Now Where Do I Take Them?

Online search marketing can be one of the most cost-effective means of growing your business because it puts your products or services in front of prospective customers at the very moment they’re searching for them. Likewise, email marketing has grown tremendously over the past several years in large part because it has proven effective at delivering new customers.

But too many businesses sabotage their own online marketing efforts with poorly designed landing pages.

What’s a Landing Page?

Simply put, a landing page is where a web searcher ‘lands’ after clicking on your link or ad. Why is it important?

Number one, it’s the first page a visitor sees. They’re likely to make a decision about whether they’ll consider doing business with you within the first few seconds of getting to the page.

But landing pages are also important because well-designed ones can dramatically increase conversion rates. That is, a good landing page can encourage more of your visitors to take the action you want them to take, whether that be to complete a form, make a phone call, or purchase something.

Imagine shopping online for a new mp3 player. An online search brings up millions of results, and you choose the one that seems to best meet your need. If you ‘land’ on the home page of a giant big-box retailer, you’re likely to be frustrated by having to search through hundreds of products to find what you want.

Alternatively, if the page where you ‘land’ is specifically dedicated to the mp3 players the retailer offers, along with prices and an easy-to-access shopping cart, your search may well be over.

Tips for Effective Landing Pages

Depending on your business and your existing online presence, a landing page may be a specific page within your site. In the mp3 player example, the landing page could simply be a product page accessible from other areas of the site.

Alternatively, a specially designed landing page may be even more effective. The electronics retailer could create a unique page featuring one particular mp3 player they’re promoting, rather than the page within the site that has all the mp3 players.

Here are a few important things to consider in the development of effective landing pages:

• Give the visitor what they want. The information should be compelling and relevant to the search terms that brought the visitor there. (Hint: That’s rarely on your homepage.)
• Keep forms on transactional landing pages short. No one likes to complete forms, so you can increase the completion rate by having as few fields as possible.
• Provide multiple response methods. If you’d like visitors to be able to respond in ways beyond the form—say, by calling or emailing you—make the contact information and the calls to action prominent.
• “Close exit doors by opening windows.” External links should open in a new browser window to keep the user on the page and make it as painless as possible for them to take action.
• Use landing pages to test various offers or campaigns without having to alter your main website.

Here’s an example of the difference a good landing page can make: Intuit, maker of QuickBooks financial software, tested two new versions of its landing page, and found that they increased trial sign-up rates by 10 percentage points, and subscriptions by 20%.

Results like that clearly demonstrate the importance of ensuring that your visitors ‘land’ on a page designed to help them become customers.