A landing page is a simplified version of your website on a SINGLE page that showcases a single product or service. A visitor comes to a landing page from a Search, or PPC ad, or email – but the most common LP Goals are below:
Most common Landing Page Goals:
- Sign up/fill out a form/Subscribe
- Call a Phone
- Download a PDF
- Download a Trial Version
- Buy a Product/Subscription etc
By now the phrase “Above the fold” is a bit overused, but people are STILL missing the importance of this. Whatever message you have to give to your visitor or display in your Call To Action (CTA) it is super duper important to do it…above the fold. Wikipedia says Above the Fold is the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of webpages, the part of a page that’s visible without scrolling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold).
So “What does that really mean in terms of dimensions?” It’s the VERTICAL space you have to work with – and it changes every so often as screens sizes and resolutions increase – but if you pop into your Google Analytic you will see what YOUR visitors are using most often – the screensot below show that I have 80%-90% of my traffic giving me at lease 800-900 pixels to work with (it’s the second # so 1280×800 means I have 800 vertical pixels to work with) BUT you want to go a little less than this to accommodate browsers that have an extra toolbar here and there (which oddly many people do 
Things that many sites are doing wrong with their landing pages are (TO be clear you do NOT want to do these)
- Include Primary navigation
- Include Footer Links
- Invite the user to read more than 750 words
- Have more than one offer or CTA
- Land on the Homepage – this is the #1 thing sites are doing wrong with their PPC traffic from banners, Google ads, Newsletters etc
- Land on a page that does NOT have the same headline or imagery that the Ad they clicked had on it. If A visitor sees an ad for “Free Widget” – there better be a heading on the LP that reinforces and repeats “FREE WIDGET”. If they see an ad that has a widget on a horse, there better be an image of a widget on a horse on the landing page.
- Please note – I have no idea what a Widget On a Horse would look like
Some things that are testing exceedingly well on Landing Pages at the time of this post
- Live Chat
- “Ask a Question About this” modules
- One on One (Schedule a time to call)
So to sum it up right quick you can have MULTIPLE landing pages – you do NOT have to do it all on one page. It is actually MUCH BETTER to have several landing pages and to A/B test each them – which I will cover in detail in a post later this week, but remove excess navigation, keep the ad and the copy and the ad and the imagery consistent if not identical and test-test-test!!
- Set the goal of your landing page before creating it. You decide what you want the visitor to do. A great tip is to set a goal for each page.
- Send the user to pages that load fast (less than 3 seconds)
- Do not use pop-ups, don’t link to pages that were disabled, and generaly speaking, don’t make the visitor wait.
- Highlight the benefits you are offering.
- Do not offer what you can not promise.
- Ask questions using your visitors words. Try to enter your prospect’s mind. (This is a great opportunity to test copy & headlines)
- Make the CTA obvious to spot.
- Test.
- Test.
- Test.
I’m serious get good at testing – email me directly and we can chat on more testing specifics relevant to you if you like.
