Landing Pages – 7 Tips to Create Effective Landing Pages

If you are doing online business, then I am pretty sure that you have heard of the term “landing pages.” But what exactly are landing pages? Landing pages are also known as your “lead capture page,” this page usually appears when a prospect clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link.

A landing page can also be customized to measure the effectiveness of certain advertising campaigns like pay-per-click. What you will do is add a certain parameter to the linking URL, in doing so online marketers are able to measure advertisement effectiveness based on relative click-through rates (CTRs).

A lot of times, businesses that pay to advertise or market their products or services will send every prospect to the same place: their company’s homepage. However what they do not realize is that you are sending everyone to the same location that is packed with multiple messages and calls to action, and navigation that distracts from the purpose of your promotion.

Also it makes it difficult to get your visitors to do exactly what you want them to do and to add to that it is difficult to track return on advertising investment or ROAI.

This is where landing pages come in. The most successful online marketers especially ones who are familiar with return on advertising investment regularly use landing pages to capture qualified leads and hence make those sales.

Website landing pages are like the end caps which are popularly seen in grocery stores, these are the stands that you see near the counter showcasing specific products and summoning customers to buy now. An effective landing page devoted to a single product or service offering, or one matching up with a message-specific referring advertisement, can significantly boost leads and conversion rates.

So if you want to create an effective landing page, here are some tips:

Effective Landing Page #1: Try to anticipate your customers’ expectations

To be able to come up with effective landing pages your need to study your ads to make sure your landing page is in line with the messaging and expectations set in those ads.

Effective Landing Page #2: Focus your attention to a clear and explicit call to action

Everything on a landing page should capture the visitor’s attention to a definite call to action. Make sure that customers can easily do whatever action it is you want them to take.

Effective Landing Page #3: Include SEO in your landing pages

Take the time in choosing your page title and heading, it should include keywords people are likely to search to find your product or service. Use those same keywords which should be no more than five to seven in the keyword meta tag for the page, and include those same words in the initial copy found on the landing page itself.

Effective Landing Page #4: Lessen the clutter

Remember the end caps that we talked about earlier? These things are successful mind you and the reason why they are a hit is because they are isolated from all the other things inside the grocery store. Too much information and choices such as unnecessary links, navigation options, or buttons especially ones that lead elsewhere diverts people from your call to action.

Effective Landing Page #5: Safety and trust should be conveyed

Having a professional design on your landing page is definitely a good start to getting an effective landing page. It would also be to your advantage if you add logos or seals for acceptable payment methods, money-back guarantees, memberships in trade associations and any media outlets that have reported positively on your company, products or services.

Effective Landing Page #6: Make sure that there is coherence in your headline and your copy

The headline on your landing page is the first thing a click-through guest will see, other than a graphic. The slightest change in your wording can dramatically affect your conversion rate. Keep in mind that it is important that your headline matches the words in the ad that prompted the click through.

Effective Landing Page #7: Present something useful and unexpected

This is great to include in your Thank You page, instead of just saying, “Thank you for registering for our e-newsletter, white paper, etc.” give these subscribers something extra which your subscriber or visitor are not expecting. You can include a link to a useful case study on your site, information about another happening, an invite to join in an instant poll, etc.

One of the main advantages of coming up with a landing page that is mainly devoted to one product or service is that it can be easily monitored as far as traffic and conversions are concerned. With a landing page you can also gauge your return on advertising investment. After launching your landing page, use web analytics to identify and remove any obstructions to conversion. Minor tweaks can result in major gains.