Landing Page: What Is It
To start off, it is important to distinguish your landing page from typical website pages, like your home page and product pages.
A typical web page presents details about your business. It could be a page with the history of your company, or a page about your products, their advantages and the customer's options for store and online purchases. These don't necessarily convert online traffic into customers. They don't necessarily urge your site visitors to do something – click, sign-up, buy or subscribe.
This is the distinguishing characteristic of a landing page; a landing page is designed to make visitors do something: buy, sign up, donate, whatever you want. It has specific goals, and is designed and worded to achieve these goals. Typically, goals are split into two types: click-thrus and lead generation.
A click-thru landing page is supposed to lead interested buyers or subscribers to an actual purchase or signup page. This type of landing page contains images, text and Call-to-Actions that convince visitors to click on the link to pages where actual online transactions happen.
The other kind of landing page is for lead generation. When you want more information about your qualified leads, you create a landing page for them where they sign up and volunteer information. Of course, this is easier said than done. A comon practice is to offer a reward for information, such as free ebooks, free downloads and other giveaways.
Traffic to your Landing Page
You will typically put up a landing page on occasion, say a clearance sale, a product launch, seasonal offers, and the like. Your other online marketing avenues, such as your Facebook page, subscriber emails, and Twitter account, are the platforms that drive traffic to your landing page.
What's In a Landing Page
There are requisite elements in an effective landing page.
An engaging headline – This is first on the list because it is also one of the first things that your site visitor will see. Your headline has to be engaging because this keeps your audience attentive, else they close your landing page's browser tab.
It also has to be consistent with the headline you used to bring traffic to your site. Say your traffic came from an emailed newsletter, your landing page headline has to look and be worded similarly as your newsletter's headline.
Concise content – There is no hard and fast rules on how long your landing page should be. You have to consider what you're trying to “sell.” If a few short statements will do, then you should keep it short and sweet. However, if you need to explain more thoroughly in order to convert the reader, then do so. The one rule is to be clear about your message. Use active words that engage, as they explain.
One or two images that fit – The images that you end up using for your landing page have to fit what you want to say. Your graphics are supposed to help put across your message. Also, make sure that these graphics load fast. You might lose your audience when you have a slow-loading page
An effective Call-to-Action – Your call-to-action (CTA) converts a landing page audience into a qualified lead or a customer. It has to be carefully worded – it has to work. There are several strategies to measure how effective your CTA is, which involve comparing CTAs based on performance at specific times and on specific markets. So, develop a couple, test, and then implement the best one on your landing page.
A mobile version – When you design your landing page, don't just have desktops in mind. A lot of people now log into the web using mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. A mobile version of your landing page ensures your message is presented optimally in these devices.
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