Landing Pages: What are they and why should I care?

The word ‘landing page’ is thrown around a lot in the internet marketing world. While it may seem like an easy concept to most in the industry, for those on the outside, it may just be another confusing term in this crazy internet world.

To be able to explain what a ‘landing page’ is, it’s useful go go even more basic and explain what a webpage is. Websites are very similar to magazines, newspapers, or books, in the way that they’re made up of several ‘pages’. The most popular form of this ‘page’ is the Homepage, meaning the center, or ‘front door’ to a website. For example, www.motoza.com is the homepage to our website. Any other section on the website is simply another ‘page’ inside the site. For example, if you were to imagine a website as a home, and you’re looking at a floorplan of the website, the ‘homepage’ would be the entrance/foyer, and other pages would be the living room, kitchen, laundry room, etc etc.

Each ‘page’ serves a specific purpose, whether it’s a contact page, an about page, a blog page, or a services page.

A ‘landing page’ is simply any page that can be used as an additional entrance to the website. It literally is a page, where a visitor can ‘land’ onto the website.

Technically, any page on your site, including your homepage, is a landing page. Someone could theoritcally go to your website by first visiting your ‘contact’ page, or your ‘about’ page. How well that page works in sparking interest in your visitors is what gauges how effective a landing page is.

A proper landing page is designed to be a main entry point to your website for a specific targeted audience.

The fact is, most homepages are terrible landing pages because they’re not designed for a specific audience and provide far too much distracting information. For example, most homepages will display all the links on the website, a mission statement, a news section, their product or service a long with a few testimonials.  However, if that website provides more than one service, people looking for a specific service may not find what they’re looking for and leave very quickly. Since it would be very difficult to design a homepage that caters to all services and their intended audience, it’s best to create separate landing pages for each service or offer you have.

A proper landing page should be very simple and have as little content as possible to gain the visitors attention. Studies show that the average web visitor spends around 5 seconds deciding whether he or she wants to continue on a website, so it’s important to capitalize on those few seconds by making your offering very clear.

If you design a landing page with a clear heading explaining the service/product/offer, have clear easy-to-follow bullet points, and a strong call-to-action (phone number, email submit, ‘buy now’ button) then you have a better chance or gaining that person’s interest.

A proper landing page will strip the page of any elements that do not contribute to the main goal of the page. Whether the landing page is geared towards having someone sign up to a newsletter, call about a product, or sign up for a promotion, everything on the page MUST push the visitor to keep going.

Landing pages are usually promoted through paid advertisements in areas where the traffic is likely to be very targeted. They should never be used as a way of capturing as much traffic as possible, instead they’re used to capture fewer, more qualified leads.

Take some time to look at your homepage, services and promotions. Decide which services are most popular with your clients, and develop landing pages highlighting the benefits and call-to-actions tailored for that targeted audience.