Broadly, a landing page is a page where a visitor first arrives at your website. It may not always be your homepage either – think about a few ways a person can find your site and how that might influence what the “landing page” is:
1. I type the website address on your business card – the landing page is your homepage.
2. Someone clicks on a blog article you post to your Facebook page – the landing page is the blog article.
3. A search is done on Google for “driveway paving orlando” and you have a page about that service that comes up in the result – if the user clicks on the result, the landing page is your “driveway paving orlando” page.
4. User sees an ad for a free estimate on driveway pavers on google (or another site) and click on the ad – the landing page would be whatever page you define when you setup your ad campaign.
It’s this 4th situation I want to talk about more – you have a lot of control over where a user arrives, and what they see.
Who Cares?
You should! It can make a big difference to the overall success of your campaign. Let’s consider these 3 scenarios for your campaign:
|
Scenario |
Cost per click |
Total clicks (page visitors) |
Total cost |
% of visitors who inquire |
Total inquiries |
Cost per inquiry |
|
A |
$2 | 100 | $200 | 10% | 10 | $20 |
|
B |
$2 | 200 | $400 | 10% | 20 | $20 |
|
C |
$2 | 100 | $200 | 20% | 20 | $10 |
Starting with scenario A, you spend $200 on 100 visits to that landing page. Let’s assume 90% of them don’t contact you. This could be because they can’t find information related to the ad they clicked, or they can’t find how to contact you, or they want to go research other businesses before calling. You end up with 10 inquiries that cost you $20 each.
Scenario B – we want to increase our inquiries so we double our advertising budget from $200 to $400. The landing page is still the same, so the % who inquire remains at 10% and you get more inquiries, but they still cost you $20 each.
Scenario C – this takes the same $200 budget as scenario A and assumes you choose a better landing page for your ad. We still only spend $200, and get 100 visitors. But your landing page is a better choice, 20% of people send you an enquiry rather than only 10%. The result is that you doubled your enquiries without spending more. Your inquiries only cost you $10 each.
So how do we select a better landing page?
There’s a lot of science to this and some companies exist entirely to make perfectly performing landing pages. I’d prefer to keep it simple and point out 5 key tips using this landing page our WordJack team created for one of our clients recently:
1. RELEVANCE: If the user clicked on an ad about “driveway paving”, make sure the page is relevant to driveway paving.
2. OFFER: This is to discourage “shopping around”. The visitor is on your site and you have a reason they should inquire – right there in the title. Even if you can’t discount, a “free estimate/consultation” invites the user to contact you (because an estimate is not a big decision for them – it’s just an estimate, right?)
3. ACTION: Make it easy and obvious for a visitor to contact you. This page has a contact form and phone number prominently available
4. PICTURE: We all notice the picture before we read a word. The visitor knows this is a page about paving in less than a second after arriving. And pictures look nice 🙂
5. LOCATION – this is important for local service businesses. Even though you only targeted your ads in the city you service, it’s nice for a visitor to know they are looking at a local supplier. Just putting your city in a title or showing your phone number (with area code) is usually enough to communicate this point
There are plenty more if you wanted to spend more time on it. But these are the first 5 I’d check on my landing page before investing more in buying clicks. Can you think of any important factors that should be in the top 5 ahead of these?
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WordJack Media provides a wide range of website design and online marketing solutions to clients throughout Canada and the US, including Collingwood ON, Ottawa ON, Barrie ON, Miami FL, Lakeland FL, Orlando FL, Charlotte NC, Hickory NC, Asheville NC and more. Contact WordJack Media today for more information about how we can help your business win on the web!
