Landing Pages - why are they important and how to create them

Posted by StraightAd, 15 september 2014

Although at first glance landing pages are “a job for the developers”, in this article we are going to explain why they are so useful in many areas, especially in marketing and monitoring.

What is a landing page?

We need to start off with a definition for those of you who may not know what we are talking about. A landing page is a unique page your visitor reaches after clicking on a search engine result or an ad (regardless of its type).

Why is a landing page important?

Conversion Rate - For a promotion to be efficient, besides the compelling text, the reader/buyer must find the information he wants, exactly when he needs it. The main purpose of a landing page is to generate conversion, whether we’re talking about product sales, download materials etc.

Let us offer you an example. Let’s assume you want to buy a new phone and you click on one of the ads for the phone you want. What would be more useful? Reaching the company’s homepage and having to manually search the desired model or reaching a dedicated landing page where you can order it with just a few clicks?

Statistical data - When you create a dedicated page for a certain goal, monitoring the action will be much easier. If the company has 5 ads for 5 different products and each one of them takes the user to the homepage, interpreting the results and calculating the individual impact may be difficult.

Easier monitoring also means a possibility of thorough analysis. This way, by looking at the metrics, you can correctly and easily assess what’s working well and where you need to make changes.

How does a performant landing page look like?

Again, there is no certain recipe that guarantees success, but there are a few elements that should not be missing:

- visuals, because no one reacts to a plain block of text
- simplicity, to keep the user focused on the main purpose
- a “thank you” page, to monitor conversion
- a contact/order/appointment form, so the user doesn’t have to leave the page and search for contact details
- an intelligent “Call to Action”