Landing pages have been around since the dawn of the web and have become an integral part of any business’ strategy to grow their online presence or find new customers. Many businesses today prefer to launch landing pages as opposed to full websites due to their relatively low maintainability and singular focus.
A landing page is simply a single website page built to facilitate an objective. This objective could be to drive leads, sell a product or create awareness. Most websites today consist of some sort of landing pages – you could even think of your home page as one!
What makes a landing page different to a website
Websites in general are hard to maintain. Much like a house plant they require care, maintenance, sustenance and more to ultimately bring out its full potential. The content on landing pages on the other hand generally remains quite static which ultimately leads to less maintenance over time. Websites will also cover what is often called the “brochureware” of a business – i.e. who you are, what you stand for, who the people are. A landing page on the other hand will focus solely on selling something.
Well executed websites will often have many landing pages focusing on key capabilities or products alongside their brochureware to ensure they cover all their bases. This website you’re on right now is a good example of that – we have landing pages for each of our core services.
The general structure of a landing page
The structure of a landing page will ultimately depend on its objective: Driving leads as an example might require you to have a contact form, whereas creating awareness might just have a download button and some information. With that said, landing pages generally have a consistent elements:
- A value proposition, usually within the banner, to explain why your potential customer should care about what you are selling.
- Description of the product or service.
- The benefits of your product or service, in an attempt to convince your potential customer of why it might be what they need.
- Testimonials of your past customers or clients can help to convince a visitor.
- A call to action, asking your visitor to take a specific action like filling out a form or making a phone call.
The key benefits of landing pages
Landing pages offer several key benefits over conventional websites:
- Improved conversion rates – Landing pages are most of the time used as a destination for advertising due to their formulaic nature. They guide the visitor through a journey, designed by an expert, with the goal of getting them to take that conversion action.
- Better targeting – Due to the content on a landing page being hyper-specific it’s possible to more accurately target people through digital marketing channels like Facebook.
- Enhanced user experience – Landing pages are much more focused which means your visitors can find things more easily, and the structure generally speaks to their needs more accurately.
- Cost-effective – They generally cost less because they require less maintenance, less design work etc. Landing pages also generally result in cheaper advertising due to how relevant they are to the visitor’s needs.
To conclude
Websites have changed and it’s no longer about simply “having a presence online”. They need to be focused and speak to your ideal customer, and more importantly, provide them with value. Landing pages are a great way to do this – they’re cheap to get up and running and maintain and could become a great vehicle for driving new business.
