How To Create An Effective Landing Page
Landing pages are essential to navigate users directly to exactly what they are looking for. For example, if you are an online glasses company and have an online ad for aviator glasses, you would not want to send them to the homepage where they have to look for aviator glasses. If they have to search around the site, a lot of potential customers will leave. Instead, just send them directly to a landing page specifically for aviator glasses.
Now let's talk about that landing page in particular. There are two main reasons why you should implement the ideas that follow this paragraph: a) When a user comes through to the landing page, they should see the content that they are looking for, therefore increasing the chances of converting that lead. b) Google and other search engines search your site to see if you are directing their users to the right place. This increases your quality score and lowers your cost per click.
There are several points to consider when designing a great landing page:
Headlines
Headlines should relate to the most common keywords that appear in the ad group that is directing the potential client to your site. For example, if your main line of business is web development, why not have web development in the title? Another thought to consider are dynamic headlines. These change depending on the keywords that the user is using to find your site. This means that no matter what the user types in to the search query, it will appear in the headline of the landing page.
Please note: that the latter methods is the lazier way of doing things and ideally you should have separate landing pages for each category, sub categories, and products.
Hero Pictures
Often good landing pages will have what is known as a hero picture of the product that the landing page was built for. This image will immediately give the user the impression that they are in the right place faster than they can read any text. Research shows that the first place a visitors eye will be drawn to is the top left of the screen. It's similar to the "eye level is buy level" rule that most retailers abide by, in which they put their most popular or highest profit lines at an average height persons eye level.
Landing page content
Landing page content should be short and sweet. The last thing anyone wants to do is read an essay to find what they are looking for. Ideally it should be relevant, keyword rich, and describe the product or service that the user is looking for. It should also state a clear price wherever possible as well as contain a prominent call to action such as "buy now", "register today", etc. These call to actions can be made into an incentive and have time constraints put on. An example of this would be "buy today and receive an additional 10% discount".
Link back to homepage
Make sure that there is clear point of entry back to the homepage and a cookie trail that allows the user to go back and amount of steps. For the example of the glasses company: Home > Men's Glasses > Aviators > Gold Aviator Glasses
Check out the competition
If one of your competitors consistently appear at the top of search results for certain keywords, chances are that they are either losing money to gain market share or that they are there because they are making money. It does not hurt to check out their landing pages to see what are they doing better than you to grab the prospect's attention.
Test variations of landing pages
AdWords allows you to test two different variations of a landing page by setting up two or more landing pages as well as setting up different ad groups with different destination URL's. You can then monitor which landing page is converting the most traffic.
Keep it consistent
Your landing page should ideally use the same or a similar template to that of your website. This is because of the principles of branding, a user should simply be able to glance at a page and see that it came from your site. Use the same colors and the same fonts in the same sizes.
Ask the user what THEY want
One effective way of moving a prospect further into to the buying cycle is by asking them what they want. For example, on bose.com you can find an interactive guide that allows the users to tick a series of boxes asking them what they are looking for in a home theater system. Once they have made their selections, Bose will give them a narrowed down range of products to choose from with a specific sales pitch for each set of selections. The target will then feel relaxed and become much more likely to take the action that you want them to and convert into a sale. Please note that this only works for certain types of websites, usually ones that offer multiple products or service.
Examples of great landing pages
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Sunny Varma
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