together. Avoid poor user experience by keeping minimal in all aspects.
Reduce Excess Loading Time: Not only is your mobile site speed important for the user experience, it’s also important for most search engines. Google’s mobile-friendly website update will give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results. According to Google/SOASTA Research, adding just 2 seconds to your mobile website speed, from 1 second to 3, increases bounce rates by 32 percent.
Choose Responsive Design: One mistake that many have made when creating mobile landing pages is sticking to a one-size fits all approach. The same landing page used for desktop will not appear the same on mobile, neither will it have the same goal. By choosing responsive web design over adaptive, it allows you to offer easy reading and navigation with minimum resizing, panning, and scrolling across all devices. Skip out on adaptive design because it doesn’t adjust across all screen sizes which causes poorly formatted landing pages.
Simple CTA Format: The goal of a mobile landing page is to drive phone calls, leads or in-store visits. When you’re using your CTA, you want to ensure it’s visible and mobile-friendly by placing it above the fold. However, making sure your CTA remains above the fold in responsive web design can be tricky. To optimize for mobile, try creating a smaller version of your CTA form and include it at the very top of the page. This will increase your leads by not allowing the user to endlessly scroll to find your CTA.
Form Fields: For most landing pages, many will include a form. We recommend keeping your CTA form fields to a minimum because nobody wants to fill in 10 text fields, etc. Make it simple for the user by ensuring the forms’ fields are large enough to be tapped easily with a finger. Don’t forget, the form fields might look fantastic on desktop but might shrink where they’re difficult to tap on a phone.
Test, Test, Test: You won’t know what works unless you test out your mobile landing pages and switch out different concepts, themes and wording. A/B testing allows you to test out two different formats of the same landing page and see which one performs better. This way you can eventually boost your conversions, leads and more. Try out different ideas constantly and if something that used to work for your dealership doesn’t anymore, try something new.
To Sum Up…
As you can see, building the best mobile landing pages isn’t as clear cut as you might think. Cardinal rule number one, never and we mean never, use a one-size fits all approach. You’re attracting a completely different audience on mobile versus desktop with different demographics, mindsets and purchasing decisions. Have a clear goal and Call-to-Action that appears above the fold. If you’re going to include a form, minimize the amount of fields in order to create the optimal user experience. Keep your landing page simple in all aspects by excluding slow-loading images, distracting elements and wordy text. This will in turn reduce your loading time which will benefit you by giving you a better ranking on search engines. Last but not least, test. Test until you find what works for you and your dealership.
Start building your dealership’s mobile-optimized landing pages and get those leads rolling in.