How To Design a Landing Page

When you purchase online advertising, your site needs "landing pages." A "landing page" is a name for a page specially designed to make it easy for a potential customer to "act."

Each landing page is partnered with an advertisement (on another site or on a search engine). When someone clicks on your ad, they "land" on its corresponding landing page. (You do not want your ads to point to your site's front page, especially if your ads are for pricey keywords.)

Key to making a landing page effective is to offer a Call to Action form prominently on the landing page (without making the visitor scroll). Potential customers have a chance to quickly sign up for an offer or buy "on" the landing page. (This is not a link to another page on your site.) People do not like to click to investigate other parts of the site. They have very little time and want answers right there on the landing page - without moving to another page or search through the current page.

So, if you have a "sign up form" on your site, the form also appears on each landing page. (Do not make "potential sales" surf around your site to find your form!)

Potential Customers

Remember, your potential clients are quickly "surfing" several sites. If they do not find what they what on the very first page that is shown to them, they will move onto your competitor's site.

Tracking Results and Boosting ROI

Online Ads can be expensive. A landing page allows you to track performance of ads. You might find that although you are paying for a dozen different ads, the bulk of your sales are generated form one or two ads. Landing pages allow you to know this and reallocate your advertising dollars to these good-performing ads.

Each landing page has a hidden field called a "lead source" field that contains a unique code. If you are running 12 ads, you might have 12 identical or slightly different landing pages, each with a unique "source code."

Your sales team receives the person's contact information along with this unique code, which allows them to know which ad brought in the sales lead. This is important in allowing you to have statistics to make decisions on the best ROI for your advertising budget.

TIP: Do not add links to your landing pages from your front page. A landing page is an "orphan" page on your site. This means visitors who enter your site's front page should not be able to click any link and get to your landing pages.