What is a Landing Page?
There seems to be a lot of talk these days about landing pages. If you are new to the concept, you are probably wondering what the heck they are, and what makes them different from any other page on your site. So let’s start from the start.
Pure Definition
The pure definition of a landing page is just what it sounds like: it’s the page your website visitors arrive at after clicking on a link. It could be your home page, or any other page in your site.
What a Landing Page should be
The best use of a landing page is not what it is, but what is can do. Your landing pages should provide a customized sales pitch for the visitor. The best way to do this is consider where the person has come from, and who they are. By providing a good match, your chances of engaging the visitor goes up, as should your conversion rate.
Well crafted landing pages almost always sport better conversion rates than simply dumping people into the home page of your site. It makes sense. When you drop people into the homepage of your site, it’s akin to asking them to fend for themselves. They arrive and spend a couple seconds before giving up and hitting their back button to move on to you competitor.
Give the same visitors exactly what they were looking for and you will have a captive audience. Be careful not to provide too many distractions in the form of links, or you are likely to lose them before they read your entire message.
When to use a Landing Page
You should create targeted landing pages anytime you can control where people will be coming from, and your goal is a specific transaction such as sales, registrations, sign-ups, etc. This is particularly true if you are paying for the traffic, with banner ads, sponsor links, or pay-per-click.
