Why You Need Landing Pages – Landing pages are the “end-all-be-all” of new visitor acquisition.

A good landing page is clear, concise and holds the hands of visitors to set points.

A poor landing page is an unappealing information overload.

Landing pages are what visitors see after clicking through to your offer. These pages are equally important to the actual ad so they need to be carefully designed to maximize conversions. If your page looks like this:

You can bet that visitors will leave immediately. The page is too cluttered and overwhelming. You only have a few seconds to make an impression, so make it count.

What is a lead page?
In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a “lead capture page” or a “lander”, is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result or an online advertisement.

What is a landing page on a website?
A landing page is a web page that appears when a visitor clicks on a PPC ad or a search engine result link. The home page of a website is not the only landing page; every page in a website has a purpose and is a potential search engine landing page.

What is an optimized landing page?
Land page optimization (LPO) is one part of a broader Internet marketing process called conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.

Benefits from leveraging Landing Pages to market your business.

1.    Conversion funnel paths directly impact your goals. For example, if your business goal is to sell your new book, landing pages can be crafted to specifically compliment that purpose. Business goals include getting visitors to sign up, fill out information, press buttons like ‘subscribe’ and ‘share’, click-through to buy products, and simply influence brand image.

Some examples of unique industry landing pages include:

• Empire-CAT (construction equipment dealer)
• CJ Pony Parts (mustang parts/accessories)
• CrazyEgg (eye tracking software – see #6)

Pay attention to the placement of funnel paths, such as information seeking at Empire-CAT, product search/large image/videos below the fold for CJ Pony Parts, and a demo video with CTA beneath for CrazyEgg.

2.    Logging user information is a quick and efficient way to directly influence campaigns, research projects, product creation, future sales, and customer service initiatives. By optimizing landing pages to fill out quick info forms, we can analyze the data to determine factors about our audience, such as demographics and social preferences.

3.    Advertising efforts can be measured efficiently with carefully planned landing pages. By using tools like Google Analytics, Adsense, and built-in WordPress plugins, we can track the effectiveness of our campaigns. Extra benefits of landing page advertising include:

• Higher paid placement
• Higher click through rates
• Larger room for creativity and testing
• Immediate results

4.    Anticipation for startups and new products can be fostered with a “Coming Soon Page” or “Countdown” style landing page. Zero programming/design skills are needed as layouts and themes are prebuilt for our convenience. To the degree of uniqueness, it can’t hurt to benchmark anticipation landing pages from large brands or startups.

5.    A/B testing lets us create multiple landing pages and track which performs best. The goal of A/B testing is to experiment with different content to increase goal completions/conversions. Some examples include:

• Videos vs. Hi-res pictures
• Different copywriting styles
• Varied action words
• Switching buttons
• Reducing purchase barriers
• Increasing CTR

6.    Eye tracking technology allows us substantially amp up our landing pages by showing us exactly where users click and how much time they spend looking at particular sections. We can base our design changes safely, knowing exactly where conversions are being missed and best opportunities for lead generation.

Another bonus of eye tracking, is determining whether people actually care about the things we want them to. For example, most landing pages carry a theme involving an industry problem, then presenting their product as the ultimate solution. If we notice visitors aren’t paying attention to the problem or the solution, we know a change is necessary.

Landing pages that capitalize on eye tracking data will always beat out their competitors.

7.    Colors and the psychology behind them have been proven time and time again to directly influence sales. Whether it’s forcing an impulse buy or establishing a sense of security, choosing the right colors may be the change that either makes or breaks your landing page. Fortunately, we can use A/B testing (as described above) to figure out which colors our visitors prefer.

Effective landing pages that convert:

• Offers a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) that instantly grabs the attention of a visitor
• Communicates in a clear way that defines the offer
• Has a clear Call to Action (CTA) of steps for visitors to take
• Builds trust through strategic branding
• Provides an incentive for users to follow through
• Details all the facts about the offer
• Are well designed and pleasing to the idea

Landing pages do not necessarily need all of these together but become more potent with a combination of these factors. The following from Square is a good example of a highly effective landing page that demonstrates in a clear manner how visitors benefit and what steps to take next:

Each ad group consists of its own set of keywords and should also have its own landing page. An ad group that focuses on “PPC marketing in Perth” would fail to convert if that landing page is optimised for “SEO services in Perth”.

The two are related in that they focus on aspects of online marketing but the intent between them are different. Keyword research is done, ads are created and landing pages are in place.