When asked, “What is a landing page of a website?” The most simple answer is the page you reach after clicking on a link within a text, an image, a banner, or a button anywhere on the Internet. It is the place where you reach a website from any other place on the Internet. Google Analytics itself consider as a landing page every page that visitors are coming to in your website from outside.
But in the classic sense of this term, the essential feature of a landing page is its purpose of making that your visitors do whatever you want they do, in other word CONVERSIONS, like:
- Buy some product or service
- Get a freebie
- Opt-in an email list
- Read a brief piece of information to take people to another page with more details
- Webinar sign up
That is an action of your visitors that can be tracked and contribute to a specific goal of your business. In this case, the landing pages must have some unique features that we will talk about in this post.
We all have seen one
Landing pages became too famous for paid or email marketing campaigns. They were also called “squeeze pages” because they were designed to fulfill one or two purposes: get your data as opt-in pages or for selling you something, but no more than that.
Have you seen any page like this?
Or this?
What do they share in common?
They are very restrictive pages where you haven’t another option that gives them what they want from you. Otherwise, you should leave the page. The reason is that there is no user experience of any kind like a menu to choose or internal links to navigate to other pages for more information. These pages are still in use. However, now we have a broader spectrum of designs and options, some of which offer a great user experience.
People who have surfed the Internet for some time now have seen many landing pages as the ones described. However, today, we can find blog posts or pages that fulfill the criteria of a landing page. Even if they have menus, links, or any other element considered useless in the past for marketing purposes.
Today virtually any post or page in your website could be a landing page as long as it meets one or two specific criteria.
Landing page main purposes
There are two main criteria each landing page should fulfill regardless of its design:
- Avoid distractions
- Conversion intent
One of the benefits of creating an environment free of distractions is that your visitors can focus on your content, increasing the time they spend on your site. The more time people lasts in your pages, the better for SEO purposes, which means higher rankings.
In this free-distraction ambiance, you can grasp the attention of your visitor towards your offer. Whatever it is either a product or service, by providing them proofs about of the value of such offer as well as why you have the authority to recommend it.
Then you can give them the power to decide by asking them for their permission to send more information, for example, by giving you their email addresses.
Although the opt-in or sales page function is by far one of the most extensive uses of landing pages even today, these pages are also used now as:
- Free Guides
- Review funnels
- Webinar Announcements
What matters is that this optimized page produces a result either your visitors buy your product or service, or register for a webinar or leave their email addres.
VIDEO
Watch a fun video about what a landing page should avoid to work optimally :
The entrance door
Landing pages are an open doorway to a sales of review funnels which ends with leads the visitor to a checkout page or an entire website as well. Both paths are ok depending on the purpose of a campaign. However, regardless of such goals, the author of any content on the internet have scarcely just 5 – 10 seconds to grab the attention of his visitors.
That’s why is essential to be in front of the right people in the right moment which means, apply the required filters such as demographics for instance in the different channels where people come from to your site like:
- Blogs
- Facebook ads
- Paid search (Google AdWords)
- Reviews
- Videos
- Youtube
“I came because I found you”
One thing is that people can find a link to your page within the sources we’ve mentioned before, and other too different is what those people do on that page. How to know it? Again, Google Analytics can tell you about the behavior your visitors have on your page. The sources they came from, the time they spend on your page, the clicks they click on, etc.
If the primary purpose of your page is the conversion intent, you should be able to measure it. Either to produce conversions if you have none or to increase the number of them.
A straightforward but powerful technique to test the behavior of your visitors is:
- Register the time that takes to you to read the content of the tested page.
- In Google, Analytics results look for the average time when people leave your page.
- If the time reported in Google Analytics is the same as the time you recorded by your own, that means that your visitors are reading your page in its entirety
- Otherwise, if the time registered by Google Analytics is less than yours then check it out what part of your content coincides with that register. That lets you know if it corresponds to a link or a call to action button which can help to explain that they are going further in your sales or review funnel.
- If people are leaving your site where there is no clear indication of a link to follow, the chances are that they got distracted or are finding your content useless for them. That’s when and where you have to adjust such page for better conversions.
Important elements of a landing page
In general terms, there are three fundamental parts to build a landing page
- Headline (3 main components): 1. ask a question, 2. provide doubt or uncertainty, 3. provide a benefit
- Content or Description (including images or videos
- Exit points (text links, solo links, call to action (CTA))
Besides, it is critical for a better performance of this kind of pages to optimize them for the above the fold exposure. Which means what people see when they come to your site BEFORE they scroll down the page. This optimization includes three visible elements:
- Headline
- Image
- An abstract or a beginning paragraph
How to build yours
There are a lot of resources, both paid and free to build a landing page. You can create or get someone to create the HTML code for you if you feel comfortable in being a little bit geek.
There is also some specialized software like Instapage, Wix, BigMarker Landing Pages, etc. to help you build your page in a friendly way but not free. And of course, at least withing WordPress a bunch of Landing Page Builder Plugins and Themes which include Templates to build your landing page.
However, the easiest method is by creating the page by your own in a WordPress (or another company) website. The only thing you need to start is:
- And the idea to write about the description of your product or service.
- An email form created with an autoresponder like Aweber (if you want to create an opt-in page, otherwise you can skip this step)
- Images
These are the minimum ingredients to create a landing page like this, without specialized software, plugins, or templates:
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Nice little piece on what a landing page is. I do a bit of affiliate marketing and would have prior knoweldge of what it is. Still very good blog post for anyone new to the game because it can be a bit confusing at the start. And reading this piece they will be in doubt to what it actually is.
Hello there, blogging can be very crucial I must say. The idea of a landing page for me is really cool and I must commend some other blog page that have a landing page which is really engaging and that alone sometimes makes you keep that site at heart and when you need to search for soemthing you just go back there without having a second thought. So for me I’ll say a landing page is a good idea for a blog. My opinion, thanks for sharing.
Excellent article and I must say that you have really broaden my knowledge on landing g page and what it really means and entails. To be honest, I didn’t have this foregrounded knowledge in it before. Thanks so much. One thing I realised is it is meant to build enough interest INA particular promotion to the extent that it can convert a person’s interest to turn them to buyers. Thanks
i have had a big confusion on the meaning of landing pages and you have really helped clarify what it really means. I didn’t know too that not all sites have a landing page. I now understand what the features of a landing page is and that in an online business, they are very integral. Thank you for this clarity here. I was well educated.