What is a landing page? A landing page is a stand-alone page with one focused objective. It is designed as a lead page for visitors. Landing pages are used for marketing campaigns to generate leads, which will hopefully create conversion.
Types of Landing Pages
It is important to know that there are two types of landing pages, click through and lead generation. Click through landing pages goal is to get visitors to click to another page. Essentially you are “warming-up” the visitor about a product or service. This is more commonly used in ecommerce sites during registration or within the shopping cart. Click through landing pages act as a sales funnel.
Lead generation landing pages or better known as lead capture pages are used to collect visitor data. Lead capture pages include forms and collect information such as a name or email address. There are many examples of lead generation landing pages. Here are a few examples you might encounter: free trials, contests, email notification for a product or site launch, newsletter sign up/registrations, and free giveaways for sharing personal information. The goal for lead generation is to have conversion but you need to be careful with the information that you request from your visitors. If you are only contacting them through email, don’t ask for their address or phone number.
Landing Page Vs. Home Page
How are landing pages different from a home page? Your home page talks about your brand with links and navigation throughout your site. Visitors could be “distracted” by the different places they can navigate. There is no distraction with the landing page. A landing page will only have one purpose with a call-to-action. The attention is focused on one task.
5 Core Components to a Landing Page
A lot of research and design goes into creating a landing page. Follow these 5 components when creating a landing page.
- Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Your USP contains headlines that portray the core value offer. Your context should be both clear and concise. This is what you will use to grab a visitors attention in hopes that they will take the action on your page.
- Hero Shot: Find images or video that make your offer appealing or show how your product/service is used. It is preferred to use real images/videos instead of stock photography.
- Benefits of your Offering: Tell the visitors the benefits or reasons why they should use your product. Bullet points are a great way to give a summary of your benefits because it is easier to read.
- Social Proof: Include testimonials, case studies, statistics, and success stories of your product or service to help validate. People want to know who else used your product and details about their experience.
- One Conversion Goal: Make sure you have a clear call to action on your landing page. Landing pages only get one action, one link. Do not distract your visitors with including any more links. You may, however, have multiple links to your landing page.
Examples of Landing Pages
There are many examples of landing pages. My first selection is Impact Branding & design, a marketing company that partners with HubSpot. I believe they follow all the 5 core components of a landing page.
Another example is actually one of our clients, Remote Control Support (RCA).
Always remember to keep your landing page simple with a clear message of what you are trying to sell or offer customers. To avoid distractions, do not include other links to your site. Keep things simple!
