16. What is a Landing Page?
By definition, a landing page is a place where your internet Visitors land. Where do they land from? Well they could have arrived from a link which you posted online or they are a result of a search engine marketing campaign. Hence the landing page could be your website's home page, inner page or any other page specifically created for a campaign. In most cases, when you do not want to make any changes to your website, but need a very specific page for a promotional campaign to communicate and interact with visitors you would need to make a page, which in this case will be the Landing Page.
A landing page is not just for visitors to come and be happy about, what is important is the purpose of it. Landing pages should have a customised feel and pitch your communication in the most effective manner to the visitor. The objective of the landing page is to convince the visitors that this is the right place for them and thereby lead them further to interact with you. Your chances of engaging the visitor will increase, if you have the right Structure, content, language, design and a smart uncluttered colour palette. Strategic use of copy and images will help in conveying the message faster. One must also remember that Call-to-Action plays a very important role in Landing pages. More than one call to action buttons always help. Too many is a bad idea. And if you are asking for personal information make sure you have a strong privacy policy as a reassurance for the visitors.
Implement all these and you will increase conversion rates.
To understand better, when you have visitors to the homepage of your website, you are asking them to spend time figuring out what they need to do before they take any action. They have visited your site because they are looking for some answers or solutions. Basically, if your site navigation and Usability is not upto the mark they will end up leaving the website in a few seconds thereby adding to your bounce rate. But when you give the same visitors precisely what they were looking for they will find the page useful and you will increase the chances of holding them for more time and therefore better chances of a conversion. Hence, the Landing page differs from a website by virtue of offering very few distractions or links. It is direct and serves the need of the visitors.
When you decide to use a Landing Page, your objective should be to be able to control where people will be coming from and direct them where you want their attention and time. Your goals can be registrations, sign-ups, sales etc. Landing page becomes important when you are paying for the traffic you get, be it SEM / PPC, banner ads etc . It is important to understand here, that the communication or the ads which get these visitors to your landing page/s also have to be in sync with the page itself.
