Landing Page: What To Look Out For

Many website owners do not give enough thought to their landing pages. They offer too little information or much too much. A landing page needs to fulfil a very important function: it calls for action.

Often a lot of time, attention and money is put into the homepage, but in the end it rarely fulfils the function of a landing page. A landing page is, in short, the page where someone ends up when he visits your site. Often somebody comes to your site via a search engine, newsletter, social network or another site and your visitor will leave your website immediately if that page does not state what he was looking for.

Call to action

A good landing page calls for action, the so-called 'call to action' (cta), as it is also called by SEO specialists. And that action can be anything. From leading the consumer to purchasing, to completing a form and from signing up for a newsletter to sharing your website via asocial media button. The 'action' can therefore be anything, but in the end you want to convince your visitor to make that action. And so you must have a good, relevant landing page.

One action per landing page

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to place several calls to action on a landing page. This can lead to the final conversion, the actual action, being left behind or drastically less. Instead, place one call to action.

Do you want that people who visit your site also subscribe to your newsletter or that they follow you

through a social network? Place that bútton (s) on the page that follows after someone has carried out the original action. This ensures that both your visitor and you stay focused on that page on one action and that your visitor is not easily distracted during reading, scrolling and moving to action.

Everything on your landing page must therefore have a good function or not be there. Whether a part is useful or not can be discovered by carrying out various tests.

Important parts of a landing page

To be able to test the effectiveness of a landing page properly, you first need to be familiar with the components of such a page, because with those parts you can experiment

until you have the best 'call to action' page.

The URL

A not too insignificant part of your url is the query string. The part in the url that follows after the '?'. The query string is an accepted way to forward tracking information from an advertiser to, for example, your Google Analytics. The URL also has an important function for the visitor.

If all goes well, he can see in an instant where he is on the website. A URL can also be decisive for your image, so make sure that you not only have a reliable and professional-looking domain name, but also that the information after the domain name does not raise any eyebrows. Also pay attention to the part in the browser before the URL: if you let the visitor send confidential information, then an SSL connection is indispensable!

The title

The page title is very important. Many visitors base their click behaviour in a search

engine on the title of a page: it tells them what they can expect on the relevant landing page. Choose carefully the titles of your landing page; in any case, avoid the same

title for all pages on your site.

The content

Be careful with your content. You do not want to scare away a visitor because he suddenly gets a big piece of text for his choice. Make sure it is immediately clear what the

visitor can expect on the landing page, or what you have to offer him.

Keep it short, but powerful. And ensure a content-relevant content regarding the reason why your visitor is on your landing page. Is he there because he clicked on an advertisement that contained a certain promise, then make sure that your text repeats that same promise

again.

Also with regard to visual content, you must only post it if it is relevant and thus add something. Everything else distracts and you do not want that.

The form

With certain CTCs, a form is indispensable. Whether it's about signing up for a newsletter, requesting a quote or registering to download something, with a form you ask the visitor to go to the trouble to do some extra work. Do not make it too difficult or complicated for him. Ask him only for the information that you actually need. Everything else can deter the visitor

from sharing with you.

The buttons

The button is the simple, visual version of the aforementioned form. In order to have an effect, the button only needs one simple click. But it is sometimes difficult to get that seemingly simple click from the visitor. Therefore make sure you have a clear, visually appealing button with a short, powerful, active text as guidance.

Try, fine tune and adjust

For all the above parts of the landing page these tasks apply: try everything, look in your analytics program what does and does not score, finetune and adjust the parts where

necessary. The ultimate goal when creating a landing page is to evokes the most action and make your visiting customer an active customer - one that signs up for your

newsletters, that registers on your website or proceeds to purchase.