What Is a Landing Page

What the heck is a landing page?  “Landing page” is becoming so much a buzz word in the internet, and yet, there are so many who still do not know what it is and what it can do for a business.

We can start with the basics.  Landing Page is purely defined as the page on any given website which visitors “land” at after clicking on a link from any other website.  In online marketing, landing pages are usually linked from many other links found in the internet:  Google ads, social media networking sites, article directories, social bookmarks, and other landing pages on websites.  In other words, it is a page where website traffic is sent to.

What Is a Landing Page That Works?

A landing page can be the most important tool you can have in the online business not because of how it looks, but because of what it can do.  A successful landing page needs to be able to provide customized sales pitch for your website’s visitors or capture information for visitors that can be used for future marketing campaigns.    An effective landing page can turn into money! 

Designing an effective landing page starts with understanding your target audience.  You have to know who your target visitors are in order for you to convert the site clicks to sales.  You need to know where your readers come from and who they are.  In being able to gather these important information, you will be able to understand how to get your visitors engaged, thus increasing your sales conversion rate.

What Is the Right Landing Page for a Targeted Audience?

A lot of online marketers make the sloppy mistake of making the homepage as the landing page.  Dropping people to your homepage will make your target market explore your website on their own, groping.  Doing this wastes the opportunity for sales conversion into a few seconds that they might simply hit the back button or click away elsewhere.

Successful landing pages need to lead to better conversion rates.  How is this done?  You should design a landing page that would give your visitors exactly what they are supposed to be looking for, with the least amount of clicks possible.  Too many distractions, such as links or ads on your landing page, will most likely lose your target audience a few seconds before you even sent your message across.

The Best Landing Page: Keep It Simple Stupid!

In designing an effective landing page, remember that the KISS rule always applies.  Keep it short and simple. Landing pages are supposed to be simple and straightforward.   If this seems hard to understand, better yet, Keep It Simple Stupid!   The best landing page can be nothing more than simple.

How to Measure an Effective Landing Page?

Beginners in landing page design are prone to create landing pages and tend to fail to assess whether or not the landing page they created is effective.  Landing page success can be measured with these three important metrics:

1.  Conversion Rate – Successful landing pages are able to convert page visits into the desired action such as making a purchase, submitting information on a form, among many others.  So much similar to the art of making any sale, high conversion rates are the result of knowing and understanding your audience and successfully getting them engaged to take action due to the message sent on your landing page content.  

2. Home Page Abandonment Rate – Chances are, you have a very short window of opportunity to keep your visitor’s attention.  If we look at your homepage as your landing page, you need to account for the number of times visitors landed on your home page and bailed out.  If you strategically place you call to action links in your landing page, you can be more successful at increased conversion rates instead. 

3. Cost Per Sale – This metrics applies as a cost of your investment to get that sale.  Your landing page’s average cost per sale comes out from dividing your advertising costs by the amount of converted sales.  Successfully managing your upfront cost per sale would help you realize big returns of your investment, thus hard work pays off.