What Is a Landing Page
First and foremost a landing page is simply a web page that someone arrives on after clicking on a link, usually an ad. It’s the page you want your visitors to land on and it has one specific goal: to get the visitor to take a desired action, such as subscribing to your email list, buying a product or downloading a freebie (sometimes called a lead magnet)
There are three primary components to a successful landing page: the headline, the copy, and the call to action. The headline is the most important part of your landing page and should be brief and catchy. The copy should provide more information about what you’re offering and why the visitor should take action.
What Is The Goal of a Landing Page
The main strategy behind any landing page is for the visitor to take the desired one action that is sprinkled throughout the page. This action (types mentioned above) can be embedded into a button, signup form, phone number, etc.
A landing page, on the other hand, may be restricting by design. By this I mean that site navigation menus and connections to additional related pages are excluded in order to concentrate the user on the goal at hand: converting. There’s generally a solid motive for this: if you’re selling anything, you don’t want to offer the customer too many choices and distractions.
How To Measure Your Landing Page's Efficiency
Measuring the results and efficiencies of your landing page can be measured with free tools such as Google Analytics or 3rd party paid tools (my personal recommendation is Google Analytics works just great). These tools will give you insights of how people are arriving on your landing pages, how long they stay, what actions (if any) they take, and where they go afterwards.
How To Create a Landing Page
Creating a landing page can be as easy as installing a template or predesigned theme to your website, of course the instructions on how to do this are going to vary depending on your content management system (popular ones include WordPress, Squarespace, Joomla, and Drupal).
There are literally dozens of companies that specialize in landing page installation and implementation, some popular ones include Leadpages, Unbounce, and Instapage. A quick Google search for ‘landing page software and templates’ will bring up dozens more.
My personal recommendation is that a great landing page should be built to suit your precise needs, and a predesigned theme may not reflect your unique services or company.
Landing Page Traffic: Sources
I mentioned above that a landing page’s traffic will typically come from an ad, and this is true in digital marketing lingo. However, quite often a landing page can be accessed through one area of your site as the visitor explores deeper into the site. This is generally a result of clever design and user experience planning during the website’s development stages.
Content Matters: What To Write For Your Landing Page
The content on your landing page should not only help drive and support your main call-to-action offer (downloadable freebie, purchase, etc.) but also be persuasive and interesting to read. You want the visitor to stick around long enough to learn about what you’re offering, and then take decisive action.
Focusing on the product or service benefits will go a long way in keeping your visitor engaged. You don’t want to overcomplicate the page with technical business jargon , rather keep it simple and to the point.
Keeping your sales and marketing team involved when creating a landing page in order to get their feedback and implement factors that will help them sell.
A/B Testing: What's The Best Variation of My Landing Page
Testing is always a key part in landing page optimization, and luckily this can be achieved with many free tools. By split testing different elements on your page you can determine which combination of design, layout, and content produces the best results.
A/B testing is the process of creating two different versions of a landing page, and then measuring how each performs. You can test anything on a landing page, but some common things to test are:
- Headlines
- Images
- Text Content
- Call-To-Action Buttons
- Form Fields
Testing out different acquisition channels to your landing page can also be beneficial to find patterns and where people are converting (top of page, bottom of page, etc.). It’s important to sprinkle multiple opportunities (of the same CTA) throughout your landing page.
Traffic By Device
Your website visitors will not always come from a desktop computer, in fact, more and more people are browsing the web from their mobile devices. This means that your landing page should be designed responsively so that it looks great and functions well no matter what device is being used.
You can use Google Analytics to measure how much traffic is coming from different devices, and then adjust your landing page (or create a separate version) accordingly.
Don't Ignore The Data
When making changes and adding content to your landing page it’s best to have a reason why you’re doing what you do. This is where data analysis comes in handy – by looking at which elements are converting (or not converting) the best you can make decisions about what to keep, change, or remove from your page.
Questions welcome!
