What is a landing page?

It's the page your website visitor arrived at after clicking a link.The link could be on any page on your website or pay per click advertising or banner ads or keyword search. The goal of landing page is to cause your visitors to take definite action. You don't want your visitors to leave until you get them to do what you want them to do. To click on the buy button, to sign up for an affiliate program, to download a free ebook or software, to sign up for a course, or to subscribe to your free newsletter. The landing page is a direct marketing copy. Your visitors landed here through a link on your webpage, an ad, a keyword search, pay per click advertising, banner ads, and now you want to convert them. Here are some tips to design a good landing page...

1. Content Relevance - Your landing page content must be relevant to what people were looking for when they applied the click through. The closer the match is the higher the chances of conversion.
2. Be Concise - Net writing is different than offline writing. Generally, when people surf the Internet they give short attention span to what they are reading. So be concise.When visitors arrive at your landing page they are already predisposed to buy, or they want to get more information of your product or service. By all means give them information but be concise. Don't use more than three sentences to communicate a point. Think through and concise what you want to say. Use bulleted list to communicate the benefits of your product or service.
3. Get straight to the point - The landing page is a highly customized marketing copy for your product or service or affiliate product or service. Don't distract your visitors with advertisements, links to other web pages. Don't let your visitors wade through a whole bunch of hosh posh before they get to want they want.
4. Focus - Dedicate one landing page to only one product or service. Don't try to promote multiple products (unless they are of the same product group)or services on one page. Create separate landing pages and campaigns if you have multiple products or services to promote. Focus on one product or one product group on each landing page.
5. Be Factual - Use facts and figures instead of generalities.
6. Clear Call to Action - Tell your visitors what you want them to do. Buy now, click here to download, fill in name and email address to subscribe or whatever. Keep all call to action text in bold.
7. Readable Text - Sure, there's nothing much to look at a page with white background and black fonts. But it's definitely easier to read the text than a red background with black fonts. Remember, it's the words that sell. Your website visitors must be able to read your text with ease.
8. Navigation Links - Not at all, if you could help it. The only link you want your website visitors to click on your landing page is the call to action link.
9. Graphics and Images - Keep visual effects to a minimum unless you are running an online audio or video business, real estate business, or selling holiday destinations. Keep in mind that for direct marketing it's the words that sell. Graphics and images serve only to enhance your text communication, not cloud it.
10. Grammatical and Spelling Errors - Check through your text and correct all grammatical and spelling errors. Otherwise it gives your website visitors a negative impression of you and the company you represent. Once visitors have a negative impression, it becomes difficult to convince them of the product or service that you are promoting. First impression counts a lot.
11. Make it personal - Make it personal to connect with your visitors. Use a lot of You and Your in your text.
12. Make your text clear and simple to understand - Avoid colloquialism or jargons. Use terms and phrases that people readily understood. Use short sentences, and phrase them in the active voice.

A good landing page will always sport good conversion rate as compared to a poor one. Take the time to think and rethink, work and rework your landing pages. Don't make the mistake of just optimizing for the search engines. You need to optimize your landing pages for humans too. Ultimately, it is humans that give you the sales.

Gerrick W