What is a landing page?

A landing page, often referred to as a lead capture page is a website page where potential customers land on after clicking on an advertisement, web link or search engine link. Typically the landing page will refer directly to the content of the advertisement or web link and will be optimised to feature keywords and phrases targeted at achieving high search engine results. Furthermore the landing page will be optimised in its layout to maximise conversions into tangible business, be it an enquiry or sale of a product.

Similar to an advert where the purpose is to encourage internet users to click upon it your landing page must work hard to convert the resulting visitor into a paying customer. Here, time is of the essence, grabbing your visitors attention long enough to convince them to make that second click is less than 14 seconds.

"For sponsored search ads, you have 1.8 seconds and one glance to convince searchers to click on an ad. Once searchers arrive on your landing pages, you have 13.2 seconds to convince visitors that they are on the right site" Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc.

Six key elements and considerations for your landing pages:

1. Consistency

It’s crucial that your landing page reflects the link to which it’s associated with, be it a Pay Per Click advert, web link or search engine result as well as your corporate branding. Ensuring these elements visually and grammatically match instils confidence in the potential customer and helps them to take on the information quickly and react to it.

2. Design & Layout

The primary objective of your landing page is to increase the rate of conversions from your marketing and promotional material, to this end it must impart the necessary information in the quickest and easiest format for the viewer to purchase your product, subscribe to your newsletter or complete an enquiry form.

Utilising headings and concise paragraphs along with bullet pointing significant product or service features will allow the viewer to quickly scan and extract the information they require to move onto the next step. Ensure that text fonts are easily readable and that associated graphics do not distract from the objective of converting the visitor into a paying customer. If capturing information is the objective, your landing page should withhold information until contact details have been submitted to capture the lead.

3. Product Images

Product photos still remain a huge influence when purchasing online, as the primary tool used to replicate the experience of a high street store it’s absolutely crucial that your product photos are as good as possible. Multiple images combined with magnification tools are ideally used, and video clips are fast becoming an addition to many ecommerce shops to give them an edge over their competitors. Do note that it’s important to keep file sizes to a minimum to maximise page loading speeds, consumers won’t stick around to wait for unnecessarily high resolution photos to load.

4. Reviews & Testimonials

Reviews, testimonials and product ratings are an effective unbiased means of catching a customers attention and increasing the likelihood of a sale.

5. Call To Actions

A ‘call to action’ is a request or a direction for your website visitor to do something, typically ‘buy now’ or ‘signup to our newsletter’. The priority of call to actions should be to channel visitors to the checkout via the quickest route possible. With this in mind your call to actions should be linked directly to your shopping cart, subscription or contact pages. Visually call to action features should be bold, use the simplest terminology and be above the page fold of your browser.

6. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

When creating your landing page, it is important that you consider the search engines as well as your intended audience. Your page should be created using search engine friendly techniques such as the use of h1, h2 and h3 tags, title and meta data, and should also be W3C compliant. Don’t be scared to question your website designers on this, any reputable ecommerce providers should be developing to these standards.

Ensure that your text content including any internal links accommodate targeted keywords and phrases. Additionally make sure that there are several links from your main website, preferably from your most active pages, this will put extra importance upon your landing page and help it to establish higher search engine results.

Don’t forget to:

1. Track your results

It should be commonplace for any ecommerce shop to have the ability to record statistical data associated with its website traffic and user behaviour. When creating landing pages be sure to add any tracking code associated with your statistics package. Typically these statistics will record where your website visitors have come from, what keywords they have used, which landing page links they click on, and record an overall conversion rate.

There are a number of statistics packages available that present data in a variety of formats. Google Analytics is the most widely used and will help determine the efficiency, quality and value of your landing pages. Features such as ‘heatmaps’ that show where your visitors click when on your landing page will show you exactly what is and isn’t working.

2. Use split testing

Split testing is a technique where several different landing pages are used, each with subtle differences designed to identify the features within the design and functionality of your landing page that engage and stimulate visitors to remain on your website and convert into a paying customer. It’s quite often the smallest of alterations like a change in font, the way something is worded or perhaps the repositioning of a button several centimetres which makes the difference between a hundred conversions and none.

For more information on ecommerce and selling on the internet contact Sitemakers on 0207 099 1002.

Written by Geoff Jackson