Landing Pages: The What & Why

landing-pages

If you are an e-commerce business or you are a small business focusing on an online marketing strategy; you have probably heard the words “Landing Page.”  What are landing pages?  They are single web pages designed to get the visitor to commit a very specific action or to deliver a very specific set of information.  They are pages with a specific purpose that usually help to drive sales in some way.

The Why

The premise behind why these types of pages are needed, is to cut down the amount of noise and distractions a visitor to your site might face in order to get a specific message across.  For instance, if you owned an olive oil company and wanted to push sales for a new flavored olive oil, you might want to create a landing page for that specific purpose.  Yes, you could create internal sidebar advertisements or banner advertisements throughout your site that called attention to this new product, but it will not be as effective as combining this strategy with a landing page specifically for the new product.

If you are advertising online and in traditional media to drive traffic to your site to buy this new product, your visitor may become distracted once they reach your site.  Even if the direct link they followed brought them directly to the product page, they may become distracted by other suggestions, advertisements on your site, or just the design of the site and navigation buttons.  While they are touring your site, they may forget why they came there in the first place and leave without making a purchase at all.  This is where a landing page built specifically for the new product can come into play.

If instead, a landing page was design that focused only on that product and included great and high converting sales copy, you could potentially land that sale.  Instead of driving traffic to your home page, product page or general store area of your site, drive the traffic to the landing page.  Visitors that followed your direct link to the landing page, will be more satisfied because the content they are seeing is directly related to their reason for the visit.  Landing on your home page may put them in the general category, but it does not relate specifically to what they were looking for.  The more relevant their “landing” on a “page” is to what they want or are looking for, the higher the chance is of you making a sale.  Relevancy is key.

Characteristics of a Great Landing Page

High converting landing pages utilize minimal graphic elements, are “clean” in their design presentation, simplistic and present information in an easy to digest format.  A visitor should arrive on the page and know exactly what you want them to know and what you want them to do.  Going back to our olive oil company example, the new product’s landing page should tell them the what, and the why.  The why needs to also be relatable in terms of why they need the product to begin with.  An easy way to do this is to combine using the AIDA (attention, interest, details, action) concept with the visitor’s need to know “What’s in it for me? Why do I need this?”

Avoid adding to many “actions” that the visitor may become distracted by and try to perform.  For example, navigation links, social media links, newsletter sign-ups, ebook downloads, etc should not be included unless that is the focus of the landing page or is pertinent to the call to action (CTA) on the landing page.  Make sure that it is very clear what you want them to do and as much as possible, keep that particular action “above the fold.”  In design speak, anything a visitor sees when they land on a page without the need to scroll, is considered “above the fold.”  When a visitor has to scroll down to see the rest of the content, that information is considered below the fold.

When designing your landing page, assume that everyone has ADD or a short attention span.  In our go-go-go society, people often do not have the time, patience or attention span to read long, boring copy or wait for you to get to the point with your copy.  Think PowerPoint presentation and keep it short, relevant and use bullet points.  Use big buttons and CTA text that stands out and calls attention to the action that you would like for them to commit.

Including testimonials, user reviews, and social proof (tweets and status messages on social networks from others) are also great ways to help reinforce why the visitor needs to buy your product or commit the action you are trying to get them to commit.

By removing a lot of the noise and distractions a user might face on your main site; you have a better chance of getting higher conversion rates from your visitors. Streamlining things and putting a laser like focus on what you want them to do, keeps them more focused on that task than they would be if you directed them to a more generalized area of your site.

This is especially helpful and beneficial if you use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms like Google’s Adwords.  Link those ads directly to your landing page and you will see better results and conversions.

Social Media Day is Sunday, June 30th

 

Social Media Day

Social Media Day is being celebrated on Sunday, June 30, 2013 and there are a ton of events scheduled to happen on this day to celebrate social media.  Yours truly will be co-hosting a TweetChat with Janeen Geary Violante of Hudson Valley, a graphic design and web design firm.

We will be asking and answering questions on “Image Curation & Creation” and I have decided to put together an eGuide to show you how to use your mobile device to create visual content that you can share across your social media profiles.  Fill out the form below to receive your complimentary copy!

Your Business Needs A Blog :: Part 2

Why You Should Blog

Last week I talked about why your business needs a blog; and because I was fearful that if I made the post too long, you would get bored, I broke it into two parts.  This post will focus more on the increase in traffic aspect of why you need a blog.

How does a blog increase website traffic?

I mentioned last week, that if the content was informative and helpful to the reader, it could result in a purchase.  What I did not mention was that the content is the reason why the visitor landed on your blog post.  They searched for something on a search engine site like Google, and your blog post was one of the relevant search results that they clicked on.  With a little search engine optimization (SEO) help, your blog post may have been in the number one position on the search results page of their query.

Another reason why your blog post was where the visitor could see it in their search results, instead of being buried on page fifty-seven, is because you have been consistently blogging.  In the eyes of search engines, your website is considered relevant not just because that particular post was relevant to the visitor’s query, but because your site is “updated.”  Search engines take into account whether a website is being maintained or updated with fresh content.  Consistently blogging from your site adds new content, and new content is updated content in the eyes of search engines.  If you are not blogging, adding new products or updating the content on your website in any way, then search engines see your site as being stale.  Stale sites get buried on page fifty-seven.

