Four things your landing page must have

A landing page is the page you go to when you click on an advertisement or search listing. Landing pages are important because they will often be the first time a visitor has seen your site. A common mistake is to confuse landing pages with home pages. If you send traffic from an ad to your home page it’s likely you are getting a low return on investment and experiencing a high bounce rate. This is because home pages and landing pages have different objectives and are used by people in different ways.

Landing pages are difficult to get right. Here we present four things your landing page must have.

1. A clear call-to-action

What is the purpose of the landing page? Should your visitor to fill in a form, add something to the basket, or call a number? Identify the primary objective and stick to it. This call-to-action must be clear and should be above the fold. Keep the structure of the page simple and don’t overload the page with text and other distractions. What text you do have break it up with headlines and headings.

Cinema Paradiso get their landing page right. The landing page is simple, consistent with the ad and the important content is above the fold.

LoveFilm’s landing page is less successful. The free trial box on the right doesn’t stand out and is dominated by the main content.

2. A fallback objective

Whilst it’s great if your visitor converts, this isn’t always going to happen. It’s often the case that whilst the visitor is interested, it is not the right time for them. Maybe they are researching your product or investigating different companies. So give your visitor another way of to connecting with you. A quick email sign-up for a monthly newsletter or free report is a great way of engaging with your visitor and capturing their email address.

Signing up for a set of golf lessons is a big decision, so Cannon Golf allow visitors to sign-up for a newsletter.

3. Credibility

Why should your visitor trust and buy from you and not your competitor? Your sales content needs to persuade your visitor that you have credibility and trust. Testimonials from happy customers are a great way to demonstrate credibility. Press and other media coverage should be emphasized. Ecommerce sites should demonstrate that they are secure and have been independently validated. What guarantees do you give your customers? What’s your return-policy? Do you give a money back guarantee? These guarantees and policies help to remove anxiety and are a great selling point.

Petra display a range a badges to emphasize that shopping with them is both safe and secure.

Cashflow Protector demonstrate their credentials by displaying the logos of their featured press.

4. Less of everything else!

A bad landing page contains too much information. Don’t try and distract the visitor with competing call-to-actions or try to cross sell. There should be one the one primary call-to-action identified in 1 above. You can reduce clutter by removing the navigation elements and unnecessary sidebar content (e.g., news) design elements. Don’t feel you have to let the visitor know about all your products and services. There will be plenty of time for that once you have turned your visitor into a happy customer!