What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is, simply put, a web page that highlights one particular program, product, or service. If I were to inbox you on Facebook about the product or service your brand specializes in, how would you provide me with more information?

When you direct a potential client or customer to your website, you want to be intentional. Sharing your domain name is not enough; visitors will only be directed to your homepage and will likely get lost looking for the information needed. If one of my potential leads is interested in writing services, I would avoid responding to the inquiry with www.ratchetnerd.com. I would respond with www.ratchetnerd.com/grammar-pop , where they will immediately find information about our writing services. You want to share a link that will send this visitor directly to the product, service, or initiative they are seeking. This is why landing pages are a key component of landing sales.

When you click on a link included in a social media post or marketing campaign, you will most likely be directed to a landing page. The landing page could include content like a set of instructions for entering a drawing, a bio link page, information about a service or product, and even a coupon for a great deal! All of these are crafted with a goal in mind for the brand, whether a sale, a booked appointment, or signup.

What is the Difference Between a Landing Page & a Homepage?

As previously stated, the landing page is a targeted campaign for a particular product, service, or initiative. This page does not necessarily go into the details of the brand or mention other products or services (unless directly related to the information of interest). A landing page is preparing the visitor for an action geared towards the service or product; actions include purchasing, booking an appointment, or registering for an event or program.

A homepage can sometimes include a broad set of content. This page is where visitors may learn more about the brand, such as the main services or products offered, the mission and history of the brand, and even some of the brand’s affiliations. Although the landing page is important for landing sales and signups, the homepage is just as important for building credibility and background information about the brand.

When designing your website's homepage, you still want to include buttons and links that direct visitors to landing pages that are important to your brand goals. After all, the main goal of the entire website is to accumulate sales.

How should a landing page be set up?

Setting up the design of your landing page requires more than just a nice web design. The landing page must include detailed information about the product or service, as well as easy access for moving forward with signing up or purchasing.

In order to adhere to SEO best practices, you will want to write descriptions and content that include keywords within your niche. Additionally, it is important to make the Meta title of your align with the subdirectory you choose for your url (ie, the "web-design" in www.ratchetnerd.com/web-design). SEO development helps you to gain visibility on search engines like Google and also helps you to stay on topic when describing your service or product!

If you want to know what keywords and Meta titles you should be using for your website content, I have a webinar recording about how to develop the SEO for your website and gain visibility on search engines like Google. Click here to see the video on Youtube!

Not only do we need visitors to learn all about the product or service we offer but we want them to move forward with doing business with us. In order to guide them into the transaction, you want buttons, links, and/or contact forms to be strategically placed throughout the landing page.

Here’s an example: It is considered best practice for buttons to be of a contrasting color so they are easy to spot on the web page. Additionally, you want to include a ‘call to action’ on the button in order to provide the visitor with a clear directive on how to move forward in the process. Simply adding phrases like “Shop Now” and “Book Today” make a significant difference in your clickthrough rate.

Maintaining a Landing Page

If you have to land, you should stick it! When visitors land on your webpage, you want to keep them there long enough to complete your call to action. Monitoring the bounce rate is important for learning how to get the best results from your landing page. A bounce is when a visitor clicks off of your website without clicking anything or visiting any other pages - it's definitely not a good look. Your bounce rate can be calculated by dividing the number of visitors that left the page by the number of total visitors.

Total bounces / Total visitors * 100 = Bounce Rate

The bounce rate can make or break your search engine ranking because when search engines determine which websites are most useful for a set of keywords or searches, pages with higher bounce rates will be placed lower in ranking.

There are a few other metrics you should pay attention to when monitoring your landing page. Here are some examples of metrics you want to analyze to continue improving your landing page's ability to carry out its purpose of generating sales:

• Clicks Origins: Whether from a bio link, an ad campaign, or a click from an email campaign, you want to be aware of how a visitor ended up on the landing page. This information helps you to make adjustments for better results and provides insight on what you are already doing well.

• Possible reasons for page bounces (ie. lack of CTAs, page errors, difficult user interface, slow page loading speed, etc.): When you are able to determine why your bounce rate may be too high, you can address those issues efficiently. You can run A/B tests and other kinds of tests to see which designs work best.

• Conversion rate: The conversion rate can be determined by noting the number of conversions and dividing that by the total number of clicks or leads to the landing page.

# of Conversions / Total visits to landing page * 100 = Conversion Rate

After analyzing the metrics of your landing page and making the necessary changes in order to see success, you will be able to make great use of your landing pages! At Ratchet Nerd Group, we offer website management services and webpage revamp services for brands that are looking to get the most out of their website and benefit from their website’s design.

Learn more about these valuable web services here.