As with any battle, you can’t spend all of your resources at the first challenge; so while yes, it’s important to ensure you’re attracting visitors with a well-designed and engaging ad, landing pages require even more attention.  Here are 10 Do’s and Dont’s to follow to make sure you set up the perfect landing page from the start.

1. DO: Come Up With a Super Amazing Headline

Headlines will be the first thing your visitors’ eyes are drawn to when they make it to your landing page: keep them interested with catchy and creative slogan, question or jaw-dropping piece of information that will make it obvious they need to know more.

2. DON’T: Forget to Mobile-Optimize

I do the majority of my online browsing and shopping from the comfort of my mobile device, like most of today’s population, and am instantly turned off of a site that isn’t mobile-optimized.  Keep that bounce rate low by making sure your landing page, and all pages that follow, are optimized for mobile viewing.

3. DO: Remain Consistent

If your ad copy is blue and yellow with large, bold font, and your visitor clicks to a landing page that shows up pink and purple with small font, it’s going to look like they’ve come to the wrong place. Ensure that your website, advertisements and landing page designs are consistent and complimentary to each other, with a professional feel.  The last thing you want is for your landing page to give off a spammy feeling.

4. DO: Make It Short and Sweet

Get to the point of what you are trying to say in a clear and concise way.  Use short sentences and bullet-point lists, which are easily consumable by a viewer, especially from a mobile device.

5.  DON’T: Include Links that Direct Away from the Landing Page

This point is important, as it’s one that’s often missed.  Once you finally get a visitor to click through to your landing page, you don’t want to just steer them away or distract them with other shiny objects.  It may seem like a great place to link landing page content to other content on your site or to within your blog…but don’t do it!  Your page’s only objective is to make your visitor respond to whatever call to action you’ve strategically placed on it.  You can introduce them to your blog or other content once they have reached the Delight stage of your inbound marketing strategy.

6. DON’T: Ask Too Much

If you’re using a form on your landing page, don’t scare away potential conversions with pushy information-gathering fields.  Decide in advance what information is absolutely necessary (name, email address, company name, etc.), and ditch the rest. The more valuable the offer, the more questions you can ask, but make sure to keep this as minimal as possible.

7. DO: Create Separate Landing Pages for Every Offer

Don’t recycle old pages.  You should be creating new and separate landing pages for every offer that you have available.  This will not only help you track the conversion success rate for each new campaign you launch, but it also allows you to more specifically target certain, relevant leads.

Companies that create 40+ landing pages receive 12 times more leads than companies relying on 5 or fewer – HubSpot

8. DON’T Forget Your CTA

Your visitor has made it to your landing page…now what do they do? Your CTA (or “call to action”) must be present and visible on every landing page to direct the user’s next steps and guide them towards that conversion.

9. DO: Give Thanks

After they’ve filled out that form and clicked that CTA, you need to thank them.  Lead them to a thank you page, which can give them a link to download the eBook they’ve requested, schedule a demo, or to say you’ll be in touch. Make them feel appreciated, which is the first step in building a trustworthy relationship with your customers.

10. DO: Test, test, test

What may work for one company, may not work for you.  What may work for one offer, may not work for the second. You’ll only know if a red CTA button vs. a green CTA button works better for your visitors if you test it out.  There is always room to improve!

For more statistics on the success of inbound marketing campaigns and how they can help your business increase its leads and generate more revenue, download HubSpot’s annual State of Inbound Report for free: