Effective Landing pages
The definition of a landing page is simply “the first page that visitors hit on your site”, so it is not strictly a certain page but any page that a user “lands” on. All websites have landing pages, whether they like it or not, even if it was not specifically designed as such. Understanding this is a key part of good website marketing.
anding pages can have a substantial impact on your e-commerce website. A poorly-developed one can hasten its breakdown just as an effective landing page can drive traffic to your site, respond to calls to action and make your business website a success.
One vital measure of the effectiveness of your ecommerce website is the “bounce rate”, or the percentage of visitors who immediately leave your site without making any other click. The bounce rate is inversely proportional to the effectiveness of the landing page. Basically, this means that a high bounce rate indicates that your landing page isn’t compelling enough for the visitor to pursue his interest or take some other action.
Most users prefer to skip information which is irrelevant to their needs. They want to get directly to their search, hence the need for a landing page that delivers just that. They are spared the time and hassle of having to navigate through layers of data when they already have an idea of what they want. The bounce rate is a key measurement for determining the effectiveness of landing pages.
Another measure for landing pages is the success of a “next action”. It might be purchasing the product, requesting more information, signing up for a free trial, etc. A concept that is intrinsic in creating effective landing pages is “alignment”. This is the connection between your source (where the visitor came from) and your landing page. The more connected they are, the higher the success of conversion.
A good example is a banner ad for a specific product from a beauty products company. Clicking on the banner ad and being directed to a landing page showing the exact same product yields a higher conversion rate. Conversely, if the alignment is absent, there will be a significant drop in conversion rates.
In general, a landing page must stir these positive emotions in a visitor for it to be effective:
- Credibility
Your page must be able to capture the visitor’s trust by presenting a credible appearance. Get rid of red flags, such as lack of contact information, typo errors and wrong grammar, use of incorrect jargon, low-resolution graphics, and excessive use of Times Roman font. - Recognition
Your page must provide your visitor a “This is what I’m looking for!” moment upon landing. - Persuasiveness
Your page must be able to convince visitors that your product or service can help them achieve their goal. Keep in mind what attracted the visitor to your product in the first place so you will understand what he is looking for. - Action
You must highlight an action for the visitor to take while he is in your landing page.
