Recently, I had a discussion with my colleagues about the qualities of best landing page, why landing page is so important & important factors which we should consider before designing a landing page. We have discussed a lot of things there & I am trying to summarize it here in this post.
What is Landing Page & Why it is important?
Landing page is the page where visitor's land immediately after clicking on your Ad. Therefore, it is most important that your landing page must be in correlation with your ad text. Landing page instantly capture the visitor's attention & compel them to take the required action; so basically it is a call-to-action page (this way it is the most important concern for the advertisers). It is very helpful for the success of any advertising program.
If the landing page is of good quality then it creates the positive user experience which actually increases the chances of getting conversions or sales. So, ultimately it is an important contributing factor in increasing ROI.
Landing page has its contribution/impact on the quality score (in AdWords campaign) as it decreases the minimum keyword bid this may mean lower minimum cost-per-click bids (CPC bids) for ads, increases the ad's position on search pages (in sponsored links; obviously ;)) and improves the chances that your placement-targeted ads will win a position on your targeted placements. So, beware poor quality will reduce the chances of top placements of ads.
Here, I would like to mention one more important point which one of my colleagues has raised i.e. is it mandatory to create a separate a different landing page instead of pushing the visitors directly to the home page of the site?
I personally believe that we should avoid sending the visitors (from PPC advertising efforts specially) to the home page as it is designed for the wider audiences not for highly targeted or specific one & when a visitor click on a PPC ad then he/she expects to land on the very relevant & specific page to his/her keyword. Generally, home page represents our entire product range & service vectors & it is very unlikely for visitors to further navigate entire site for their relevant search. By this mean relevancy is very important for an effective advertising program.
Landing Page Quality Factors:
The first impression of a website by a user occurs in less than 10 seconds, in this very small duration visitor generally decide whether to stay on a website or move to another.
So, we have very less time (few seconds) to convey the relevancy, importance, quality of our company through the page design.
When visitors click on the ad then they should land at a page clearly displaying the information or product/service offered in the ad. If users don't immediately find what prompted them to click on your ad, they're more likely to leave your site without converting.
We should try different version of text, image and layout on our landing page to find out the most effective page. Here, we should try Website Optimizer. The results will show what's most effective in increasing conversions on your page and boosting your return on investment.
The landing page should be easy to navigate so that visitors can easily find what they are searching for. We should create a simple process for users to complete transactions. The final page where visitor can complete the transactions should be easily approachable from the landing page.
Landing page should not be a splash page as it can confuse a visitor. We should avoid using flash, animation & other fancy code to fascinate the visitors as all these increases the loading time of the page. We should focus on simple & clear layout that allows visitors to find what they want in the shortest time available.
Landing page should not use pop-ups & pop under as they result in to negative user experience.
Landing page should have relevant & original content. We should also take care of the transparency.
Go through Landing page guide to find detailed information about landing page quality guidelines & checklist.
So we actually have about 10 seconds to convince the customer that he was directed to the right place. the landing page and the wordpress theme design has to be both eye-catching and interesting. Where can i find some examples?
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