Those of us old enough to remember those heady days of the Apollo Space Program will recall that much was made of the choice of landing sites. The same was true later of the Mars landers. The aim was to find a spot that would prove to be both safe and relatively welcoming, and then provide an interesting environment for the visitors to explore.
Here are the basics
These are pretty fair guidelines when landing pages are being created for your online business or presence, and in the SEO techniques used to help deliver prospects to them. Sadly, many pages that claim to be “landing” are, in reality, simply either home pages or slight variations on that theme. The result can be unsatisfied or confused visitors, leading to lost selling or contact opportunities.
It’s vital that your landing pages are created to specifically greet and move on those people who have clicked through from a Google search, Twitter, Facebook or other social media or marketing link. Otherwise it’s like arriving at the entrance to a store, wishing to visit a specific department, and then being provided with absolutely no help in locating your destination. Visitors arrive at each landing page to meet their specific need or interest. Therefore, there may need to be a great many of them for you to truly maximise your business potential.
Each should be clearly identifiable as yours, but immediately address the reasons for the visit – the product or service sought, key benefits to be delivered, or problem to be assisted with. Secondly, these are landing pages, providing no more than an initial destination. This means that their next task is to move the visitor on through your website to where they finally need to be. This might be your order placement facility, or the place where further information is delivered and direct contact achieved.
And Lastly
Unlike the situation for those vehicles touching down on the Moon, your landing sites should not also prove to be places where it’s easy to leave and head elsewhere! It pays to take time to make sure that visitors to such pages are welcomed, quickly shown to be in the right place, their interest strengthened, desire built, and then their further action ensured.
