- March 20, 2013
- Posted by: Vishal Shah
- Category: SEO
Your landing page is a page on your website that people reach when they click a link to your site. Quite often, the link is attached to an advert that a person clicks, but it may simply be a link on another website that has a little anchor text attached. You can have your home page or product page as your landing page if you like, but many people set up a separate landing page. Many people set up a separate landing page that acts like a shop front for people who have clicked a link/advert to come to their site. This article assumes that you have set up and designed a special landing page for people to enter your website via.
Make your landing page the start of a funnel
A funnel is actually a marketing technique, and is actually a sale technique that is used by everyone from car sales people to lawyers. You start with a client who has hundreds of questions, objections and reasons not to buy, and you chip away at them until the client has no other recourse than to say yes.
This is a little different online because there is no two-way dialogue. You have to second-guess the objections of your viewer, and what order they are going to object in. You have to start with a landing page and encourage them to choose a link, which will take them to another selling page that will remove some of his/her objections. After which they click a link for another page… (You get the idea). The end result should be a sale that you get via going through as few pages as possible.
What is the aim of funneling?
The aim is to get your viewer from the state of being a cold/lukewarm lead, into a buyer. It is not just about removing their objections. It is also about restricting their choices as they go along. A lawyer will lead someone down this path until the other person is left with a yes or no answer, from which, they are forced to choose yes. Maybe your landing page and its funnel need not be as intense, but the principle is the same.
Make it very quick loading
There is no point risking the alternative. There is no point in risking having a slow loading page, because every person who clicks off of your site because it hasn’t loaded yet is wasted income. Those people could have seen your landing page and become loyal buyers, and you lost them because your page was taking too long to load. If anything, make your landing page the quickest loading page on your website. If the others take 1-3 seconds to load, then the viewer will be more forgiving because you already tickled their interest with your landing page.
Put the most important information at the top
You should do this for two reasons. The first is because some people are going to open your website, glance at the page, and click off of your website. If you have a hook, then you need to put it at the top of the page so that the people who just glance at your page can see it. The second reason is that mobile web device viewers may only ever see the top of your page because that is what appears on their screen. Many mobile viewers cannot be bothered to scroll down, so the top is all they ever see.
Answer the users question with your landing page
The user clicked on the link to your website for a reason. You need to address that reason. If they were looking for the cheapest, newest, most fashionable, most discounted, etc, then you need to address that issue. You need to synchronize your anchor text/adverts with your landing page. For example if you had two adverts pointing at one landing page, then it would be incorrect for one of them to say “cheapest” whilst the other says “highest quality”, because you would struggle to address both of those concerns via the landing page.
Get to the point and get there fast
You can beat around the bush and take forever to get to the point on your other pages, but on your landing page you need to get to the point fast. We have to assume that your landing page is going to be the first contact that you have with your clientele online. This means that they have little incentive to sit around reading your landing page for more than a few seconds. So get to the point and get to it quickly.
Make sure there is lots of navigation away from it
You may be tempted to leave just one link on the page that maybe goes to the homepage, but this is a mistake. You should have lots of links that will help the user get to whatever page will help them the most. If you have taken the funneling advice, then you can even use their choice of link as an indication of their current objections. In other words, you could set up lots of little funnels if you wish.
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Korah Morrison, writer on College-Paper.org that helps students achieve their academic goals.