The Macy’s Department Store window displays at Christmastime are glorious, eye-catching, and nostalgic with the Miracle on 34th Street scenes. But, what if you only need a new pair of gym socks? Is it worth navigating the crowds for socks?
A common mistake that business owners make is confusing a website’s homepage with a landing page. Your homepage is like Macy’s storefront, it’s the decorative front of a store with thousands of separate products inside.
A landing page is specially focused on one particular topic, product, promotion or service. One click takes the potential customer to the exact thing they are looking for. No navigating, no static, no time lost.
This article explains the advantages of adding landing pages to your website to increase conversions as well as the benefits of hiring a landing page creation service.
The Benefits of a Landing Page Service
Landing Pages Promote Products
A landing page is a single page designed to promote specific product or service. Its purpose is to invite the visitor to become a customer.
With one page and one shot to get that first impression right, investing in a landing page service can make all the difference in customer conversion rate.
Landing Pages Capture Leads
In short, a landing page allows you to capture customer lead information by directing a visitor to sign up for any number of things that can lead to a full sale, such as a free consultation, eBook, webinar, sample packs, and so on.
Landing Pages Identify Each Promotion
In fact, a different landing page can, and should, be created for each service or promotion. Landing pages are often underutilized because business owners have robust websites with interlinked pages that give all sorts of information about your company’s products, services, history, and so on.
Let’s think about this, though. This information is often useful to the existing customer, not to the prospective customer.
Landing Pages Give Customers What they Want Right Away
The new customer is searching for something specific, let’s say golf cart customization. He clicks on an ad that should take him where–to the home page? No, it should take him directly to a page that describes your golf cart customization service with an invitation for a free consultation in his area.
Do you want to give him the opportunity to click around and skip that consultation button? Not really. You want him to sign up for the consultation, maybe even share the offer with his buddies on the Extreme Golf Cart Facebook group.
Landing Page CRO is More Than Web Design
There’s a lot of needs we must meet on that single landing page. For example, what is your goal? We may want to invite a consultation, engage a potential customer in a conversation, have the customer sign up for a service or take advantage of a limited time promotion.
We could go on, but the needs of your company are unique to you, which is why adding a landing page service to your marketing package can be advantageous.
The Analytics Behind Landing Pages
There is quite a bit of analysis behind the design of a great landing page. Conversion rate optimization plays a huge part, as well as the basic principles that drive our SEO services.
While SEO is known to drive traffic, CRO zooms in on that call to action, on getting the visitor to find what he or she needs right away and then purchasing that product or service.
Page Design
The look and layout of a landing page needs to be uncluttered and clearly direct customers to whatever it was that “landed” them on the page in the first place.
Because of that, landing pages design is part and parcel of Web Design, landing pages are becoming a complex and critical element, in part because of their stand-alone nature.
Other elements come into play as well to keep that landing page on target, which is why landing page design is becoming a specialized service.
These elements include:
- A precise headline that clearly states the offer or product
- Clear and simple text, with SEO optimized keywords
- Sharing Links that let visitors to easily share the landing page to social media sites
- Hidden Navigation bars to keep the page clean and on point
- A Lead-Capture/Conversion Form
- A relevant image that enhances the visitor’s understanding of the service or product being offered
The Happy Effects of Effective Landing Pages
Directing people to your website’s homepage invites the visitor to get good and lost, leaving them to click around to find the advertised promotion or service that led them there. This is basically tossing leads out the window. Think of how many more leads you could capture by sending them to a focused landing page.
Individual Landing Pages for Special Offers
If you have special offers, they should exist on their own, individual landing pages. Potential customers should be able to find offers on that initial click and be able to sign up for them right then and there.
Landing Pages for Demographics
Landing pages can become demographics collection tools. Whenever a lead completes a conversion form found on your landing page, there is more information for your marketing team.
You will be able to see what types of visitors are converting. You can also see if any existing leads are coming back for more. The more landing pages you have will also yield data on which products or promotions are getting the best or worst responses.
Essentially, each landing page is an addition to your marketing strategy.
Landing Pages Are Content
The essential elements of a landing page that we stated earlier adds up to marketing content among other things. And the more compelling content the better.
Each landing page created is that much more content that can be searched, shared, linked, and re-purposed for email campaigns and PPC ads.
The ROI on Targeted Landing Pages
It’s in the marketing content discussed above that I can come back around to all the elements you already know about with regards to marketing, the:
- Importance of that killer headline
- SEO and CRO keywords that drive search results
- Call to action that creates customers
- Importance of clear and aesthetically pleasing web design
- Share button that gets your message spread to other networks
- Marketing metrics
When it is done right, all of these powerful pieces appear on a single, clean, direct landing page.
Summary
While the look and message of a landing page is deliberately simple, the analysis and design behind it are not. A good landing page is much more than a picture window or store homepage.
Visitors are looking for something specific. You have one web page to present it and convince readers they want it enough to convert to customers.
That’s one shot to get it right before they close that window and move on.
Contact us today to learn more about our landing page creation services.