The Benefits of Using Landing Pages on Your Website
“How are the customers gonna spot ya?”
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a standalone web page specifically designed for a marketing or advertising campaign. It is where a visitor lands after clicking a link in an email, or from ads on Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or similar places on the web. Unlike typical web pages, which encourage exploration and have multiple goals, landing pages focus on a single objective known as a Call to Action (CTA). This singular focus makes landing pages highly effective at increasing conversion rates and lowering the cost of acquiring leads or sales.
How Landing Pages Help Businesses
Landing pages play a crucial role in a business’s marketing funnel. After prospects at the top of the funnel click a link in an ad, email, or anywhere else, they are directed to a landing page where they are given an opportunity to do something. This can be a purchase, signup, or registration. This focused approach enhances the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in several ways.
Increasing Conversion Rates
By minimizing distractions and focusing on a single goal, landing pages are better at converting visitors into customers compared to general web pages.
Making it Cheaper to Get Customers
Higher conversion rates mean you spend less money acquiring each lead or sale. While important for every business, this is even more important for businesses that operate on smaller profit margins.
Highly Targeted Messaging
Tailored to match the visitor’s expectations based on the ad or link they clicked, leading to higher engagement. Specific campaigns such as an email marketing campaign can have a specific theme or messaging that remains consistent through to the landing page.
Enabling Precise Tracking and Analysis
Easier to measure the success of specific campaigns and make data-driven decisions. Key for properly testing any changes to future campaigns.
Landing Pages vs. Homepages
Homepages are designed to show off the brand, let people explore products, and provide additional information about the company. Home pages and other traditional pages will link to other parts of the website as well. They contain numerous links and potential distractions, which can reduce the chances of conversion.
Landing Pages, on the other hand, have a single focus. They are designed to convert visitors by minimizing distractions and focusing solely on the CTA. Expert marketers use dedicated landing pages to drive traffic from their ads, ensuring higher conversion rates.
Types of Landing Pages
Lead Generation Landing Pages are made to collect information, often in exchange for some kind of free offer. Email newsletters, tools, PDF’s and more are often used to attract traffic to these landing pages. This kind of offer is called a “lead magnet” and is often used by Businesses that sell to other Businesses, marketers, and others that are selling higher priced items online.
You’ll probably recognize Ebook and Webinar landing pages as common lead generation landing pages.
Clickthrough landing pages, on the other hand, are trying to drive sales or subscriptions directly. Frequently used by Ecommerce, or Software Service marketers, these are directly trying to convert people into paying customers. Ecommerce landing pages, signup landing pages, and sales landing pages are all examples of these click through landing pages.
Driving Traffic to Landing Pages
To make landing pages effective, they need traffic. Here are some common sources:
Paid Traffic is the most common and is driven by ads from Google, Facebook, YouTube or any other ad platform directly to the landing page.
Another common way to drive traffic is using Email Campaigns, something that we go into more detail about here. These require you to develop an email marketing list and are often targeted at an audience that is already familiar with you and your brand or business.
Finally, traffic can come from organic traffic as well. However, these more focused pages often don’t rank as well in organic search and are not generally referred large amounts of organic search traffic, due in part to them be so focused on converting paid traffic from advertising.
The Importance of A/B Testing
A/B testing involves creating two variants of a landing page to see which performs better. It helps in optimizing different elements like headlines, images, CTA text, and layout to improve conversion rates. By continually testing and refining landing pages, businesses can achieve the highest possible conversion rates.
An important thing to remember when doing A/B testing is to keep your changes small. Don’t test radically different pages against each other. For example, rewrite just the CTA, or change the color. The less you are testing at once between versions the better data you will gather.
Finally test your alternative versions on subsections of your audience or ad campaign if possible. You don’t want a poor performing landing page to ruin your whole email list, or otherwise good ad campaign.
Best Practices for Landing Pages
Use Consistent Messaging
Ensure the messaging and style on the landing page matches the ad or email that led visitors there. You don’t want to have the landing page look or sound radically different from the ad that they just left. Also unless there’s a pressing reason, it’s generally best to keep your landing pages consistent with the rest of your brand and messaging.
Simplify Forms
Ask for only essential information to maximize form completions. The more questions that you hit your visitor with at once, the less likely they are to complete the form. Try to break forms up into sections if it must be longer.
Add Social Proof
Add testimonials, reviews (from outside sources for additional credibility), and other signals of trust to boost credibility.
Improve Page Speed and Mobile Friendly
Many of the On Page SEO rules apply here as well, you should make sure that your landing pages load quickly and work with phones and tablet sized screens.
Do your A/B testing
Run tests with samples and rotate in better preforming landing pages, and worse performing versions out.
Frequently Asked Questions About Landing Pages
Can Any Page Be a Landing Page?
Technically yes, but for maximum effectiveness, a landing page should be campaign-specific with a single CTA and minimal navigation.
Can I Have a Landing Page Without a Website?
Yes, landing pages can be standalone and are useful for short-term campaigns or testing new business ideas.
Do I Need a Domain for a Landing Page?
All landing pages need a domain, but you can use default domains provided by landing page builders if you don’t have your own.
How Long Should a Landing Page Be?
Only as long as necessary to convey the message and prompt the desired action. Avoid unnecessary information that could distract or overwhelm visitors.
How Many Landing Pages Should I Have?
It depends on your campaigns, audience segments, and the variety of products or services. More landing pages generally lead to better results by catering to specific needs and testing different approaches.
How Much Does a Landing Page Cost?
Costs vary based on whether you use a landing page builder or hire a designer/developer. Builders are typically more cost-effective and allow for easier updates and testing, but you’ll still want experienced guidance to help you properly manage your campaign.
How Can I Improve My Landing Page Experience?
Have relevant content – Match the content with visitor expectations.
Fast Loading Times – Ensure quick load times to keep visitors engaged.
Good Navigation – Provide a seamless user experience.
Mobile Optimization – Ensure the page is mobile-friendly and responsive.
By following these guidelines, you can create high-converting landing pages that enhance your marketing efforts and drive better results for your business. If you want our help with your landing pages, digital marketing, or SEO efforts, contact us today.
