Landing Page Checklist/ Guide

June 21, 2008 at 7:52 am · Filed under AdWords, Landing Page, Online Advertising, PPC ·Tagged AdWords, landing page checklist, Landing page factors, landing page guide, Online marketing efforts, PPC, PPC landing page, Web page design

Landing page plays a very important role in the success of online advertising efforts. This serves the ultimate objective of the website to get conversions which can be of different type as per marketing objective of the site like it can be sign up for newsletters, purchase of specific products, contact form fill up & many others. Previously I have written some posts about landing pages like importance of landing pages, quality factors, impact of landing pages on quality score of Google Adwords campaign & many others.

Today, I am trying to create a comprehensive checklist or you can say it guide about website landing page so that we can keep some basic points in to mind while working on landing page design.

I would like to define the landing page before making the checklist of effective techniques to create an influential landing/ sales page.

Landing page is the page which is highly focused & specifically designed for selling purpose like to get the leads, sales or conversions without giving any single change to visitors to loose focus.

This is the page where visitor lands after clicking on your advertisements. Squeeze pages can be defined as different version or face of landing pages. Squeeze pages are basically designed to get leads not for immediate sale, you can take the example of open source solutions selling firms, as they sale customize software solutions as per different organization needs & they don’t have any physical products, so what they actually requires…is simply the lead, means the contact details of the potential service buyers.

Now I would like to answer some questions which can come in your mind-

Is it really important to have specific landing pages?

Then my answer will be definitely, Yes. If you want maximum out of your advertising efforts then you need to have an appealing & highly focused landing page which can suggest the specific solution to the visitors for their specific needs.

The other question can be – Do we have separate landing page for visitors from SEO & visitors from PPC?

In this case my answer would be both Yes as well as No. Actually that would depend upon your objective. For example, if you have an online store with different products, free e-books & many others, then it is good for you if people are coming to reading your free books, getting reviews before buying or purchasing. But obviously you don’t want to spend lots of money on PPC for these pre sales activities. In that case marketing thru SEO would be a better option for you. If you decide to generate traffic through search engine optimization, planning your landing page will entail finding phrases within your niche which have a high demand (aggregate search value) and a low supply (small amount of competing sites) and then creating multiple landing pages, each which is optimized around a different phrase. If, on the other hand, you decide to generate traffic through pay per click (PPC) programs, such as Adwords, planning your landing page theme will again entail tuning a number of different pages to fit the keywords you are purchasing & products which you are selling.

Many people (including most of my clients) usually asked me to define the layout of landing page. Well, there is no explicit mock-up which we can work for all website or every single industry. One specific model which is very successful for one site may not work for other. Landing page depend on the marketing objective also and again testing is the best way to find out the best model for you.

So, let’s start creating the Landing Page Checklist 😉

• First & the most important thing is to define your focus or objective before designing the landing page. Identify what action exactly you want from your visitors on your page. You should have some goal like you want your contact form filled or you want newsletter sign ups or the final purchase of product. Your lading page should have the accurate action point which can lead to the achievement of marketing objective. For example, if your marketing objective is to sale some products then your objective would be the “Immediate Sale” and in that case you should highlight the special offerings (if you have any), your USP, any free offer with your products, any discount or guarantee etc. These things will help you to persuade visitors to take the required actions like sigh ups, purchase etc. and at this stage the action point will be a “Buying Button”, so your page must have shopping cart, checkout service or any quick buying buttons on that sales page. All of these services will allow you to make transactions quickly. Agree?

• Don’t forget to define yourself. When a visitor first comes to the website, chances are they want to find out a little more about you. Information about you adds instant credibility to the site. You can create a separate About Us page on your site. It will put a face to your site through profiling your company, business policies, and partners. It will humanize your site to your visitors. It will help visitors to understand the site as a whole. It will work as a way for your readers to know you on a personal level. Otherwise many times it is difficult for visitors to pull out his or her credit card on the spot and make the purchase.

• Try to highlight the undeniable sales points with powerful psychological triggers. This means you should have content a mix of sales points & what visitors will gain from your offering & what they might loose if they don’t. Say for example, if you are selling some cosmetics which cure the acne. Then you should highlight your best selling points like discounts, guarantee, money back guarantee etc. etc., but simultaneously don’t forget to highlight acne as the biggest issue which can harm overall look & personality & what might be the benefits/ results once someone get rid of this problem. These psychological factors are very helpful in getting the conversions or the required actions. You can miss the final sale if you miss any of these 2 things.

• Take care of the information flow. Don’t put information randomly on landing page. All information should be in right context & in an appropriate manner. Visitor should not loose interest or focus …anyhow.

• Also, don’t forget to highlight the alert factor which instantly create the urge for visitors to act immediately like if you have a specific offer for limited period then you can highlight this as “Offer is valid till…” . But don’t create unnecessary hype with misleading or false information otherwise you will loose credibility very soon.

• Try to generate maximum trust as much as you can. Users or visitors normally hesitate to give their personal contact information & other details. Try to show your authenticity to them by defining your secure transactions policy, any authoritative seal etc. You should always define them the purpose of asking for specific details with the guarantee of not selling/ reveling these information to others like spammers & hackers.

• Refine your landing page by eliminating unwanted or unnecessary elements. Unneeded baffled information can distract the visitors. It should have very specific & relevant information as people expect it & they can be disappointed by not getting the same.

• Don’t overlook the layout & design of page. It is very helpful to catch the user’s attention. Mostly visitors leave the site with in 7 seconds because of the unprofessional & catchy look. So, now you can understand the importance of looks 😉

• Be precise or to the point while asking for information. Don’t put a lengthy fill up form by making all the fields mandatory. Keep the form as short as you can. Don’t expect to fill all unnecessary information. They may leave your site as they might not have too much time to fill a big form.

• Don’t forget the “Thank You” page. Thank you page basically appears when required action has been completed on your site. We should optimize this page. We can optimize it by placing some important links of the site (which can be useful for visitors) on this page, we can ask for our free newsletters (if this is a thank you page of sales or sign ups etc), joining mailing list, we can offer free E-Books etc. which opens up more means through which you can up-sell.

• Landing page should not be a splash page as it can confuse a visitor. We should avoid using flash, animation & other fancy code to fascinate the visitors as all these increases the loading time of the page. We should focus on simple & clear layout that allow visitors to find what they want in the shortest time available.

• You can find some important points in one of my previous posts- Landing Page Quality Factors. Here, you can find other information also like how landing page effect the quality score of Google AdWords PPC campaign.

In this guide I have tried to highlight all important factors, though there is always a scope of elaboration.

Hope this post is making sense to readers who really want to work on their landing pages to get the maximum output from their advertising efforts.

Your comments & suggestions are always welcome. In fact comments really help me to research more on the subject matter. Also, let me know if you want me to answer any query related to your online advertising (SEO & PPC) issues. I would like to solve them by writing post on those specific topics.

If you have any query about your landing page or need any suggestions, do let me know.

Thanks for your time.

Happy Reading!!

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