By Elmer on July 23, 2009

Landing pages are pages visitors go to once they click on our ads like paid search, links or banners. This is a very critical stage of a visitor buying cycle because once a someone decided to click on the ad, there is already a perceived intent to find out about the advertised product or service. This intent should be catered to as much as possible, and the only way to do that is to provide necessary details in the landing page.

For example, if I search for “luxury hotel hong kong” I am probably looking for luxurious accommodation in Hong Kong to stay. So when I see the ads as shown, and click on one of them, I expect that my desire to find one will be addressed by the page I will land on. I have concerns like how much it costs, how far is it from my conference venue or how secure/easy is it to book online. If I sense something is missing, like maybe as simple as the word “luxury” in the page, I could go away in an instant.

So how do we make our landing pages effective so they are more likely to do conversions?

Consistency of Message
There should be truth in advertising. This means ad and landing page are seamlessly connection and visitor expectation hardly changes. If we place an ad saying the hotel is truly 5-star, has harbour views or picks up guests in a limousine, landing page should be consistent to those promises. Otherwise, visitors feel deceived and leave the site.

Prominence of Calls to Action Buttons/Forms/Links
The objective of a landing page is to persuade a visitor to become a customer/subscriber/participant. There are many ways this can be accomplished. Download a brochure, signup for a newsletter, buy a product or call your customer support to enquire further. But before that can happen, we should ensure that we are prominently place the right buttons at the right locations. This helps visitors easily find them when they need to. Never assume they think the same as we do.

Depth and Freshness of Content
Emphasis should be made on substantiating the ads presented. Visitors need more information that help them decide and less of marketing lingo. Charts, videos, surveys or testimonies are good examples of content that should be incorporated within a landing page.

Page Design and Layout
Have you tested how quick your landing page loads? What about the design itself? Are you placing too many escape routes such as main navigation menu that visitors can easily click to access other content of the website, but effectively leave your landing page?

Interactivity
Interactive pages help visitors get what they need in relative ease. If someone visits a clothing company and wants to choose shirts based on color, size or style, he should be able to preview it easily as he desires. An interactive page that works properly expedites the shopping experience and helps improve conversions.

Prominence of Security Features
A visitor may want to buy a product online, but may hesitate to continue the checkout process especially if your landing page doesn’t have a prominently placed security badge, assuring her that any transaction she’ll do in your website is safe and will not be compromised by hackers. So consider placing these badges as prominently as your call to action buttons.

Try Other Landing Page Combinations
Using multiple versions of landing pages and testing them simultaneously using Google Website Optimizer helps us identify the most effective landing page and adopt it in the long run.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites