It doesn’t matter if you’re a site designer for a multi-billion dollar company, a small business owner or even an unknown blogger just starting out, having an attractive and functional landing page on your website is vital for attracting and retaining visitors. If you’re not really familiar with website building or marketing though, you may not really know what a landing page is, what it’s used for or why you need one, so today we’ll look at the basics of what landing pages really are.
Many people believe that a landing page is always your website’s home page and while this may be true in many cases, it’s definitely not always the case. A landing page is simply the initial page that your visitors will ‘land’ on when they first come to your site by typing in a URL, clicking on an email link, an advert, a social media CTA (call to action) or similar.
As previously mentioned, this is usually a home page, but often these are pages with only one CTA button and information about what will happen if you click on the CTA. These are good if you have a direct path or goal in mind, as the single CTA means there’s nothing else around to distract visitors into browsing other parts of your site. So, why do you need a landing page in the first place? Read on to find out:
You’ll lead visitors right into a sales funnel
If you only have one CTA and not much else on your landing page (or a well-structured page that directs people straight to your CTA), you’ll be funnelling your visitors to exactly where you want them to go. Marketers these days know the value of a ‘freebie’, so they will usually create free content – such as a free course, informational download or similar – and that is where the CTA button points to. By giving away a free bite-sized chunk, marketers are making these free snippets a part of the sales funnel for the larger purchase.
As an example, imagine you’re a business selling courses. You create a landing page that has two links – a CTA to a free download or webinar (that they will have to opt into your free fortnightly newsletter to access) and a link to your blog. When visitors are directed to your landing page, they are restricted to only these two choices. If your visitors choose to opt into your free download or webinar, they’ll also be opting into your mailing list and will receive an email about your full paid course in the near future. Setting up your landing page in this way means you’ll grow your mailing list, which will help you convert the people on this list to buyers later on.
You’ll send visitors to your product straight away
Many businesses and companies choose to send their visitors directly to a specific product page and this is a great idea, but not always the best idea. You may choose to have a landing page that has more than one option, but whatever you add, your visitors will be more inclined to purchase if you ensure they are all directed towards either purchasing your product or service or accessing a free trial. You can add more links to direct visitors to information if necessary, but when they get to this information, they should find only the same options as on the landing page (i.e., purchasing a product/service or receiving a freebie).
You’ll generate more subscribers
Using a landing page in the above manner has been shown to boost conversion rates by up to 50%! This is because you’re limiting the number of options your visitors have. So how does it work? Research has shown that consumers can suffer from a form of indecision called ‘choice fatigue’ when they’re presented with too many options. Choice fatigue usually results in site visitors leaving your site completely, so it’s definitely worth limiting the choices your site visitors can choose from.
These tips all suggest keeping the information on your landing pages short and sweet, and that’s definitely good advice, but there’s absolutely no reason that your landing pages should be boring! If you’d like to create beautiful, appealing and highly functional landing pages with fully automated features, give the team at Swift Digital a call on 1300 878 289 or click here for a demo.
