A landing page is a webpage that leads visitors from a specific source (such as a blog post or a social media post) to another URL. This is often done for marketing purposes and is sometimes called a conversion page. These pages are essential for building a successful online presence because they generate customer leads and conversions.
But how does all of this happen and why landing pages? Let's dive in!
Landing pages are a great way to increase leads and enter them into your lead nurturing cycle. They allow you to capture information such as email addresses, phone numbers, and names. Once you collect data, you can send them targeted emails, calls, and messages. Every conversion rate optimization campaign we run at Digital Recruits, examines the use, or lack of use, of landing pages for a business' goals.
These pages are also great way to get visitors to engage with your site or blog. They also provide a good opportunity to test out new ideas and concepts.
1) Lead Generation - This type of landing page is used to generate leads. It usually has a form at the top asking visitors to submit their contact information, such as an email address. Once submitted, the visitor receives an email containing a link back to your site.
2) Conversion - This type of landing page is used to convert visitors into buyers. It typically has a 'call to action' (CTA) button at the top of the page. When clicked, the visitor is redirected to a sales funnel where they can purchase a product. This is called a landing page conversion.
There are instances where a landing page is the most effective choice to drive sales or capture leads. It might be when you use Pay Per Click advertising, a lead magnet, focus attention, to attract different types of customers, or for easier testing.
The key to creating a good landing page is understanding its purpose.
Landing pages convert more traffic because they are focused on one goal or call to action by providing information about a specific offer or item. It has limited navigation, and the simplicity keeps a visitor focused on the goal rather than being distracted by multiple links taking them away from the page. A dedicated landing page is also a destination for traffic and when a high-quality advertisement promotes a single offer, it is more likely that visitors become customers.
I shared with you the two main types of landing pages; conversion and lead generation. There are many reasons to build a page for each campaign, and each page should have a singular goal. The most common reasons people build landing pages include:
They can be used to collect information about visitors to websites. They're often designed to help users complete forms or fill out surveys. Once collected, this information can be used to identify leads who might be interested in products or services offered by companies. Just remember to keep your form fields to a bare minimum.
They are one of the best ways to get more email subscribers. This is because they can be very effective at getting people to opt-in to your list. All you need is a great call-to-action(CTA), a strong headline, and brief engaging copy. These items should relay what the benefits are for signing up for your newsletter or emails.
They are a great way to communicate with potential customers about your products and services. For example, if you were launching a new brand of clothing, you might have a page where you describe the clothes and showcase some photos of models wearing them. Or if you were promoting a new book, you might offer a free chapter download. With services you could offer a trial and give a high level value proposition on why a visitor should submit their information and learn more about the service.
If you want to give something away for free, you can always send people directly to a page where they can download your product or free trial. This works because many visitors are more likely to take action if they know exactly what they're getting into ahead of time. Plus often times these freebies and discounts are great way to get contact information in your further marketing efforts and upsells.
Remember, these pages are webpages within your site that direct visitors to other parts of your site, such as products, services, blog posts, etc. They can be useful if you want to send visitors to a particular section of a website without redirecting them to the home page.
Landing pages are great at directing visitors to other parts of your site, such as products, services, blog posts, etc. They can be useful if you want to send visitors to a particular section of a website without redirecting them to the home page. While this may seem counter productive, its often a great first impression for getting visitors started in your funnel.
With some ecommerce or online sales sometimes its best to use a page for each product you sell. A great example would be supplements–you have a much better chance of conversion if you can create your page to target the audience who the supplement or product would be beneficial to. Listing out the ingredients and how each one is helpful and then reviews of the product itself for social proof. This concept can work with any product as long as you focus on the benefits of your product.
A landing page is designed for one purpose only–to get people to click and take an action. It will typically be optimized for conversion (getting someone to buy something) and may not contain much information about the company itself.
A good homepage should be engaging, easy to navigate, and contain links to other pages. The homepage also needs to provide information about the company, such as contact details, pricing, product features, and testimonials. You want to think of your homepage as short collection or introduction of the rest of the content on your website. It should help the user find what they are looking for and lead them to the areas of interest on your site. It should not typically be used to convince a user to take action, but it should contain your overall value proposition and some "lighter" calls to action.
The effectiveness of landing pages depends largely on what they’re trying to accomplish. If you want to drive traffic to your site, then a well-designed landing page will likely perform better than one that doesn’t. If you want to convert visitors into customers, then a landing page needs to be designed specifically to achieve this goal. In any case having a page that has one goal in mind is always going to be more effective then sending visitors to your site and letting that visitor figure out where to go on their own.
Sure, you could make the argument that with a well laid out website with great UI and user experience will guide the user to the right spot or action. However, studies have shown that you are more likely to convert a visitor with less friction. Friction in web terms is anything or any steps that a user must overcome in order to achieve your desired results. Less steps to take = higher conversion rates.
Research reveals pages that have social proof within the copy convert on average at 12.5%, compared to 11.4% for pages that don't contain social proof.
Source: pipeline.zoominfo.com
It’s important to keep in mind that not all pages will convert equally well. Some people may find one type of page works better than another. For example, if you know that video converts really well, then you should probably focus on creating videos for your pages. If you don’t know which types of pages convert best, then you might want to experiment with different types of landing pages until you find what works best for your audience. In conversion rate optimization this is often referred to as A/B testing.
As mentioned, its also important to have a high-converting landing page for each goal or campaign. For example if you are a pest control company that offers multiple services like termite treatments, lawn, mosquitoes etc. it's best to have a landing page for each of those services instead of just one broad page for pest control. The idea here is to sell the visitor on the service they are looking for, then upsell them on additional services after you convert them on the first.
Companies that have more than 10 landing pages see a 55% increase in leads.
Source: semrush.com
Yes! But... you should reuse them in terms of layout only. Using the same layout for your landing pages is a great way to stay on brand. Plus, if you've testing a page, and it's converting well, why not use the same layout?
Obviously you will need to change the content to match what the offer is, and for what action you want the user to take.
Look, we all wish everyone would come to our website, find their own way around, and do what we want them to do, like submit a form or buy a product. The reality is, the less friction that is created towards our web goals, the better.
This is why landing pages are so important. Once you've testing and have a proven, high-converting landing page design, repeating the process for each campaign will be a breeze. Making it easy to implement more of these pages in your marketing funnel.
