Your product's landing page is the very special page that has to be carefully designed and built to attract maximum traffic. However, major attention needs to be given to this page because you will direct your traffic primarily to this page to snag their attention and lure them to explore your product. This page can contain your prominent sales pitch, excellent content or even video content optimized to rank high on popular search engines' lists.
Since this page is very important and possibly your front in traffic marketing for your blog; you need to be extra careful with this page. There are some very common mistakes that can ruin the effectiveness of your landing page. Learn to recognize them and improve upon them to create a self sufficient landing page for your blog.
Cluttered landing page designs
Page designs are vital in blog marketing strategies. However, a landing page is not your usual blog page. You cannot include all the same design elements, like different headers and footers or a variety of widgets or hordes of advertisements, in your landing page. Remember, to maintain the some uniformity with the other blog pages for aesthetic continuity.
However, cluttering up the landing page will confuse and distract the visitors. So, instead of focusing on the requisite action that you expect from them, they might just navigate to other options instead, or worse still, they might lose interest and veer away from your blog altogether.
Drab headlines
You probably have just seconds to hook your visitors' attention. Drab headlines will completely fall short of this purpose. Try to assess your headlines with your visitors' eyes. Come up with short, snazzy and attractive headlines that clearly spell out their purpose to the visitor. The headlines should direct the visitors attention to the action required of them, in the landing page.
Unclear options
You painstakingly optimize and strategize to get your traffic directed towards your landing page and you get fairly frequent visitors too. However, when in the landing page you set before them too many options for proceeding, they are more likely to just veer away from the page without choosing any of the options. Keep the choices simple and easy to follow.
Poorly optimized page elements
Page elements such as the colors, fonts, images and all the highlighted details need to be subtler in a landing page. You do not want to take away attention from the main purpose of the landing page. However, maintain the continuity with the blog's other pages, so that the visitor does not feel to have landed in a completely detached page. Optimize the contents as well as the visual elements of the page keeping in mind the action that you want the visitors to take on this page.
Unattractive copy for the landing page
Content marketing is a very effective marketing strategy. However, the foundation of this strategy lies in high impact copy writing. Since, you put extra emphasis on your landing page; the content copy of the page should rise up to the expected quality standards. What an unattractive copy for the landing page can do, is lower your credibility.
Typos and spelling errors should strictly be avoided (a no-brainer!). Content should keep with the theme of the blog but clearly outline the purpose of the landing page. Do not confuse the visitor with extra words or confuse them with twists and turns. Be specific, crisp and meaningful in your landing page content copy.
Elaborate page length
Landing pages should be kept to the point, both in the design and the content. You cannot design a landing page to start long drawn suspense that is revealed at the end of a long scroll down the page. You cannot expect your readers to patiently go with this set-up. Rather grab the readers' attention right from the top of the page and maintain it for however, long the page is.
You can write a really long page, but make sure you give the option for people to take action at multiple places from the top. Learn to recognize the simple mistakes in your landing page and rectify them immediately. Shaping up your landing page to be a visual treat as well as informative, will sky-rocket your conversion rates and make sure that your readers take the appropriate action when in the landing page.
I think funneling the user is such an art – getting them onto the page is reasonably easy (esp with PPC) but having them perform the desired action is tough. I strip back everything and enhance the call to action for best effect.
Matt that’s right. Focusing on the call to action works great! Thanks for your comment.
Sounds like you and I need to start working on some landing pages, Jane. LOL
I got the point Ana, lol!
Thank you Jane, this is good advice as usual! I find that knowing what *not* to do is just as effective as knowing what TO do, so thank you for these helpful pointers 🙂
For good sale of your product, you can not consider its landing page a less importance entity. keep it at top priority.
To me landing page should have a description that is precise and concise. Keep it short and simple is the key.
I believe that product landing pages must be on the top of your list. It is not all about the product, It’s all about the quality.
These are the important and useful tips for any newbie bloggers because we should think and do lots of things in favor of main page because main page is the very important part to attract the visitor in online business.
Everything about a landing page is important, but by far the most important of all is the headline because it only took the prospects eye about 2 second and if it did not catch his or her attention then the rest of the landing page will be a waste.
In order to have a good headline that catches the prospect is to use the famous AIDA formula which actually means Attention, Interest, Desire and Action… if your headline falls into either the 3 words, you will be able to catch your prospect.
Excellent formula Wong. Yes well said, the headline, it always matters doesn’t? I mean, matters the most!
