How to Craft the Perfect SMS Landing Page
Drive conversions with these tips on creating a winning SMS landing page
Motivating your SMS contacts to buy your product or service, sign up for your annual conference, or donate to your fundraiser might not be a walk in the business park. Still, it is easier to optimize an SMS landing page for your audience (and mobile users). Crafting the perfect text message landing page gives your business a better chance of converting potential customers into actual customers.
But first, let’s cover what is an SMS landing page? An SMS landing page is a mobile website users are directed to when they click the link in your text message.
Why are they important, you ask? SMS landing pages are where people complete an action. You can have a stellar call to action (CTA) in your text message, but without an SMS landing page designed for mobile users, your slam-dunk CTA could turn into a missed shot.
What Are the Key Elements of a Successful SMS Landing Page?
The key elements of a successful SMS landing page are clear and concise content, compelling value, an easy-to-navigate design, and fast page loading time. Let’s dive deeper into each element.
Clear and Concise Content
Just as you would optimize your texts for success, you must also optimize your text message landing page. That means ensuring you’re using as few words as possible to deliver your message. Choose your words wisely. Not only will concise content help deliver a succinct message, but it will also help to avoid a cluttered page.
Tip: Like the front page of a newspaper, place the most important content, images, and CTAs “above the fold,” which means on the initial screen (without scrolling) for mobile landing pages.
Compelling Value
Why should the customer interact with your site or brand? Why should they complete the action mentioned in your SMS text and landing page?
These are your guiding questions for delivering your message, not only in content but also in design. The person should understand what they’re supposed to do and why in a matter of seconds — longer than that, and you might lose them.
If it’s a product page, ensure it’s targeted to the particular customer demographic and/or prominently highlights the deal or offer noted in your SMS message. If it’s a landing page with a web form, ensure that the incentive or value for filling it out is prominently displayed. Finally, ensure that CTAs are optimized to compel people to act.
Easy-to-Navigate Design
No matter the SMS landing page type (registration page, product page, web form, etc.), it needs to have a simple design that is easy to navigate for mobile users; in other words, it should be mobile-friendly. Here are a few landing page tips:
- Use high-contrast colors
- Make CTA buttons or links large enough for a finger to touch
- Place CTA buttons and navigation menus in the "thumb zone," areas of a smartphone screen that are easiest for thumbs to tap
- Use simple designs for web forms, and only request the most important information to reduce the need for scrolling
Fast Page Loading Time
Your clear and concise content, compelling value, and mobile-friendly design aren’t worth much if your landing page SMS response time is slow. Statistics show that sites that load in about 1 second have a conversion rate three times higher than sites that load in about 5 seconds. You want a high-converting landing page for your business, right? Well, every second matters.
While mobile sites might not have the speed of desktop sites, they should be continually monitored so that any page lags can be resolved.
What Are Some Tips for Writing Effective SMS Landing Page Copy?
In addition to using clear and concise language, which we touched on earlier, some other tips for writing effective SMS landing page copy include the following.
Keep It Short and Sweet
People should be able to understand what you’re offering, selling, or asking them for in a matter of seconds, so your copy should only touch on the basics. If more information might be required, include it “below the fold.”
Focus on the Customer
Whether the landing page is targeted to a specific customer demographic or a bulk SMS landing page sent to various contacts, the copy should always focus on the customer’s pain points, desires, preferences, etc. Remember your customer persona as you craft the copy, using language they’ll understand and resonate with.
Use a Strong CTA
CTA buttons should use strong statements or verbs that motivate people to click or take action, like “Register Now,” “Get Yours Today,” and “Claim Your Offer.”
How to Create an SMS Landing Page
Now that you’ve learned the key elements, you might wonder, “How do I create an SMS landing page?”
To create an SMS landing page, you’ll want to use whatever service you use for your website. Website builders have templates that make it easy to build your own pages. Just make sure that you follow our landing page best practices.
But wait, how do you choose the right SMS landing page provider? Choosing the right SMS landing page provider with our curated list of the best website builders for small businesses is easy. You’ll find research on all the important stuff: template options, SEO tools, user-friendliness, pricing, and more.
Another option is hiring a web designer to create your SMS marketing landing page.
How Do I Test My SMS Landing Pages?
Once you’ve built them, you must test your SMS landing pages. Why? This is the best way to determine which version has the highest conversion rate, whether for product/service purchases, registrations, donations, or another action you want the SMS contact to take. This process is called A/B testing.
First, you must have at least two versions of the SMS marketing landing page to conduct A/B testing. If you’re texting links to different landing pages targeted to different customer segments (as you might for retail products for men and women or seasonal, location-based products), again, you’ll want at least two versions of each.
But you don’t want two versions of a landing page with various elements that have been changed. The key to accurate and effective A/B testing is only changing one element per version. For example, you could test different CTA copy, hero images, amount of content, and so on — but only one per test.
Once you’ve created, published, and sent links to your landing page through your SMS marketing campaign, you’ll then track metrics for each version:
- Bounce rate
- Form abandonment
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
Wondering what some of these terms mean? These metrics also pertain to text marketing and are listed in our SMS glossary.
A good practice is to test versions simultaneously for at least two weeks and then see which one performed the best.
What Are Some Examples of Successful SMS Landing Pages?
Here are some examples of successful SMS landing pages to inspire you.
Starbucks
Starbucks created a landing page dedicated to a limited-time offer during the holiday season. This example hits all the landing page tips: clear and concise copy, the benefit/value communicated “above the fold,” and an easy-to-navigate design (notice that the “Join Now” CTA button is one easy thumb tab away).
Farmers Insurance
The SMS landing page for Farmers Insurance also hits the bar for a mobile-friendly landing page. The design is simple and uses contrasting colors, the web form only asks for the most pertinent information, and the page includes a prominent CTA button that leads the potential customer to the next stage in the buyer’s journey.
What Are the Benefits of Using a Bulk SMS Landing Page?
The benefits of using a bulk SMS landing page are that you can simultaneously reach (and test) many contacts. While businesses can send targeted landing page links to specific segments of customers, creating bulk SMS landing page texts means you’re sharing one landing page with a large group of people.
This option is nice for links to fundraisers, web forms, and general offers or deals that might not be targeted toward customers in different locations, with different preferences, or with varying purchase behaviors.
With almost 60% of global web traffic dominated by mobile devices, businesses need to focus on effective landing pages for their SMS campaigns.
Learn more about bulk SMS marketing.
Send Your Next SMS Campaign With EZ Texting
Ready to implement these SMS landing page tips in your next text marketing campaign? Sign up for EZ Texting, your all-in-one SMS marketing solution. We even have a 14-day free trial, so you can try before you buy.
FAQs
SMS landing pages are important because they are where people (potential customers) will complete your intended action, whether making a purchase, donating to a fundraiser, registering for an event, etc. Additionally, most web traffic is done on mobile devices, meaning that SMS landing pages are crucial to the success of text marketing campaigns.
Here are some common mistakes to avoid when creating SMS landing pages:
- Not having clear and concise content
- Not providing compelling value
- Designing it in a way that isn’t mobile-friendly or easy to navigate
- Not paying attention to page loading time
- Not focusing on the customer or target audience
- Not including a strong and prominent CTA
- Not doing A/B testing of your landing pages
EZ Texting is a great tool and resource to help you send an evite. Just upload your contacts, write your message, choose an image, and click send! Then, watch the RSVPs roll in.
Future trends in evites include a broader use of augmented reality, the integration of social media, and the use of AI for text marketing.