Many businesses have a website designed, and because the information does not need to be changed very often, they only update them once or twice a year.   Normally this is only done to change the copyright year in the footer of the site or remove a staff member’s name that is no longer with the company.  Consider this scenario:  Company A sells pecans, has competitive prices and offers excellent customer service, but only updates their website once or twice a year.  Company B sells pecans that are priced above average and has a couple of complaints with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but blogs weekly.  Customer C searches the internet to find pecans for sale and Company B shows up in Customer C’s search results on page one.  Company A is on page fifty-seven.  Although Company A is the better choice for buying pecans, Customer C will likely never find that out.

If you created a web site so that you could have a web presence, take it one step further and add a blog.  By doing so, you will increase your web presence and your earning potential.

Your Business Needs a Blog :: Part 1

Why You Should Blog

When working with new web design clients, one of the questions that I ask when sorting out the content that will go on their website, is whether or not they will have a blog.  Often times, their answer is in the form of a question, “Do I need one?  My answer is always “yes.”  I truly believe that every business should have a blog because it is a relatively low cost way to market your business.

Having a blog drives more traffic to your site.  Before I started blogging for my business, I was averaging less than 10 visitors a month.  Not per day or per week, but 10 visitors per month.  Granted, at that time I was still working as a graphic designer in corporate America and freelancing only on the side.  I built a website like most businesses do, to establish a web presence and showcase my portfolio.  In my free time, I built an unrelated site to blog about some of my interests in natural hair, art and healthy living.  Within a few months, I was averaging over 1,000 visitors per month on that site.  10 visitors per month for a business that helps put food in my mouth compared to 1,000 visitors per month for something I do for fun, about random stuff that I like?  Yes, I thought the same thing you are thinking right now.

When I decided to freelance full-time, I also decided to dedicate time to blog for this site as well as my other site.  Actually, this site has become a significantly higher priority over my “fun site.”  Within a few months time, I saw my site traffic triple to over 30 visitors per month.  In a year’s time, I was averaging over 100 visitors per month and I only posted a new blog post once a week.  Not only did my website traffic increase, but it was what I consider “quality” traffic.  I blog about topics relating to: graphic design, marketing for small businesses and projects that I have done.  The services that my business offers relates to the topics that I write about.  As a matter of fact, most of my blog posts are born out of the questions that I get from clients; and friends and family that like to pick my brain.  That means that the majority of the visitors to my blog fall within the demographics of my client base.  In my opinion, that makes it “quality” traffic.  The added bonus is that this “quality” traffic only costs me the time it takes for me to sit down and type.

This leads me to my next point.  Having a blog can increase revenue.  It is all about the content.  If you have quality content related to your products and/or services, it can influence a visitor to want to learn more about your business, which can lead to a purchase.  How many times have you turned to the internet for information on a particular product or service and ended up on a blog?  If what you read was informative and helpful, did you do some further browsing on that site?  Did you make a purchase or contact them for further information about their services?  If you answered yes, then you fell within the category of being “quality” traffic for that particular site.  I have had several clients that were the result of landing on one of my blog postings and many more inquiries into the services that I offer as a result of reading my blog.  Again, the cost to market in this way for me, is just time.

Blogging as a form of marketing your business is fairly inexpensive.  If you have a website, then you already have a domain name and hosting.  You may have to get with your web designer if you are not very technically adept, but it will be fairly easy to add a blog to your existing site.  If your website was built within the last two years or so, chances are that it is already built on a content management system (CMS) like WordPress.  Websites that are built on platforms like WordPress make it easy to add a blog.  Other than time, which I consider a cost, most of your out of pocket expenses to blog will be related to content creation.

Can you spell and write a decent sentence?  Then you can probably write a blog post.  If not, you can pay to have one written using a freelance writer or a service like scripted.com.  If you are not sure where to find a freelance writer, check out sites like odesk and elance.  Not sure what to write?  Think like your customer.  What would they want to read?  What information would be helpful to them?  Remember, it’s not about you, but about them.  Help them and they will reward you with their patronage.

Think Like Your Customer, Make More Revenue

You hear it asked all of the time, “How do I make more revenue?”  The simple answer is to think like your customer.  This simple rule can make a world of difference when applied to your marketing plans, product development and the services you offer.  Often times, businesses approach their marketing from their own perspective, making money.  Your business’ goal is to sell, sell, sell, but you can actually sell more if you try to think from the perspective of your customer.  Put yourself in their shoes.  Ask yourself why your current customers buy your product or use your service?  Yes, it solves a problem that they have, but what made them buy your product or use your service over something or someone else?  If you can identify what that is, you can use it to your advantage and begin to look at your business through their eyes.  Give them what they want to see, hear and how they want to see and hear it.

No one, not even you, wants to be “sold to,” but businesses constantly bombard potential customers with “buy me,” “try me,” “I’m great!”  It’s all about them, the business, the product, the service.  What about the customer?  Step into their shoes and make it about them and not about you.  Here is a fictional example to illustrate my point, Lucy is a tax professional who’s clients love her because she is a certified tax professional.  This eases their minds and gives them confidence that their tax returns are done right, because they are afraid of being audited.  In her flyers to new potential customers, she uses this to her advantage.  The sales copy on the flyer plays on the fear of being audited while showcasing the fact that she is a certified professional and her years of expertise.  She even lists that in 5 years, she has only had one client selected to be audited, and she was able to help them through that process with a favorable end result.  Potential clients that view the flyer are still being “sold to,” but the language feels more relevant to them.

If you take this approach, thinking like your customer, you will be able to better engage them and sell to them.