From Landing Pages to Home Pages

time-for-success

How many of you use landing pages or do you simply use anchor text hyperlinks that point an existing order page on your site?

The goal of landing pages

The goal of a landing page is to convert prospects into clients, and that’s best accomplished by designing a specific page that causes a prospect to act. If you’re sending prospects to your home page, then you’re leaving it up to them to search your site for what they’re really interested in. If you’re selling shared hosting, dedicated servers, web design and a dozen other services, you need to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to get from “point of interest” to “point of purchase.”

Secondary advantage

A secondary advantage to using landing pages is that it allows you to easily track the effectiveness of your marketing programs. If you can’t measure your marketing efforts, you certainly can’t effectively manage them.

The importance of design

Style, font, color theme and white space attributes for landing pages are no less important than for any other page on your home site. What should differ is that your landing pages should be focused.

Call to action

As always, a good call to action creates a sense of urgency, either in number of items or days left.

Asking for the sale

And as every good sales representative knows you have to ask for the sale, which includes some kind of order icon on your landing page. Split testing has shown that orange converts at a better rate than red, given all other factors remain the same.

Versus Home Pages

Whereas landing pages are designed with a single focus or goal, home pages are more so about branding, letting prospects explore your products and services while offering additional information about your organization. From the home page, prospects can navigate elsewhere on your site to read your blog, shop or just browse, which takes us back to design.

Use Ample White Space

Resist loading up your pages with everything imaginable. Focus is important. Use white space to guide visitors as they navigate your site. Clutter simply invites confusion.

Consistency

This reverts back to short term versus long term memory retention and branding principles. Try to use the same terminology in your prompts and menus.

KISS

We’ve all see the term. Keeping it simple works. Highlight the key products or services you offer on your home page, then provide more in-depth information about them deeper in your site. Don’t try to squeeze everything onto one page that scrolls forever.

Embrace all five senses

Reach out to your visitors in a way that they’ll best understand what you have to offer. Use a mix of graphics and short blocks of text to capture their attention.

Analytics

Employ analytics to determine how visitors reach your site, how long they stay & if they return. If your site has a high bounce rate, perhaps the search query doesn’t match well with your content, or the content may need to be revamped.

Enhance Credibility and Trust

Add an About Us page. In an era where we’re being warned to avoid certain websites as they may infect your computer with all sorts of malware, it’s important to convey credibility at first glance. Let’s face it, the design of your site directly relates to the perception of your professionalism.

Color and Layout

Color and layout speaks volumes about your business. Color themes are perceived differently in global markets, so it’s vitally important to understand your target audience. What works for car dealerships doesn’t necessarily work for furniture retailers. Research your competition and emulate success.

Online Store? 

Increase your conversions with options, discount codes and freebies. I know if I’m comparing products and one vendor offers an immediate rebate, I’ll opt for that every day over the option to mail in some coupon and wait for weeks to get a check back.

Conversions

If you’re looking to push a specific product or service, landing pages generally convert better. Why? Home pages present too many distractions. Think of your prospects like cats. They’re easily distracted, so getting them from point interested to point converting means maintaining their focus throughout the purchase process.

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Steve
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