Website - landing pages

Driving traffic to your website is the goal of most SEO, SEM and or banner ads. I believe we all understand the benefits of driving traffic. Naturally, when landing on a company website, there are so many messages that we are trying to relay, that sometimes our visitors get lost, maybe even forget why they arrived or worse get aggravated by not being able to easily find the information they seek. Certainly with multiple corporate requirements it can prove difficult to focus on multiple tasks at the same time.

One way to avoid mixed messages and to ensure that your visitors can focus on the task at hand, is to build landing pages. Landing pages can be single source, single product or even a single offer. Landing pages allow you to fully evaluate your SEO, SEM, or banner ads. They allow you to segment your marketing budgets as well as segment and evaluate the ROI. They also assist in improving conversion rates, let's face it, generally your customer is looking for something specific and a landing page fills that need perfectly. Nothing can be better.

As your digital agency here are a few simple tips for creating great landing pages;

Clear & concise copy
Single focus
Direct call to action
Professional design
Avoid unnecessary navigation & links
Keep it clean & open
Incorporate your SEO in the page tiles and headings
Ecommerce easy to execute
Consistent messaging

Using these techniques will ensure your visitor doesn't get lost in the shuffle and can focus on the task at hand. Conversion is the name of the game, if your site is built to sell a product or service, or provide information, you need to ensure that your  page converts and landing pages assist in do so. Don't forget to use analytics that will provide the proof that things are proceeding as planned.

Landing pages can assist you in boosting your conversions and your sales. Like a one way street, a properly constructed landing page results in improved traffic flow.

Michael Bickerton, JBM Interactive Ltd, August 2010