A landing page is a web page where your visitors enter your website. In essence, it is the first impression that your company will make on a potential customer.
Landing pages have been compared to a shop window – it is the first thing that a customer sees, so you want to make it as attractive to their needs as you can.
Landing pages can be used to create a highly relevant, keyword rich page of content on your website. There are two massive benefits to creating landing pages, one being it helps rankings for certain products or services and the other benefit is it helps raise conversion rates.
In terms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), landing pages are hugely advantageous. These highly specific landing pages are keyword rich, and contain only relevant information – as a result they are very easy to optimise and it can be very easy for these pages to achieve a higher ranking.
When you do any sort of advertising, be it through email marketing, sponsored links or even offline traditional media – when a potential lead takes the action to go find out more information on the product or service they are interested in, they will want to go directly to that product / service page, not your homepage. If a user has to navigate their way to the individual page themselves, it diminishes the user experience and they may even get distracted by something else they notice on the website and perhaps even never end up on the page they originally wanted to see.
The conversion rate of landing pages is always more than a standard web page, this is because the landing page is geared specifically towards converting visitors. The content, the images and the calls to action can all be aimed at an ideal customer who wants to buy one specific product or service. One of the main reasons landing pages have high conversion rates is because the quality of leads coming to the landing page are usually already interested in the product, they have possibly researched it extensively, they are ready to buy – the landing page must make them commit.
Using landing pages in conjunction with Pay Per Click (PPC) is almost essential. Driving highly qualified traffic to a page which is designed to convert will be very lucrative for your business.
By using unique landing pages for advertising campaigns such as banner ads, email advertising or even traditional advertising such as flyers, you are able to track the effectiveness of each campaign. You can see exactly how many users went onto that landing page and what conversion rate was achieved. The conversion rate is how many conversions were achieved divided by how many page views there were.
Advertising which is not measured is wasted, as you do not know how effective it was and you could be putting money into something which is not working for your business.
The design of each of your landing pages in of vital importance, the smallest design flaw could end your chances of a customer conversion, as a result, a strong, well designed landing page is essential.
Things to remember when designing a landing page.
Firstly, the content on the landing page should reflect the text seen on the advertisement from which the user clicked, having content which does not match will not only reduce conversions – as the user may think they have landed on the wrong page, but your AdWords relevancy score will suffer meaning your ranking on PPC listings will drop.
Try and keep the landing page simple, ensure it is focused on conversions only, don’t distract the user with things they are not interested in, you want them to stay on the landing page and take action i.e pick up the phone or make an order. Use words which encourage the conversion such as “Buy Now”, “Download …”, “Order Today”, these terms would be calls to action, and urge the user make a decision.
Make sure you have carefully thought about the content on your landing page. The content should be well written, have a clear purpose, be keyword rich and relevant to your advert but most importantly it should include no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, this may scupper your chances of making a conversion.
As the main aim of a landing page is to increase conversions, the purpose of the landing page should be made blatantly obvious to the user. The whole landing page should be geared towards ensuring the user takes a positive step towards a conversion. Simple tactics can be deployed to encourage this, such as, contact details should be prominently displayed, preferably on the top right hand corner – as this is where most users will naturally look. The ‘action’ button should be big and bold, it should stand out from the rest of the page, vibrant colours such as yellow and orange are proven to be highly successful, the ‘action’ button should be just below the calls to action or be part of it. Another way to increase conversions is to ensure the button is above the crease, so the user can see it instantly without having to scroll to find it.
Don’t forget, you will need to constantly update and optimise your landing pages, removing what is not working and replacing it with something that is. You should not be afraid to experiment, see what additions you could make to your landing page that would increase conversions, this could be something as simple as a change of colour, content, images and videos or even the calls to action.
Landing pages are of vital importance to any website, they smooth the buying cycle, ensuring a customer has a flawless move from advertisement to purchase. Any disruption in the buying cycle can break the chain and possibly lose you your lead. The internet user of today wants everything now, they know what they want and how to get it, if your website can’t provide it to them quickly and conveniently, they’ll find one of your competitors who can.
Vudu Northern Ireland specialise in landing page design as well as web design. If you would like a landing page designed or for us to show you how conversion architecture can be used to improve your website call us today 028 9048 0257.