A landing page can be defined as any web page a potential customer arrives at after expressing interest in one of several forms of advertising: search result, banner ad, Google AdWords or AdSense ad, link in an email, print or TV advertising.
The purpose of a landing page is to expand upon the upstream ad and convince the visitor to "convert" into becoming a customer by taking a specific action.
You might also want to take a look at our gallery of landing page templates for some visual reference.
This week I did a guest post over on SEOmoz called: The 12-Step Landing Page Rehab Program. It presents a guided visualization of the conversion funnel and where (and how) you can apply optimization and design techniques to improve the conversion rate of your landing pages. Click the image for Read More...
This post is the first in a series exploring the Landing Page Manifesto – which is a set of guiding principles for producing effective landing pages. The idea is to recognize the various elements required to address the complexities of conversion centered design, and teach it through the Read More...
Nice T-shirt. Terrible way to spend your inbound marketing budget.
There’s a simple point to be made here. When you’re sending multiple streams of inbound traffic to your homepage (or registration page, cart page) the original upstream ad message gets lost in a flood of generic multi-channel multi-product communication that dilutes the experience to the point where the visitor just does the browser shrug and leaves.
For the record, the browser shrug is the physical embodiment of real-life disappointment, akin to a simultaneous clicking of the back button whilst saying “meh” out loud.
Sounds much like women’s tennis.
Looking for some design inspiration for your next landing page? We’ve just started a new landing page examples section in the Unbounce blog where we’re going to feature the best examples of landing pages that we find on our marketing travels. In each post we’ll break down the anatomy of the landing page and look at what’s good and where they could be improved.
To kick things off here are 5 great examples of lead gen and click-through landing pages:
An example of excellent message match between banner and landing page is shown by Full Sail. They also offer up 2 different design versions to test their messaging in an A/B test.
In November 2004 I had my first real encounter with marketing people. It was a horrible experience.
I come from the user experience (UX) crowd, indulging in usability, interaction design, information architecture and other such altruistic endeavours rooted in a desire to make the web work better for “the customer”. The marketing guys had an entirely different agenda with no real concern for anything but the bottom line.
Here’s the scoop cowboy: They came. They saw. They didn’t care. Sad, and perhaps a little painful – if you take these types of thing personally.
Maybe they weren’t ready? Unprepared even.
I’m not here to instill false hope about your business model or promise you a golden chalice of optimized redemption. Really I’m not. That would be silly. If you want to improve your conversions you need to figure out why the horse bolted, and whose fault it was.
There are a few reasons why your wannabe customers skedaddled without paying the toll. If you can analyze them, you might get a second chance at conversion:
What do ping pong balls have to do with conversion rates? It’s all about focus and “message reception”.
Recently, Rick and I have been giving landing page workshops to small businesses and start-ups, and we always kick things off with a game that involves ping pong balls… and an unwitting volunteer. Our purpose is to illustrate the importance of focused messaging on your landing pages.
If you’re the type that has ping pong balls lying around, pick ‘em up and join in. Quick tip: don’t use golf balls as a replacement, they hurt. (If we meet in person, ask me to explain the golf ball incident).
For my latest post, I wrote about Lessons in Conversion Centered Design: 7 Arm-Twisting Persuasion Techniques for Your Landing Pages on the web analytics and internet marketing blog over at VKIStudios.com. Overview The post uncovers 7 persuasive tactics for increasing conversion on your landing Read More...
Some random smart looking teacher types from WikiCommons
Landing pages are awesome, we all know that. They expand upon your ad message just enough to distill the concept into a bite-sized chunk of marketing goodness. They convert waaay better than the traffic you send to your homepage, and once you understand the basics, they’re pretty simple to put together.
Having said that, there are still a truck load of really really bad landing pages driving around on the old information superhighway.
That’s all about to change…
Download our free white papers and reports for some bedtime conversion optimization reading.
Download our free opinionated guide to landing page conversion.
Using Twitter to enhance, promote and measure your landing page campaigns.
