Blog

When searching for the best air travel to London, you’d make sure to research on various sites prior to buying a ticket, right? In this day and age of information overload with a constant barrage of lightning fast stimuli, how do you quickly gauge which site to click when ready to buy airline tickets? is there a quick way than visiting various websites / pages?

yes there is one new way – by using a site previews in paid search ads on search engines (also known as adwords ads or PPC ads) . This new preview in sponsored search ads means landing pages (the pages where these ads take you) better be darn relevant, consistent with rich content as seen in the orange box preview, and dense but with just enough information for a preview to now become a micro-conversion in the conversion funnel.

You may ask yourself, “Is there a difference between a landing page and a web site page?” For all intents and purposes, that’s a blinking-neon-green-sign reading a BIG YES!

We still have to work within the fundamentals of quality copy writing and rich keyword content writing just as a website being optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but there are some important differences to consider when it comes to a landing page.

First and foremost, an ad connected to a high quality landing page prevents ads from not being shown for irrelevance, elevates quality scores, lowers costs, increases leads and reduces bounce rates. Maybe you should read that sentence again— landing page not pages.

On a landing page, we know 10,000% what we want our visitors to do— we want them to convert. On many web sites, text is written to help people find what they want, either on that page, another page, or a link to a different site altogether. This often involves long, descriptive content on multiple pages to move that visitor down the search funnel path, further into the site down to a page 3, 4 or 5 clicks later. This is criminal waste of a user time who came with an intent to do what you wanted him to do – BUY!

On many websites, lot of times, clicks and re-clicks are required where the pages are not final destination pages for our visitors but guides to the final page. The intent is to redirect them (read : bounce them) off the page and point them in the right direction. Sure this is a good idea but what stops you from creating the page where the consumer can get what he wants.

Enter : Landing page. A landing page is to get a visitor to find what we want them to find, and find it right away within milliseconds. You may have heard us say it before, you’ve only got 3-5 seconds to get a visitor to convert = that’s the time the user gives you when they see the page and the info they need when coming from a paid search ad. If they do mot find what they want they are right back to the engine to find a more relevant ad.

So whats the big thing to remember – Remember the intent of the user clicking a paid search ad? its like him saying “I need it, and I need it now”. With a landing page, that the intent is met. With our landing pages, we know what we want the visitor to do and where we want them to do it. We DON’T want them to leave that page without converting, calling, signing-up, getting a free consult, speaking to a representative, receiving a discount, printing the coupon—or whatever else the call-to-action is.

A landing page not only tells the story we want to tell the visitor with our creative control and control over the content’s, it allows all of the events and conversion data to get captured in our data analysis tools. Without this data, it’s like flying blind in a snow storm over the Himalayas with the altitude controller at sea level. So, who wants to get on that flight which will hit a mountain?

Just how important is the landing page?

The landing page design, navigation, content, creative etc are as equally as important as the keyword set.

How important is it to use landing pages?

Equally important as using the right keyword set. You’ve pitched a value to someone who needs it through the keywords and the subsequent ad, now you have them where you want them—you simply need them to convert. The purpose of the design is to support and showcase the offer to generate a lead for the advertiser. It’s the page that they will have hoped for, guiding from the query submitted, to the special offer or call-to-action in the ad they wanted, to the information they seek to get their needs met right now.

If the message in that chain is broken, they’ll bounce. If the message is inconsistent, they’ll bounce. If the message is not contained in a way that we craft to stay consistent with all elements of the campaign and messaging, they’ll bounce. If the message is brief, a one-pager with the right information that screams “convert —> here!” staying consistent with the offer in the ad, and is exactly what they need, conversions galore and happy advertisers.

A landing page is the conclusive piece of the online direct marketing, such as the roadside billboard / hoarding to grab attention, and convert you into a new member of a gym. The landing page is the billboard across the expressway, it connects to a visitor screaming “Stop—convert here!” due the sheer connect based on intent and need of the consumer.

Needless to say such user experience can only lead to loyal customers for you.