Landing Pages That Convert
Landing Pages That Work
Landing pages developed a bad name for a while and they are still not fully recovered from their stigma brought about from spam and scams, but they do serve a very valid purpose for legitimate businesses, especially when they are used for the specific task of complimenting a pay per click (PPC) campaign.
Pay Per Click Landing Pages
Just because MLM, affiliate and other marketers have given landing pages a bad name does not mean you should avoid them or shy away from using them. In fact, well designed, thoughtfully laid out, and carefully deployed they can be very effective in collaboration and complimenting your pay per click (PPC) campaign. However, effective ones need to have a few marks they must hit if you intend for them to hit consistently for you converting interested information seekers into satisfied customers.
Efficiency
Efficiency is a subjective gauge of many variables, but undoubtedly its ability to create conversions into sales is the leading variable for analysis by most. Creating a PPC campaign that will bring visitors to your site and pages is just the first step in creating an effective PPC campaign to drive visitors to your site to drive your sales.
Landing Page Success Tips
Creating a landing page should not be an after thought or considered lightly as part of a PPC campaign. There are a few things to consider to maximize the efficacy of your PPC campaign and your page where visitors will enter upon clicking your ad, link or banner.
Landing Page Express Lanes
Interested visitors who clicked on your PPC ad are coming to your site for the reason they clicked your ad, not for other items to be pushed in front of them or to browse – they clicked on what interested them, so let them have it. The fewer clicks a person has to make from their decision to purchase to the decision to pay and complete the sale the better. Create landing page express lanes – when possible, it’s beneficial to create not just add to cart functionality to the product page, but if the visitor can click to buy and check out without clicking through a bunch of unwanted rhetoric and other sales pages they more likely your visitor will become a customer!
Relevancy
Few of us appreciate surprises when it comes to doing business; surprises can be scary forecasters that scurry visitors away as soon as they arrive. They must be relevant! The information on your page should be to the point, relevant, unique and of value to the visitor about your service or product. Relevant pages are not a redundant regurgitation of the same information as in your PPC advertisement – they are powerful, prominent calls to action that are clear, uncluttered, easily and quickly scanned and concise. Your page is the first impression most will have about your site – make it count, make it credible, make it incredible!
Landing Page Alternates
They do not need to necessarily be from the same template that is guiding the rest of your site. For that matter, it is often better to create pages outside your template so that the page is not too busy and cluttered with other information. Running alternate pages allow you to run better A/B testing for analytical research for effectiveness. Finally, alternate pages created outside your current template offers you more flexibility in optimization of your landing pages.
Optimization
After your landing pages are optimal for aesthetics, copy writing, and message it is imperative to ensure that they are also optimized for search engines. Your on-page SEO factors should be as important on your landing page as they are to your website homepage. One of the benefits to alternate landing pages is the ability to separate from a site template or normal code heavy page designs and focus solely on the (landing) page at hand, allowing for easier code validation and faster loading speed of your sales copy or landing page.
Additional Resources
- Google criteria for a high quality landing page
- Landing Pages defined and discussed at Wikipedia