Take off the stack hat, and lets look at landing pages and how they work. In the purest sense, a landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. However, when discussing landing pages within the realm of marketing and advertising, it’s more common to refer to a landing page as being a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has been designed for a single focused objective. This means that your landing page should have no global navigation to tie it to your primary website. The main reason for this is to limit the options available to your visitors, helping to guide them toward your intended conversion goal.

Landing pages are generally used to help boost your conversion rates, ie. to capture your customers details and/or make a sale. The difference between a landing page and your general website is that a landing page is designed to align with a particular message, promotion, event or sale which you want to highlight, rather than have it lost amongst the more generalised content of your website. The message needs to be clear and unambiguous, and to be reflected on both the teaser that gets potential customers to click through and the page they land on. 

There are two primary types of landing pages – Click Through and Lead Generation. As the name suggests, Click Through pages have the goal of having a visitor click through to a point of sale, once they have been warmed up by the information and messaging and are closer to making a purchase. The destination page from a click through website is usually a shopping cart or registration page.

Lead Generation landing pages are used to capture user data, such as a name and email address. The sole purpose of the page is to collect information that will allow you to market to and connect with the prospect at a subsequent time. As such, a lead capture page will contain a form along with a description of what you’ll get in return for submitting your personal data. There are various lures to get people to sign up on a Lead Generation page such as e-books, exclusive reports, webinar registration, discounts or free offers.

A landing page can be built in a number of ways. If you already use a web designer that is external to your business, you can simply ask them to create one for you and a unique link for customers to follow. Many contemporary web template services such as SquareSpace and Wix offer landing pages, as do companies specifically set up to create DIY landing pages templates such as Unbounce and InstaPage. These services are usually a subscription based cloud service with templates to use so you can easily transform with your brand and link to a sign up or transaction portal. 

The key takeaways to remember are that your landing page is not your home page and shouldn’t be part of your website. It is a dedicated channel that exists to capture information relating to a specific offer, or to capture customer information to build your lists for future promotions. It is pure strategic marketing and needs to be singularly focused on a key call to action for your customers.