In marketing, the term landing page refers to a page on your website that will receive direct traffic with the intention of selling. If you have one primary product, then you can use a landing page in order to promote that and to drive conversions. In fact, for many internet marketing businesses, a landing page will be the single most important tool when it comes to increasing turnover and profit. Learn more…
If you have ever been to a website that has tried to sell you an ebook, an online course, or some kind of work from home scheme, then chances are that you have encountered a landing page. The landing page is the page that you will direct traffic to in order to sell that product. That is its only goal and it serves no other purpose in the broader context of the website or the business. That in turn means that the page should have no other advertising, it should have no other links or navigation elements and it should entirely be focussed on selling and promoting that single thing.
The Basics of Design and Copy
So, a landing page is a page on a website that exists solely as a platform through which to sell a product or a service. It's called a landing page because the objective is simply to get traffic to 'land' on that page and then to sell directly from there. If you can convince people to buy well enough on this page, then simply directing traffic there becomes a way to earn money, and you can then justify using overheads such as AdWords in order to accomplish it - a– long as you make more money from the traffic than you lose getting them there, then of course you're on to a winner.
The Site Design
Likely you will have seen landing pages before, and if you've ever clicked on an AdSense link for a fitness program or making money online eBook then you will have encountered them then. These pages are noticeable as they often have several things in common. First of all, they will be very long and narrow pages that force you to scroll down the page while reading. Next you will notice that these pages don't have any other links along the top. These aren't pages on a larger website they are just stand alone pages.
So, what is the reason for these two design choices? Well first and foremost the lack of links is of course to ensure that you don't get distracted and that you don't leave the page. There are no other pages for you to look at as far as you are concerned at this point and there's nothing to lure you away.
At the same time the narrow layout has another advantage, and this is to ensure that the reader is forced to scroll down the page continuously. By getting them to do this you are then able to make them feel almost committed to your product – because they've spent the time and energy scrolling down that far they are then going to want to buy something, not just leave empty handed after they've spent so long reading and scrolling. Or at least this is the central concept.
Finally, these sites will also use a lot of buy buttons which will be repeated throughout the page as you scroll down. The purpose of these is to ensure that when someone thinks they might be interested in making a purchase, they can then go ahead and easily click buy without even having to scroll further, thus you are able to take advantage of their impulses.
The Text
Something else will also most likely stand out when you come to read these sites, and that's the way the text is presented. Not only will the content on a landing page be designed in such a way that it is very persuasive and compelling, but you will also likely notice that it uses lots of bold, a fair amount of italics, and ample underlining and even CAPS. All this then means that the content kind of pops off the page and lures you in.
The way that the content will be written will be so that you really can't help but read. This will be accomplished by its using an emotive subject, a narrative format and a very direct and to-the-point vocabulary. The site will also probably employ a number of other strategies, for instance you will probably find that they use a lot of questions in a bid to replicate what their audience is thinking, and as a way to get you more involved still. They will probably also use testimonials, facts and figures and other authoritative sources in order to further drill home their point. And finally, you will find that they add some kind of special deal or time limit in order to get you to buy right away.
More Things to Consider
A landing page is a page designed entirely around the objective of selling a single product. However, what is interesting to note is just how much this has in common with the squeeze page. The squeeze page is a very similar concept, except that here the objective is to get people to sign up to a mailing list rather than buy a product. In terms of layout and writing though, there are a lot of similarities.
Consider too the power of split testing. In a split test, two slightly different versions of the same page are compared and small changes are introduced gradually. Each time a new change is introduced, it is then kept or abandoned on the basis of how that version of the site performs compared to the baseline.
