Why Landing Pages?

Katherine Bennett - March 25, 2010

Landing pages are often underrated by companies who can’t fathom the idea that their website isn’t perfect. However, landing pages are meant to compliment websites, not insult them. In fact, if a company’s website was built with a sound strategy, many of the pages on that website will make great landing pages.

According to Wikipedia, a landing page “is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link.” The issue that arises with many companies is that they direct visitors to the wrong landing page, because they don’t have a specific landing page to correspond with an ad or they feel that a general landing page will do the job. Let’s look at it another way. What if you bought a plane ticket to Hawaii, your bags are packed and you board the plane looking forward to sunshine, beaches and surf waves. When the plane lands, to your dismay you find that you are in Nebraska. They have sunshine, but they’re missing beaches and surf. This is the way many visitors feel when they click on an ad only to find the landing page has nothing to do with the ad that they just clicked. Landing pages have to be specific, but they also have to coincide with the ad that a person clicks on. Don’t tell them Hawaii and send them to Arizona. 

Another important reason to have a landing page is to get a visitor to complete a desired action. Sometimes a company has a landing page that has the correct information, but lacks a call to action. The visitor gets informed, but they can’t sign-up or buy a product. An example would be a visitor seeing an ad that offers 20% off their blender purchase, if they sign-up for e-mail blasts.  The visitor clicks the ad, lands on a product page about the blender, reads the information and decides they like the blender. Unfortunately, as they scan the page, scroll up and down and right to left they can’t seem to find where they sign-up for the e-mail blast to receive 20% off. They check one or two more pages of the website, hoping to find the offer, and then leave in frustration.  How could this have been prevented? If the company was willing to tweak the blender product page, they could have put a noticeable button or link that said click here to sign-up for e-mail blasts and receive 20% off. The other option would be to create a landing page specific to that offer. Either way the visitor needs to be able to complete the desired action requested in the ad without being hindered.

Landing pages are very valuable; however they have to be used correctly to maximize results. A landing page must direct a visitor to information that accurately corresponds with an ad’s offer and it must clearly show the customer how to complete a desired action. If the pages within a company’s website offer the above, then they are set to get started. However, if a company is missing any of the above, it would behoove them to add landing pages or tweak the pages of their website.