By Dino Adamou
Imagine seeing a great ad for an intriguing new flea shampoo call ShamKill. It's only available at PetWorld, so you hop in your car and head on over. You walk in the doors and are quickly greeted by a sales person, but when you ask for further details, you are given a wishy washy answer. Your sales person claims to know all about dogs, birds, and toilet training cats, but is clueless about ShamKill.
A web site where the landing pages are not designed properly is just like PetWorld. Let's learn how to turn this situation around so that when someone comes into your store, your sales people (landing pages) will know exactly what to do.
A landing page acts as the top part of your sales funnel. It captures visitors and tries to keep them engaged long enough so that when the call to action comes, they are likely to answer the call and move on to the next part of the sales process. If people are coming onto your site and then spilling over the sides of your funnel and never coming back, then it is time to evaluate your landing page strategy.
Smooth Transitions – For landing pages that receive traffic from PPC campaigns, email blasts, or any other source that you directly control, make the transition from the source page to your landing page as smooth as possible. Don't dump your readers directly into the middle of a sales page. If they came from your Facebook campaign, keep your landing page social and friendly. If they came from your ads on a tech blog, your landing page should be a tech sounding page as well.
Direct Calls to Action – Don't be shy about telling your readers what you want them to do next. For every 1 person who is offended by a blunt request to join a mailing list, there are 3 who consider it just part of being on the Internet. Tell them what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do so. Don't beat them over the head though, 2-3 calls per action should be plenty for an average sized landing page.
Engaging Content – Just because your landing page is effectively a pre-sell page, that doesn't mean that it has to sound “salesy”. Keep it informative, keep it engaging, and keep your readers nodding along with the content so that when the call to action shows up they are already in a “yes” kind of mood.
Effective Section Headers – Just like with print copy, when someone first lands on your page it is likely they will merely skim the section headers to get a quick idea of what that page is about. If you have bland section header (introduction, conclusion, etc) then don't be surprised when your readers just move on to their next bookmark without even giving your page a chance. Use informative section headers that tell a complete story if the user just reads them and nothing else.
For example:
Does Your Cat Suffer from Fleas?
New Flea Shampoo Guarantees 100% Kill
Veterinarians Agree that ShamKill Works
Here's How to get ShamKill
Just the Good Stuff – Don't give your readers reason to leave your page, except for when it's to sign up for your mailing list, trial offer, or download your special report. The only links on your landing page should be ones that further reinforce your message (testimonials, for instance). Keep them informed and entertained, but keep them in a box.
A good landing page keeps your readers' right where you want them all the way up until the time they sign up for your email list or other steps in your sales funnel. A good landing page does not distract or bore your readers, and it does not step lightly around what it wants your readers to perform. Good landing pages drive sales, so don't ignore this critical portion of your site.
How does your landing page measure up? Tell us about it and tell us what we missed.
