Here is a question for you. Have you ever been enticed enough by a piece of advertising to go into a shop you have never noticed before? Chances are the answer is 'yes'. So imagine the feeling of going into said shop to be greeted with a mess so catastrophic that it almost makes your wallet sprout legs of its own and vote with its feet. This sounds like a ludicrous idea, why would a shop allocate time, effort and money to get me (a customer) into the shop only to present me with something underwhelming? Well, it may sound mad, but sadly this happens on the internet every single day.
Making sure that this doesn't happen is the job of the landing page. Landing pages, if you are not familiar, are simply pages that are intended to be the first page a person sees when they arrive at your website. Some might say that every page on their website is a landing page and I would say that those people are very wise, well done. The idea of a landing page is a theme close to my heart, not only do I know what makes them tick, but it makes me actively angry when I see a website getting it so wrong.
Happy Landings
It is all very well spending money on paid search advertising, it is great to do some SEO and it is fantastic to build links to your website, but until you make sure that your landing pages are up to scratch, it is all very much wasted effort. The first thing I always encourage a website owner to remember is that in order to expect people to spend money on your website you must make the effort to make them feel welcome and make the whole process as pain free and enjoyable as possible.
One of my pet hates, and something of a 'mark of a bad landing page' is the habit that some e-commerce websites get into; pasting a manufacturers product description onto product pages, even if it doesn't make any sense. Yes, it may save time and 'be ok', but consider this, you are expecting a real person to come along and spend their hard earned money with you and you can't even take the time to tell them what the product is. That is like asking a shop assistant for more information and the assistant silently handing you a leaflet, and the leaflet is on a different product, infuriating! To add insult to injury, chances are that most of your competitors have done exactly the same thing, making duplicate content issues creep in and leaving a gaping opportunity shaped whole for your more savvy competitors to fill with useful information. Food for thought.
Size Matters
Something else which crops up from time to time is the layout of a landing page. Usually, in a a physical shop a nifty shop owner will put all of their best products on display in the front of the shop, this is great. On the web however, many website owners hide their products with lots of 'welcome' text and other useless pieces of information. Also consider people using smaller screens, you may have a 27" computer monitor to lord it over the web, but your user might only have a postage stamp sized notebook.
A great tool for highlighting the point I am making is Resize my Browser. This lets you resize your web browser window to a selection of common sizes used by Joe Public. That means that even if you have a monster screen with resolution so good it could make the Sun squint, you can still see what your website looks like through the eyes of a mere mortal. The advantage of this is that quite often you will see that important products are actually below the visible part of the page when the page loads for many people. If this is the case, fix it!
Common Sense
Perhaps the most important tool to posses when creating / optimising a landing page is good old common sense. Take a look at your page, does it display the most important things clearly? Is it easy to use? Is it clear what you would like the user to do next? remember that you know all about your products but your website visitor may not, explain everything in clear and concise detail. Show off images of products so that the user can see what they are buying. Leave no questions unanswered, but in case there is a question unanswered, make it easy for the user to ask you the question.
All of this stuff is logical and obvious but extremely important. Getting all of the ingredients right for a landing page can be a rewarding process, so make the most of the opportunity and you wont regret it!
