Our first stop on the journey through the land of Landing Page, is to take a look at the king of the jungle. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that all the other animals pay homage to the king. Without the king, the circle of life is incomplete.

What is a landing Page?

Before you jump to Google and search this question, lets get something straight about what a landing page is and is not. A landing page is, in the purest sense, any single webpage that a visitor “lands” on after either clicking a result in a search engine (like Google or Bing) or clicking a hyperlink (outside of a search engine) that redirects the user to a new page. While yes, many websites and businesses use their home page as their landing page; we will soon discover this is NOT the way to do it!

To get more specific, a landing page is more than just any webpage. To a marketer, it’s more commonly referenced to a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has been designed for a single marketing objective.

Why Should You Use Landing Pages?

Landing Pages increase your conversion rates!

Think of it this way, someone out there is searching Google for a specific XYZ Widget that you sell. When your ad pops up front and center on the search results page, they click your ad and follow through to a landing page. At this point 2 different things could happen:

1. They land on your home page where you talk about what a great company you are and tell them about all the widgets you make. Now the user has to read through this material to find out where to go. They find a product page (if they haven’t left the site yet) and now they sort through all the products to find XYZ Widget. At this point they click through to the specific product, to learn more about the product.
2. They land on a landing page designed specifically for XYZ Widget. This page has the XYZ Widget picture front and center with a large headline that quickly lets the user know they found the right place. There is no navigation, no other pages they could wonder off to. Instead there is a big, stand-out, button that says “Buy Now.”

Which type of page do you believe is going to see higher conversions? Some could argue that users like to “learn” and be educated before the purchase. However in this example we have a user searching specifically for the keyword “XYZ Widget”, this is a buying cycle search term, the user is likely ready to purchase.

In the above example, it’s obvious that if we ask the user to think hard, they are going to bounce to another website where the business makes the experience easier on the user.

What’s Next?

We now grasp what a marketers landing page is. Next week we are going to dive in to understanding the basics of what A/B testing is. We will be using the website PeninsulaGermanMotors.com for our dissecting.

As always, leave a comment below if you would like to see one of your landing pages dissected in our series. It could be featured as soon as next week!