Why You Should Create Landing Pages

With effective content marketing and targeted Calls To Action (CTA), you are now driving traffic from your blog and social media accounts back to your main website. However, how effective is your current website in converting visitors into customers? Don’t worry, we aren’t going to tell you that you need a completely new website or website overhaul – instead, it may be beneficial to create website landing pages to increase your click-through conversion.

What Is A Landing Page, And Why Is It Important?

A website’s landing page is a web page that is displayed when a website visitor clicks-through a specific link to a website. Website landing pages are often confused with “splash” pages, which were common in the early days of the internet. Back then, many websites displayed a basic page that presented new visitors with the option to view a basic version or a larger, more multimedia-rich version of the site. Modern websites sometimes still use splash pages if a visitor has an incompatible web browser, or if a plugin such as JavaScript is required to view the site in question, but temporary websites pages are now most often used for marketing purposes as landing pages, especially in conjunction with off-site and social media marketing campaigns.

Two Types of Landing Pages

There are two primary types of landing pages: A reference landing page is a page specifically designed to present a customized set of instructions or content to a visitor. The second type, which is much more common as a part of social media and content marketing campaigns, is a transactional landing page, which presents a visitor with the option to complete a form or submit a transaction.

Easing Transitions

These two types of landing pages can benefit your marketing campaign in a number of ways. First, either type of landing page can ease the transition from a blog or social media post to your main website, which may be too large or generalized to effectively service your sales prospect. For instance, if your content marketing is designed to advertise a specific service, but your website doesn’t have a web page dedicated to that service, a visitor who clicks through to your main page may become frustrated or lose interest before they are able to locate the relevant content on your website. A landing page dedicated to a particular product or service can be a particularly effective stopgap between the narrow focus of your content marketing and the broad, general focus of your website.

Sales, Promotions, Contests

Second, a landing page can provide a temporary web page for a sale, event, promotion or contest. The temporary nature of many such events makes creating a permanent page on your website dedicated to the event unnecessary and even detrimental – for instance, if a permanent page is created for a limited-time sale or promotion, a search engine web crawler may index the page and direct visitors to it, who may in turn submit an unsolicited request or order and demand the promotional pricing from your sales representative. Landing pages can be easily added and removed from a website without breaking the existing website hierarchy and structure, which make them ideal for promoting such events and promotions. Finally, landing pages can be used to filter marketing campaigns, allowing sites to present different, targeted temporary pages based on the source of the click-through and/or better track website analytics.

What Are The Drawbacks Of Using Landing Pages?

The biggest drawback of using landing pages is the possibility that the targeted information and options presented to the visitor on the landing page may be irrelevant and/or unnecessary – in these cases, landing pages become barriers between the visitor and your main website, which can cause said visitor to become annoyed and frustrated and ultimately abandon your site. This can be especially true if you present a landing page to all visitors to your website, not just specific sets of visitors who click-through from a specific source. To minimize this risk, always present a prominent CTA on all landing pages that presents a way for visitors to quickly click-through to your main website.

Misuse Of Pages

A secondary drawback to landing pages can be unintended misuse of transactional pages. If a visitor is presented with a web form, they may use it to submit a request or complaint that is unrelated to the intended purpose of the landing page. These messages may in turn be lost or neglected if they are misdirected through a landing page

Published October 9, 2014
Via: http://bluezenith.com/blog/
Courtesy of Donna Galassi. Blue Zenith