Great post; I would agree that landing pages should be very straight forward; have an easy to use and navigation menu and 100 or less links 🙂
Landing page depends on many things, first how big is website, how many product it promotes. As landing page is probably the most important part of website, it need special attention. On most of the projects I have worked, a promotion announced on home page can do the job.
Thank you for sharing this Jane. At least we now know what we need to do in order for us not to commit mistakes for product landing pages.
great advice Jane, I’ll see if I can apply it to the new premium commentluv landing pages when it’s ready!
Oh yes Andy, I await that a lot 😉 Let me know when its ready!
Hi Jane and Ileane. Nice to meet you.
This is Megan Brown and this is my first visit at your blog. Inorder to reach here I have travelled long from this wide and deep oceans of sites but I am happy that atlast I reached here. So main reason which force me to bring here is “Knowledge” and I am sure that I have come to right place and I get what I want.
Hello Jane,
This is all about my first landing and what I coincidence that I get post whose topic is also “Landing Page”..lol..
Anyway you have really shared very important post as landing page is our first and last impression for our site and business. So this is something which is taken very seriously and not to be neglected.
If our landing is perfect and looks truely professional then it makes our work more easy and fast inorder to convience visitors.
And for this I just came to know about new stuff concern to creating perfect landing page and the name is “Product Skin” by founder of FamousBloggers whose name is Hesham.
I also going to use sooner for me as it very much important to looks our landing page as professional and perfect.
Thanks a lot for you useful tips and suggestion.
Bye for now…Have a wonderful weekend.
There are some marketting theme that help you to design landing pages. Like I am using Profits Theme for my blog “Bivori” and it has nice feature. Just drag different elements like headlines, subheads, images, buttons, bullets and fill up your text to create it in minutes.
Great tips. yes the landing page is important and it will be good and attractive.
What about the landing pages with large font size colorful text and 3 miles long with lots of testimonials. I’ve seen most of the pages like that. On first look I thought they are scams but I have bought a few plugins through those pages and now I realize a few of them are not scam.
Suresh, yes, to be honest I don’t understand the psychology behind kilometers long sales pages with yellow highlighted content all through, and yet even if you try to close it they will never leave you until your 5th attempt. But still such kinda landing pages are known to be the “standard” ones. Strange!
The importance of landing pages is something that many people tend to ignore.
On numerous occasions I’ve seen websites with good content destroyed by unfriendly landing pages.
It is vital to avoid confusing the users by bombarding them with all sorts of links, pieces of irrelevant information, ads, text in all sizes and colors, and other flashy elements.
Simple is always best.
The more relevant and simple a landing page is, the more easily it coverts. Thanks for your comment!
Reminds me of my first and only ebook, which did pretty well considering the lousy marketing effort we put on it.
HY Jane
fully agree with you. landing pages are very very useful.
Great Article Jane! I am going to be launching my first official paid product here in a few months and I will take your tips into account! Thank you
Joshua, I’m so glad that you’re having a product in the pipeline. Please let me know when you launch it. I’d like to have a look 🙂
Great Post Jane. I have been working on my own landing pages and sales copy. Thanks for these tips.
I’m so glad I could help James. Let me know when your page is ready. I’ll be glad to take a look.
Of all the factors mentioned above an often ignored area is optimizing page elements. Color of a button, text of the button or simple highlighting a button when the mouse moved over ti can increase conversion rates.
Great Post, Jane!
I agree with you. For a landing page to be effective, it needs to have a catchy headline, a short paragraph (or list) that explains the product/incentive and it needs to have a sleek design. All of your points are valid and useful to any blogger who is trying to build a list.
Thank you for the post,
Surely helped!
Jeevan Jacob John
I’m so glad that the post helped! Thanks for your comment 🙂
The way we usually do it is to use a design that’s related, but highly streamlined, with sidebars removed so the focus is entirely on the content and the action we want the reader to take.
Very Nice. This is one of the best articles that I have read in while. The landing page is a very important aspect of a good web strategy whether its for a product or a service and you have served the tactic well here.
I am amazed how many landing pages and pages in general fail to use a sales funnel. These are after all sales pages and they should be selling and asking for the sale!
You have emphasized the importance of landing page as a marketing tool in this blog. And you have listed great tips on how to have an effective landing page. Great job Jane!
I have to agree here, your landing pages are the most important…think about them as your money making pages