by Idea Lab

What is a Landing Page?

A “Landing Page” or “Entry Page”; is the first page opened on a website, usually from a Search Engine Results Page, or an advertisement. The landing page is not always the home page.

Why Use a Landing Page

If advertising a website using PPC keywords, email marketing, banner ads, or other types of online promotion, you need to develop landing pages for your website. Without an effective landing page for every ad campaign, it’s likely wasting money, losing website visitors, and decreasing the site’s potential conversions. Advertisements are used to get a person to your website, and landing pages are used to move a person from the advertisement through to the desired destination or conversion page.

Common Mistakes: Pointing Ads to the Front Page

Too many web site owners/marketers make the mistake of pointing all website advertisements to their website’s front page. Instead, advertisements or theme-based group of advertisements should have their own unique landing page that is specifically related to the content or theme of the advertisement.

Targeted landing pages will increase user click-through rates into a website because they are directly related to the ad the user was interested in and clicked on. For example, if ChineseWomenToday.com purchased the Keyword Phrase “study Chinese”; then the landing page a user is taken to after clicking on that Keyword Phrase must contains links and information about studying Chinese. Simply taking the user to the front page of ChineseWomenToday.com won’t do any good because that page doesn’t contain any information about studying Chinese. The average home page doesn’t provide a clear path to the topic that is being advertised in a keyword, email or banner ad campaign, so users who are directed to a website’s front page from highly targeted advertisements are more likely to leave the site.

Connecting Ads and Landing Pages

Think of a website advertisement and landing page as two parts of the same advertisement. If, for example, the advertisement asks a question to get a user’s attention, be sure the landing page addresses that question and leads the user deeper into the site to find the answer. Don’t leave the website visitors hanging with no place to go. Most users won’t take the time to dig around in a site to find what they thought the advertisement was going to deliver. If purchasing keywords on different subjects but not directing keyword traffic to unique landing pages, a site is paying to have visitors come to the site to visit one page then leave.

Reduce Opportunities for Visitors to Leave the Landing Page

Once a person has been enticed to click on an ad (and in many cases have paid for that click), the last thing anyone would want to do is give the person multiple opportunities to leave the landing page. To do this, remove all unnecessary navigational and paid banner ads and links that lead away from the website (ie don’t use the regular “article page” template to create landing pages, but instead create a unique template for landing pages). Remove all distractions from the landing page that will keep a user from reaching the desired destination on the website. This destination might be anything from getting the user to sign up for a newsletter, taking part in chat, reading the gospel, taking a poll, adding comments to a discussion forum or reading a person’s personal experience with Christ.