There is some confusion about what a landing page is and is not. As you read on, you’ll understand the characteristics of a landing page, and how you can design effective landing pages to collect data to benefit your company and optimize your online marketing efforts.

A Landing Page Is:

A landing page is a solo webpage with a focused sales pitch that is designed to get a visitor to take action.

A landing page contains a form to collect visitor information. A ‘form’ on a webpage is a section of the page that allows a user to enter data. It can be made up of checkboxes, radio buttons, or text fields.

The main purpose of a landing page is to get a visitor to take action in order to collect their information. Landing pages are simple enough to focus on the message, and contain just one call to action.

When a visitor goes to a landing page they should be prompted to fill out their information, such as their email or demographic information. A landing page will usually offer an incentive such as a product, download, or free trial in exchange for visitor information.

Landing pages are usually linked to an online ad or sales campaign. By sending a visitor to a landing page instead of a multipurpose webpage, they will stay focused on your primary goal and will be more likely to answer the clear call to action.

A Landing Page Is Not:

A landing page is not a webpage or a homepage that includes more than one call to action or navigation away from the page.

A landing page is not typically a homepage, even if a homepage has a form on it. A homepage usually serves several purposes, such as showcasing the company, introducing the founder, presenting a mission statement, or providing navigation to the rest of the site that can distract a visitor from entering their information. Unless the sole purpose of the page is to collect visitor information through a form with one call to action, it is not a landing page.

A landing page is not a webpage with navigation.  A proper landing page does not provide opportunities for escape, except through its call to action; it also does not have more than one call to action. Remember, landing pages serve one purpose, and that purpose is to collect information.

The Benefits of a Good Landing Page:

With a well-written, clear call to action, landing pages can provide companies with valuable information about their website visitors and customer base, which can benefit them in the following ways:

• Data for marketing: Collecting user information through an automated form is an efficient way to analyze demographics and preference factors, and make educated marketing decisions that will benefit future campaigns.
• Quantified ad success: Advertising success can be measured by using resources like Google Analytics to track the value of campaigns.
• Immediate results: With a clear call to action, you don’t have to wait weeks for a customer to go through a sales funnel to see if a new sales pitch worked; you don’t have to wait for weeks to see if a creative decision (like a new logo) makes a negative or positive difference on your brand. You can get real feedback almost immediately by designing landing pages and A/B testing.
• Goal support: Landing pages can be specifically constructed to support your goals. If your goal is to get more visitors to convert onto your newsletter list, a landing page can clearly communicate that. If your goals shift frequently due to new products or seasons, it’s easy to make a focused landing page for each occasion, saving you the trouble of a website redesign.
• Mouse Trap: By giving your landing page a compelling title and telling the visitor what they can expect in return for providing information, your landing page can attract clicks and capture emails for future marketing efforts. Testing different headlines and calls to action can also give you insight on the types of messages that resonate with your customer base.

Building a Landing Page

A good landing page must be carefully thought-out to appeal to a company’s target audience and prompt visitors to provide their information. Here are a few of the tried-and-true characteristics of a successful landing page.

A. Headline: A good landing page contains a clear and compelling headline. Because many landing pages are linked to online ads, it’s important to standardize the headline of the landing page to the headline of the ad. This assures visitors that they landed on the right page.

B. Secondary headline: If your headline must be long and wordy, chop it up and make a portion of the description a secondary headline.

C. Value proposition: The bulk of the page copy should be your value proposition. Tell visitors what value they will gain by providing information. Tell them why they need your product. Follow these guidelines:

• Describe your customer.
• Get to the point – Keep it brief and easy to read.
• Use words like ‘you’.
• Use bulleted lists and whitespace.

D. Establish credibility: Tell the visitor why they should trust you. Show statistical evidence in an easy-to-understand design; display customer testimonials and third party trust seals.

E. Images/video: Give your page a human element. Help your visitors feel connected to your product by including photos of people with the same general look as your ideal customer.

F. Call to action: Make your call to action attention grabbing! Use bright colors and bold language to make your call to action stand out.

G. Form: Design your form with intention. Create a non-invasive, clear form that will provide you valuable data on the types of people that visit your site. Knowing demographic information can help you optimize your marketing decisions.

H. Button: Make your call to action button eye-catching and clickable. Use active, commanding language based around what they will gain from clicking. For example, “Download the free e-book”, “Receive new blogs to your inbox”, or “Watch the sample lesson”.

When you first design your landing page, you may not know what design will perform best. It’s important to fine-tune your landing page for optimal performance, and that’s why there are tools in place to help. One of the easiest ways to optimize the performance of your landing page is to do simple A/B testing in order to experiment with different landing page designs.

A/B Testing

A/B testing, also called split testing, is a process where you can test out multiple versions of the same page to determine which design yields a higher conversion rate. By gathering data from A/B tests, you are able to validate features of, and changes to, your landing page that affect the conversion rate. By comparing variations of the same page, you can get a good idea of what language, graphics, or design your audience responds best to.

If you decide to A/B Test, it’s tempting to make two totally different pages to compare. Fight the urge and keep it simple. If you test two totally different pages at a time, you may see one outperform the other, but you won’t know why. Altering just one variable at a time gives you a more detailed understanding of what specifically resonates or doesn’t resonate with your visitors.

It takes time to learn how to optimize landing pages and use them to their fullest potential. As you learn your customer and experiment with A/B testing, you can learn to optimize not only your landing pages, but your greater marketing and sales strategies. Above all, never stop testing. Even when you develop a landing page that performs well, it doesn’t mean you can’t design something even better.