Monday, 29 October 2012

Landing Pages… convert the curious into the customer





A well crafted landing page should be focused and created to target your audience, and potential customers, for your business. It should be clean and uncluttered, easy to navigate, promote a concise message about the product or service your business offers and provides a clear CTA (Call To Action), a means (button or link) to prompt the viewer to follow a path (or convert) to a sale. The goal is to have a high conversion rate by prompting the curious, potential visitor to your page to register their information (to generate leads) or convert them into a buying customer.  But first you have to direct the curious to your landing page.

The landing page is reached though an existing link, often in an advertisement, or by way of an online search. You can boost the accuracy of that search for your business by implementing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. These can easily be built into your site and landing page during it's construction and can play an important role in placing your site before competitors in search results.

Google, a leader in online search, offers suggestions to assist in landing page optimization. Search data is collected by way of "web crawlers" (or bots) that search the Internet to gather site data. You can assist the search bots and help push your landing page to the top of search results by following some simple page creation rules:
  • creation of unique, accurate and descriptive web page titles (HTML <Title> tag)
  • using the "description" meta tag in your HTML code (using words relevant to your business)
  • short but descriptive page file names or links (URLs - Uniform Resource Locator), using hyphens as separators so bots can recognize the individual words (eg, dress-formal.html - yes; DressFormal.html - no, words not easily searchable)
  • make site navigation and the Call To Action easy to find and access
You've help guide potential customers to your landing page through boosting search results, now the structure of the page itself comes into play. The following video provides 8 tips for optimizing your landing page.






Your business wants and needs a high "conversion rate" to be successful. Boosting the search results for your site through SEO techniques and implementing the design tips provided will greatly help convert the "curious browser" into a "buying customer".


References

SEO Starters Guide -
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Learn how Google discovers, crawls, and serves web pages - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897

Landing Page Optimization - 

Examples of small business landing pages -
http://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/8-small-business-landing-pages-critiqued-for-conversion/

What is a landing page -
http://www.vertster.com/landing-page-design/what-is-a-landing-page/

8 Tips video -
http://www.vertster.com/landing-page-design/what-is-a-landing-page/

Search Bot image -
http://seoyourblog.com

Submitted by Pamela Ramos Peraza

23 comments:

  1. Good job. I guess every company do want and need a "conversion rate", which is a key step to develop potential customers into real ones, to be successful. Plus, it is a trial test towards company to see whether they trully understand what our target market want from marketers.

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  2. Establishing a good landing page is very important, especially because you don't want to let them stray away from your page. Making a smooth transition to an original and high quality landing page will attract your consumers to stay and venture. Good job on the post!

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  3. This blog was very well written, and gave me an excellent idea of what a good landing page consists of. All of the key points you listed would be good for any business creating a landing page to understand. By creating an appropriate and compelling landing page, you will have a better chance of having potential customers be more interested in staying on your page.

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    1. Thank you Christina. I think that an interesting and well done landing page is the key to success for increasing-keeping customers relationships.

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    2. Yes a interesting and well done landing page will attract customers. However, keeping your landing page simple and up-to-date is also cost effective for the company. Landing pages are crucial! You only get one "first impression."

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  4. Great blog Pam. Your blog really helped me to better understan what a landing page is and why they are so important. I find it interesting that there are so many different ways to have readers sent to your landing page. Businesses should take these landing pages very seriously because it is potentially the customer's first visit to the compamy's website.
    Overall, great job!

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    1. Thank you Amanda!yes, I agree with you, business should take landing pages very seriously, not only for customers visiting your website, but also for them take action (buy your product or service. To have a clear CTA (call to action)is crucial for your landing page.

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  5. Lading pages are very useful when their well crafted. Their has been several times where this has happend to me but it was well designed and brought my attention to the product/service on the page. Good Job

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  6. landing pages are very important in converting lookers to buyers. ive seen some horrible landing pages and it has definitely stopped me from using the site further. awesome post.

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  7. If visitors will spend a longer time or do more clicking on your website will depend on how well you design your landing page. It will either tell the visitor to stay or leave. Thank you for the great information ant the references. great job.

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  8. Having a successful landing page depends on lots of things, and I really believe you have covered most, if not all of those in your blog post! Very well done!
    I like how you broke down each step and showed what each term meant in the process.
    I also liked how you demonstrated a couple of different examples to show!

    Well Done!

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    1. Great job highlighting the importance of landing pages, and I completely agree that this tool is critical in converting simple visitors into potential leads. However, from my experience the first results of a search that are highly optimized, are more generic than a result with less optimization that could be found on a lower rank.
      Great work.

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  9. Having your landing page appear first when searching in Google would be ideal especially because people are not going to search through pages to find your website. The landing page is essential to provide the viewer a targeted seamless transition. Whatever the search was should be something that would appear on the landing page that would entice the reader to continue on and stay on that webpage and click around.

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  10. Excellent post, landing pages are very important for a website which has ads displayed on other website and when it us searched in a search engine because if their is no landing page for the ad that the website has up and the search made for the particular part of the website, it would become difficult for the visitors to reach the specific page they intend to visit by clicking the ad or by searching it . Landing pages are useful for a website while targeting their market when they have their ads and searches that targets specific customer segmentation.

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  11. It is amazing how much we've learned from all our blogs. When I first saw the words "landing pages" I had no clue what they were! As marketers, we know it will be impossible to forget what a landing page is and the benefits.

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  12. A unique landing page is vital as you need something to attract a consumer to not stray away from what we want them to do. I really enjoyed the video that you posted as well. Its amazing how much this class as well as these blog posts taught myself about web marketing. Good post Pam!

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  13. At my co-op over the summer I designed several landing pages, and it really has more to do with how you present your information, rather than what information you present. We would design super cool infographics and really neat ways to present our products (and customer's products), and I would hear from my boss, after the page's launch, how they performed. It was a really cool experience, and we would be able to see what worked at what didn't. Good times.

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  14. Because so many consumers want to buy online or research online before purchasing a product is very important that a company's website can be found. If consumer's don't see you online they will be less likely to buy from you. Having an effective landing page is a way to become a consumers potential option when they are researching which product is best for them.

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  15. Online shopping is 24/7, and if the consumer can't find your website, you will not make the sale. People enjoy the convenience of shopping from their home today, and that's why online shopping is becoming so popular today. Businesses have to make sure that their loading pages are effective and properly set up to ensure that the consumers are being lead to where they want to be lead.

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  16. Very good post, it is gave me better understanding what Landing Pages and what it is contains. there are certain rules that marketers have to follow to create Landing Page that actually works and that will give marketers better chance of having potential customers be more interested to search and staying on your page.

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  17. Interesting and creative post! Thumb's up
    The two types of landing pages as discussed in class by christina are reference and transactional, reference landing pages are pages that display information that is relevant to the visitor, while Transactional pages are pages that seeks or persuade a visitor to take an action, like website where they sell products or services.

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  18. Landing pages are extremely useful. There have been the odd time where I am overwhelmed and forced to exit, but often times I have been intrigued and stayed. The breakdown of the different landing pages and how to make them successful has made me realize what was done poorly by some marketers and poorly by others

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