The 7 Questions about Landing Pages That You Should Be Asking Your Web Designer

You hear the words landing page getting tossed around a lot, but as a small business owner it is difficult to keep up with all the latest marketing jargon. You understand that a landing page is important for SEO, but you are unsure of what it is or how it works. Yet you don’t want to seem inexperienced, so you don’t ask questions. Here are seven landing page questions and their answers so you don’t limit your business’ potential to get new leads and increase revenue.

1. Why do I need a Landing Page?

A landing page is part of a multichannel marketing strategy to capture inbound leads generated by social media and SEO. Usually landing pages are used in pay-per-click campaigns, meaning people will click on a designated link to be directed to a highly optimized marketing message. The landing page message is targeted to a specific corresponding niche, business function, or service offered related to keywords in the campaign. The landing page is optimized so the user has a great introduction to the business and hopefully converts to a paying customer.

Landing pages give you the best chance to control what your targeted audience sees, therefore increasing your chance at turning them into new customers. The landing page is designed to make your brand extremely relevant to that target group, giving you a chance to show off your value proposition to lead them towards conversion.

There has to be an engaging incentive to get customers to stick around, such as a special offer or an email subscription to receive a discount or a prize. Most small businesses aim to get an email out of the user to continue marketing messaging campaigns.

2. What is the benefit of optimizing a Landing Page?

The landing page gives you an opportunity to target your audience. While a homepage is an open book, hoping the user will see something they like, an optimized landing page has specific conversion goals to improve the customer conversion rate.

Business owners often choose multiple optimized landing pages depending on the type of conversion they want to receive. Some go for a purchase, but many want to capture contact information or have the user download a resource with branded marketing messaging.

The best way to track this optimization is through Google Analytics goal setting, as well as measuring the bounce rate of each landing page.

3. How do I optimize a Landing Page?

The best way to optimize your landing page to be more effective is to find a way to quickly convey your unique value proposition without making the user feel like they have spam being shoved in their face, causing them to “bounce” of your page (this is referred to as your bounce rate).

Many marketers say that interruption marketing, such as a popover message, is one of the best ways to convey the message and increase email marketing subscription conversions. To make the interruption marketing effective, you need to:

• Make the messaging highly targeted to the user.
• Offer something unexpected and valuable to the user.
• Have the message convey relevancy quickly.

If you don’t hit these benchmarks, the message will come across as annoying and forceful. Other tactics you can use to optimize your landing page include:

• Clear navigation with little distraction.
• Guide users to the conversion point.
• Use the attention ratio – an assessment of conversion points to non-conversion links on the page with the goal being a 1:1 ratio.

4. What is the difference between an Optimized Page and a Landing Page?

Optimized pages are similar to landing pages, but are optimized with a certain set of keywords to rank higher than the homepage with organic searches, using a SEO strategy. This ensures the page that gives the business the highest chance of conversion and relevance is clicked on before any other.

Optimized pages are used when a specific keyword is targeted through SEO and organic results to direct to that page. Marketers search for keywords that have the most impact and search volumes to create higher conversions and a smaller bounce rate.

When it comes to landing pages, marketers can only control which PPC results, directs to which landing page. Whereas this optimized page method is dependent on what ranks higher with Google, putting the search engine in control.

5. If I have these pages, why do I still need a Homepage?

A landing page is different from a homepage. The homepage provides essential information for non-targeted users while a landing page is highly targeted. Landing pages are created for different stages of a sales funnel while the homepage is an open invitation to any user who comes across it.

The homepage should give a quick gist of what your business is all about and still be engaging so the user stays on the page. As long as the homepage is easy to navigate through, the user will have a positive experience with the brand and explore the website’s offerings, decreasing your bounce rate.

6. How do I know my Landing Pages are working?

The most important thing you can do to keep your landing pages at a high conversion rate is to keep the messaging updated and relevant. You need to know what your audience wants to see. This takes some extra analytics and an innate understanding of your users’ behavior with your brand.

One way to accomplish this is with A/B testing to find what your audience is doing on your website. Here is how it works. You will create two different landing page messages targeted to the same audience. Half of that audience will see one message while the other half sees the other. After the test, you will see which messaging resonated more with your target audience.

You can also use heat mapping to figure out the behaviors of your audience. Heat mapping follows the steps a user takes to consume information by tracking their cursor movements. You will be able to see which parts of your message are engaging and which are distracting or irrelevant to the user’s journey.

Whether you use heat mapping or A/B testing, you will be able to find what messaging your audience finds valuable and keep your landing pages effective with a high conversion rate.

7. How do I know if my messaging is just being annoying?

Your message can very easily fall into the annoying category. It is a fine line to walk. By following the above answers to your questions very carefully, you can ensure your messaging is engaging and highly targeted to specific users.

Also consider different conversion points for first-time visitors and repeat visitors. If a first-time visitor performs your conversion and then revisits the landing page, don’t keep asking for the conversion they already supplied. By implementing cookie tracking, you can avoid this and disable the conversion points for repeat visitors.

One major consideration you need to take into account to avoid your brand becoming annoying is mobile optimization. There are now more mobile users than desktop users on the internet. Everything on your landing page, especially the interruption marketing, needs to be mobile friendly. Even if the messaging is flawless, it has to be easy to access on mobile.

Landing pages come down to one major point – showing the right, optimized message to a targeted audience at the perfect moment. Now that all your questions are answered, start creating and optimizing your landing pages to increase your all-important conversion rate.

For more information about web design and conversion rate optimization, visit the Magicdust website.