You have probably heard about landing pages and how they can help SEO and conversion rates, but you are unsure of what they are or how they work. This can be awkward in the world of digital marketing jargon, so you find you may not be getting the answers you need to leverage the benefits of landing pages for your business. Here are six common questions about landing pages and their answers.
1. What Is a Landing Page?
A landing page is specific page that is part of a targeted marketing strategy to capture inbound leads generated by external channels such as social media and SEO. Magicdust, a digital agency with some of the best web designers Sydney has to offer, explains that ‘a landing page helps businesses target an audience niche related to a specific business service or product’. The targeted audience finds the landing page through a marketing campaign, such as email, social, or pay-per-click. In short, a landing page is the intended page a user ‘lands’ on from a specific point or source like an advertisement or social post.
One of the big benefits of a landing page is that a business has a chance to control exactly what the targeted audience sees from start to finish. The advertisement and related landing page is crafted so it is extremely relevant to the target group and shows off your value proposition. By presenting targeted content on the landing page, the customer has a higher potential of converting. Landing pages give you the best chance to control what your targeted audience sees, therefore increasing your chance at turning them into new customers.
Business owners often choose to have multiple landing pages depending on the type of conversion they want to receive. Some go for a purchase, but many want to capture contact information or have the user download a resource with branded marketing messaging.
2. How Do I Optimise a Landing Page?
A website homepage is an open book, hoping the user will see something they like and remain engaged. An optimized landing page has specific content related to controlled user journeys obtained through PPC. The key to optimization is to make the content short, sweet, and to the point so your value proposition is quickly communicated. It can be a fine line to walk between informative and spam, which is often the cause of a high bounce rate.
There are a few strategies you can utilize to reduce bounce rates while conveying your value proposition. One of these is interruption marketing, such as a popover message, that has been proven to increase email marketing subscription conversions.
With interruption marketing, the message needs to continue to be conveyed quickly while also being highly targeted and highly relevant. You also need to add something unexpected yet valuable to the user. The message will quickly become annoying and forceful if you skip these points.
For extra success with landing page optimization, ensure your navigation is easy to follow without any distractions. The navigation should easily guide users to the point of conversion in your marketing message.
Lastly, try using the attention ratio. This is an assessment of conversion points to non-conversion links on the landing page with the goal being an even 1:1 ratio between the two. Track the optimization through free tools, such as Google Analytics, and make sure to watch the bounce rate.
3. What Is the Difference Between an Optimized Page and a Landing Page?
A landing page is usually implemented with paid or ‘controlled’ traffic such as what is seen with Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC). As we’ve said, landing pages are often highly targeted by the business for a specific user persona. An optimized page is usually a page that is relative to organic (un-paid) traffic, which has been optimized for audiences related to common search terms. Optimized pages provide businesses with less control over the entire user journey as they are generally less targeted. They serve to be relevant to a wider range of people and a specific keyword.
4. Why Would I Still Need a Homepage?
Your website homepage and a specially crafted landing page are very different. A homepage is a central hub for all the information about your business. A landing page has one specific goal for a highly targeted audience segment. Most businesses create a series of landing pages for different stages of a sales funnel.
The homepage should be an open invitation for all to come and experience your brand in an engaging and informative matter. As long as the homepage is easy to navigate through, the user will have a positive experience with the brand and explore the website’s offerings, decreasing your bounce rate.
5. How Do I Know If My Landing Pages Are Working?
Monitoring your Google Analytics dashboard is the best way to measure your landing pages and see if your efforts are worth it. By setting up goal based analytics and heat mapping, you will see if your content and conversion pathway is successful with converting your target audience- or if there is something you can improve upon.
One of the best ways to figure out what type of messaging works best for your audience is with split A/B testing. To do this, create two identical landing pages with slightly different messaging. Then send one page out to half of your target audience and the other page to the other half of your audience. After a week or two, use analytics to see which message resonated more with your target audience by measuring:
- How many clicks it received
- How long each visitor stayed on the page
- Which page had a lower bounce rate
- How many people converted
For more micro behavioral data- heat mapping follows a user’s cursor movements to see how they are interacting with your landing page. This allows you to see which parts of your message resonate highly and which are being ignored by users.
6. How Do I Know if I am Irritating My Landing Page Visitors?
This is legitimate concern because your messaging can easily fall into the annoying category if your text is too long, if your interruption marketing is persistent, or if you are pushing your landing pages too often.
Follow the above steps as well as your own due diligence to keep your page from being annoying and also consider different conversion points for first-time visitors and repeat visitors. If a first-time visitor performs your conversion and then revisits the landing page, don’t keep steering them towards the same outcome. You can also edit your paid campaigns to retarget converted visitors with a new landing page.
Another way to keep your landing page visitors happy is to optimize for mobile. Everything on your landing page, especially any interruption marketing, needs to be mobile friendly. Even if the messaging is flawless, it has to be easy to access on mobile.
The success of landing pages comes down to one major point – showing the right message to a targeted audience at the perfect moment. Now that you understand the ins and outs of landing pages, start creating and optimizing your own landing pages to start increasing your website’s conversion rates.
