When it comes to creating your website, landing pages are going to be a vital part of the operation. A landing page is a section of your website that a visitor can arrive or “land” on when coming to your site.
It’s very important to keep in mind that your home page is not your landing page. A home page is a going to be a mixed bag of information attempting to provide visitors with a well-rounded idea of who you are and what you do.
That’s not what you want for a landing page. A landing page should focus on a specific group or item, or whatever the visitor is attempting to find. So here’s a few tips when developing landing pages for your site.
Be Specific, Very Specific
As we mentioned a few seconds ago, a majority of the visitors coming to your landing pages are looking for something specific. If you’re a lawn and garden company, perhaps they are looking for lawnmowers. When creating your landing pages, focus on what people are coming to this particular page for. If they’re looking for lawnmowers, you don’t want to provide them with your company history or gardening tips. Stick the main focus and keep it simple.
Keep It Consistent
The overall development of your website should provide your visitors with an overall experience, and that experience should remain consistent, whether it’s tone, design or layout. This needs to remain the same with your landing pages. From the ads or banners that visitors are clicking on to get to your site to the final checkout, your landing page should remain consistent. People want to know that they’ve come to the right place. If they click on a banner and land on a page that isn’t consistent, they might feel as if they’ve come to the wrong site.
Make It Eye Catching
Think about your experiences in the past when surfing the web trying to find a certain service or product. How many times have you clicked on a link, took a quick glance at the page and left because it didn’t catch your eye at the first glance? I can say it happens to me almost on a weekly basis.
This comes back to visitors wanting to know they landed on the correct page or found the right company, and that starts with the title. Don’t make visitors guess what the page is about by trying to be creative with your title. Let them know they landed on the lawnmowers page, or whatever they might be searching. Can you tell I have Spring on my mind?
It also helps to use images, this way the visitor can see the images right away and know they went to the right place.
Keep Them in Line
You have to view this process as your sales funnel, and so far, you’re off to a good start by funneling your visitors to a particular page, whether it was through an add, a blog, etc. But you want to make sure you keep them on a narrow path and further direct them down the funnel.
When it comes to developing landing pages, you don’t want buttons and links and all types of extras taking them to other pages that have nothing to do with what they came for. I can honestly say there’s been many times where I began searching the web for a particular item and by the end of my search process, I was looking at something in a completely different universe.
It’s about keeping your visitors attention focused on what they came to your site for. Remove the clutter and outbound links to other products and keep your visitors flowing smoothly down the sales funnel. If you focus on these simple steps highlighted above, your landing pages should lead to an increase in conversions.
