You never get a second chance to make a first impression. That old saying never rings truer than for internet based businesses. Marketers have one shot to entice customers and they do it with their landing pages. The landing page is the first contact a prospective buyer has with you when coming from an outside source. It determines if they stick around and buy something or if they get bored or frustrated and leave.
Now, I don’t want you confusing landing pages with home pages. Those are two different things. Home pages are the first page of your website. When you type in wealthauthority.com the first page you see is my home page. You can then click through to other pages on the Wealth Authority site to find more information and offers. Landing pages are single web pages that appear after you click on a link from a company. The goal of these lead capture pages is to acquire a visitor’s information through a form and ultimately convert a visitor into a buyer.
Let me give you an example of the two pages. Say you run a banner ad on a competitor’s site. You offer them a free report on how to fight a traffic ticket. Anytime a prospective buyer clicks on the link in the banner ad you have to send them somewhere to get that free report. If you send them to your homepage, they could get lost. They could have trouble finding the sign up box for the free report amid all the other stuff on your page. Or they might see something else that interests them and forget about your free report.
Whereas if you send visitors who click on your banner ad to a landing page, then you can better control what they see and do. A landing page that is clear and concise in what you want that visitor to do is more likely to result in a conversion or sale. Well-crafted landing pages always sport better conversion rates than simply dumping people into the homepage of your site.
So if a landing page is so important. What do you put on it to make it successful? To make customers buy your offer. Here’s the lowdown on landing pages…
The first thing you should put on your landing page is a thank you note. The reasoning behind doing this isn’t so much about being polite as it is about letting them know they are in the right place. When you click on a link you never know where the heck you’ve been taken too. Putting a brief headline like: “Thank you for responding to Wealth Authority’s recent email” let’s the visitor know that they have indeed ended up in the right place.
The next most important thing is to focus on your offer. Ask yourself if you have a truly valuable offer to share. Your visitors won’t give up their contact information for a so-so offer. If you feel you are delivering value focus on that in your landing page copy. Don’t mention other offers you have or other things that might interest them. This is not the time or the place for that. Keep your copy focused on your offer and nothing else.
It’s best if you do this in as few words as possible. The landing page is not the place to write a novel. The visitors have already shown an interest in your offer by clicking on the link you sent them. You don’t need to fill up the whole page with more reasons. Keep your copy short, straightforward and to the point.
When creating your landing page you want to limit the visitor’s navigation. You’ve brought them to this landing page for one reason, to buy from you! Don’t distract them from this task. You don’t want them to see something else that catches their eye and navigate away from your page. Limit the number of links and exits from your landing page so your visitor will focus on filling out your form.
One exception to this rule is the share button. You want to enable your visitor’s to share your offer with their friends, relatives and anybody else they think would also be interested in your offer. Doing so allows you to reach many more people without coughing up any extra dough or putting in any extra work to find these people.
The whole reason you’re doing this is to capture some data about these visitors. Just don’t ask for too much information from them. Only ask for the minimum amount. People get turned off when you ask for their home address, telephone number, company name, etc. when the offer is for a downloadable report or product. If you aren’t physically mailing them anything don’t ask for their address. Maybe just ask for their name, e-mail address and if they are interested in receiving other offers from you in the future.
Privacy is really important to visitors. They are afraid you’ll sell their information and all of a sudden they’ll get a bunch of unsolicited emails, phone calls or junk mail. That’s why you should write a brief sentence or two about your privacy policy. Tell them that you will never sell their information to a competitor. This is what I use in my business: “Your email information is kept private & confidential, you can unsubscribe at any time.”
The only way to get better at creating landing pages is to test, test and re-test! As many best practice guides as you may read about online, your landing page can always use improvement. Test variables by sending prospects to unique landing pages. Then measure which ones get the best click through rates to find the winners.
You should be creating landing pages anytime you have traffic coming from a specific source and you want them to do something specific like sign-up for your newsletter, download a report or buy something from you. This is particularly true if you are paying for the traffic with banner ads, sponsor links, or pay-per-click. Landing pages are opportunities to create customized sales pitches for a prospective buyer. The more customized, targeted page you provide them with, the better your conversion rate should be. And that means more money in your pocket!
Good luck!
Ethan Warrick
