Landing Pages

A landing page is a webpage where a person arrives (“lands”) when he/she clicks on вЂ" in this case - an e-mail link (it can also be an online ad banner, or maybe a search engine result). Many marketers believe that their outbound campaign (e.g. e-newsletter) does all the work, and that the landing page is simply a passive gateway, but in fact the exact opposite is in many cases true.

Let’s take a look at what the options are for the visitor, what happens when people arrive at your landing page.

1. Stage 1: Should I bail? Roughly 50 percent of the visitors leave the website within 0 to 8 seconds after taking a glance at the page. There are certain elements that can lower this percentage, such as high readability and appropriate length of the copy, professional design, easy-looking registrations, and interesting graphics.

2. Stage 2: Should I take action? Roughly 30 percent of the visitors bail when the landing page does not prove compelling under close examination. After stage 1 the visitors have to be convinced to convert. Elements that help are rich media information (streaming audio/video), testimonials, copy, the competition and relevant information (with enough details).

3. Stage 3: Conversion attempt. The visitor has decided to say “yes”, now they need to actually do it. Roughly 5 percent of the visitors are attempting to convert, but fail somehow. There are certain aspects that can hinder this attempt, such as insufficient shipping/pricing details, lack of privacy information, lack of alternate modes of communication (e-mail, phone), errors, and required fields in forms.

4. Stage 4: Roughly 5 percent actually convert. Be sure to thank the consumer for his conversion.

There are several mistakes that are made too many times in the creation of the landing page. To avoid the next mistakes, keep consistency, relevance and appeal in mind.

Almost 45% of landing pages didn't repeat the strong promotional copy found in the email, thus failing to reinforce the call to action that prompted the email recipient to click a link in the first place (Silverpop's Landing Page Report", 2007). After making the decision to click on one of the links of the e-mail, the reader is expecting to be awarded for his effort by finding the solutions he needs, or entering a promoted contest. When he is not immediately rewarded for his efforts, the reader will be disappointed.

More than 35% of the landing pages analyzed didn't match the emails' look (Silverpop's Landing Page Report", 2007). This pressing finding shows the importance of a feeling of consistency between all forms of communication. Not only lay-out is an aspect here, also copy. Using similar colors and vocabulary creates a fluent look-and-feel which is essential in an integrated e-communications platform.

Another mistake that can arise with landing pages is the fact that there are too many conversion goals on the landing page. Marketers try to pack the page with hotlinks, and buttons to convince a visitor of several purposes.

One tip for your landing page here can