Landing Pages: What They Are, Why You Need One, and How to Create Them Effectively

In general, attracting more visitors to your website will result in more customers, clients, or subscribers. But what can you do to capture more customers for any given level of site traffic?

This is where conversion rates come into play. A conversion rate is a ratio: the number of site visitors who take the hoped-for action (like buying or subscribing), divided by the total number of site visitors.

Landing pages are a feature that can help significantly increase your site’s conversion rate, allowing your site to really capitalize on the traffic it receives. By creating a page on your website whose sole focus is to elicit a specific outcome or action from your readers, you can make it easier for them to take the next step in the sales process, and make your site a more effective sales and marketing tool.

Landing pages are a valuable tool in the arsenal of anyone promoting their offerings online. In this article, we will look at some uses of landing pages, the benefits of adding one to your site, and what makes an effective landing page.

What is a Landing Page?

While a website can have many landing pages, each page of this type should be focused on provoking a specific action from your visitors. Some of the popular outcomes or goals that are promoted with landing pages include:

• Purchasing a product or service
• Booking an appointment
• Entering contact details for a call back
• Subscribing to an email newsletter

If you are selling or promoting a product, service or opportunity on your website, then each time you mention that item in a blog post or article, you could include a link to the relevant landing page. The landing page would then be totally focussed on promoting and selling that item or opportunity.

As well as frequently linking to your landing page from related posts on your site, other ways to send visitors to your landing page include:

• Adding a text or graphical link to the sidebar of your site or header menu
• Including a link to the page in your email newsletters
• Using paid advertising to direct visitors straight to the page from other sites or search engines

It doesn’t really matter how you send visitors to your landing page, but it is important that the page is relevant to your audience, and that it contains the right kind of information to encourage them to take a specific action related to the item you are trying to promote.

Why You Need Landing Pages

If you are not doing all you can to turn visitors into leads or customers, then your publishing and marketing efforts could be going to waste.

If you’ve been blogging regularly, and adding great content to your site on a frequent basis, as well as building your email subscriber list then you should be starting to see an increase in visitors to your website. While this is great in itself, if you are not doing all you can to turn those visitors into leads or customers, then your publishing and marketing efforts could be going to waste.

By adding effective calls-to-action to your content which funnel readers to your landing page, you can greatly increase the number of visitors who make the transition from passive readers to engaged followers.

Landing pages also allow you to direct all your sales and promotional efforts to one single page on your website. This can remove the need for you to actively promote your offerings in every post, which at best can be repetitive and at worst can alienate readers who weren’t expecting a constant barrage of self-promotion.

By including descriptive links in your content that lead to a relevant landing page, you can still share useful and valuable information with your readers without overpowering them with your sales pitch at every turn. However, when the visitor arrives at the landing page, they get all the information they need in order to make an informed decision about the opportunity you are offering them.

In short, landing pages are a good way to keep your informative and helpful content separate from your sales material, while still allowing you to effectively promote your services.

What Makes a Great Landing Page

A clear desired action

It’s important to be clear on the purpose of the page and what the desired outcome from the reader is. Keeping this in mind while designing the page and writing the copy will make it easier to create a landing page that effectively converts readers into leads, customers, or clients.

No distractions

Since a landing page has a single focus, landing pages typically do not contain many of the traditional elements of a WordPress page, such as sidebars, menus, or links to other pages or sites. By stripping away on-page distractions, you can increase the chances that the reader will focus on the content and take in your message.

A concise and powerful heading

The heading of the landing page should immediately grab visitors’ attention, and direct them toward the value your business has to offer.

Clear and persuasive copy outlining the benefits of the offer

The landing page’s text content should build a persuasive case why readers should take the desired action.

Multiple, strong calls-to-action throughout the page

Visitors should be asked directly and repeatedly to take the desired action. These calls to action must be highly visible—it should be clear to visitors where they are being directed to take the desired action.

Conclusion

In summary, a landing page should have a single objective, with all content on the page focused on directing the reader to complete that desired action—whether it’s purchasing a product, booking an appointment, entering contact details, or any other action that will turn visitors into leads or customers.

In our next post we will be taking a look at the different ways to create a landing page using WordPress, so you can add one to your site and make the most of your site traffic.