What key features should be contained on a website landing page
First let’s define a “landing page”
A Landing Page is the FIRST page, or pages, in your websites that visitors will be directed to, whether through online advertising like ppc (Google Adwords) or through natural listings in search engines, links you get from other websites or specific web address you publicise in conventional written adverts.
Always think about this in terms of a visitor arriving on your site who knows NOTHING about you.
They may visit 20 websites per search session and they have “stumbled” upon your site.
Remember that they may have landed on an internal page. The search engines will serve up the most relevant page, not just your home page. This factor is very important, you should design many of your pages as landing pages. In fact you can almost design all your major pages as landing pages.
First, catch your visitor’s attention
Use bold headlines to communicate what it is you are offering on this page. Don’t start with an introduction to the history of your firm. Communicate clearly what you are offering and any unique features (free shipping, discounted rate, free trial etc).
Once you have caught your visitors attention, and they know that what they need can be accessed on your page/site, offer up some more detailed info about your product or service.
In order to make a sale, you will have to satisfy your customers desire to confirm that you are a reputable organisation. They are looking at two angles:
perceived trustworthiness and perceived expertise
Your landing page should be constructed so that you have elements that satisfy these requirements.
For the perceived trustworthiness add:
- Businesses Physical Address and contact phone number
- Logos for any trade or quality assurance organisations
- Previous customer product reviews
- Product guarantees
For perceived expertise add:
- Impartial product use advice
- Impartial product selection advice
- Related information and advice
- Good quality sales copy explaining your product and how it will benefit your customer
The final, but most important, section of the landing page is the “call to action”
We really want to get something from your visitors. Whether it is some basic contact details, or some form of request for more info.
If they find you, look at your page and then leave, you may have lost that potential customer forever (Unless your brand stuck in their head or they bookmarked your page) as you may well know it takes on average 7 “touches” with a business for a customer to make a purchase. Finding your website may be only their first.
In my experience, you will dramatically improve your sales conversion by encouraging the prospective customer to interact with you. The most common offer is the “register for our free report” or newsletter” version which is very effective. However consider these options where the “free report” is not appropriate.
- Send a free or very low cost sample (get their address details)
- Let us try to beat our own price? Enter your delivery postcode (get their email address) )
- Brochure, Catalogue request (address details)
- Free design, quotation, measuring service
- Offer a discount voucher (email or address details)
This list is only limited by your imagination. but do get some sort of contact detail, you can then gently communicate with these customers over an extended period ( I give full follow-up advice within my courses)
You can add a time limit to all of these options. This does accelerate decision making.
Make sure that your call to action is clearly marked and that you encourage them to participate. I will use phrases like:
If you do nothing else today, at least sign up for my free course on widgets. I will show you step, by easy step, how to save money (or avoid errors, or to lose weight etc). Enter your details in the form below and I will send you instant access to your course by email.
General Site Navigation
Now finally a little mention about navigation to the rest of your site.
The visitor may be very interested in the particular product and service on your landing page, but may also be interested in other features and products within your site (this can be a great way of establishing your credentials).
Use a clear and concise navigation menu system. Customers expect to see the navigation at the top or down the left so stick with that. Add links back to your landing pages on any pages they may navigate away to.
Ensure you have a search facility within your site where they can key in particular products or terms for further viewing (Yes I know this site hasn’t got search yet, it is just coming!!). On one of my main ecommerce sites, I have been able to trawl the site search logs and discovered whole new product lines that people were interested in and I now supply.