Landing pages are one of the most important elements of your website. It doesn’t matter how great your SEO efforts, how marvellous your product and how enthusiastic your staff; if your landing page doesn’t cut it, your customers will leave without purchasing.

A bad page will see your visitor bounce straight back to the search engine they came from.However, a good page will attract and hold their attention, while persuasively encouraging them to do whatever it is the page exists for. So how do you achieve this?

Earlier this year, I wrote tentips for creating solid landing pages. Now I want to look at the moreadvanced discipline of enhancing the sales effectiveness of your pages.

Have a special offer

There’s a warm rush that comes with feeling you’re getting abargain and a decent landing page should ideally hook the visitor with anoffer. It doesn’t have to be a loss leader; it could be as simple as freepostage. Just make the visitor feel special.

If you’re in a services industry, like SEO, consideroffering a ‘free review’. This allows you to make your pitch while yourpotential customer feels they are getting something for nothing. Everyone likesthat.

Cut out all distractions

Now, normally I love a site to be filled with internal linksto other content a reader might be interested in, such as blog posts, but thisis not necessarily right for a sophisticated landing page.

If your visitor has clicked on a paid link, then they arepotentially ready to buy. Distract them with reviews or blogs or news storiesand you could lose the purchase.

Let them click through to other sections of your site ifthey want to but don’t distract them from the big ‘buy now’ call to action.

Just ditch the pop-ups

Most marketers finally understand that pop-ups are one ofthe most loathed aspects of the web. So don’t do it.

It’s not just a distraction, it’s impertinent. Many peoplewill leave your site without buying if you open windows on their screen withoutinvitation.

Keep the best bits visible

Don’t underestimate the laziness of the online reader. Keepall your important information above the fold of the page, i.e. visible withoutthe visitor having to scroll down.

That includes information about why the reader should buythe product, any testimonials and so on. A good page is also uncluttered, sothis can be hard to achieve but a decent web designer should be able to producesomething effective.

Keep your call to action visible

It’s easy to leave your ‘buy now’ call to action at the verybottom right of the page, but you should really make sure it’s visible at alltimes and, again, keep it above the fold.

All the information on your landing page is designed toencourage a sale, so make sure it’s easy for them to buy once they have decidedto do so.

Use graphics carefully

This is where testing your landing page comes in useful,because it is not always easy to work out what will help and what will hinderthe conversion.

Graphics can be a fantastic way to enhance your landing pageand that’s especially true if you’re selling a high-end product, such as aluxury holiday, new car or popular gadget. Images can be aspirational and thatcan really boost sales.

However, images can also be distracting, especially if theyoverpower your ‘buy now’ button by drawing the eye away.

Keep that in mind during design and test different versionsof your page to see what works.

Track everything your visitor does

It’s important to be able to follow and analyse everythingyour visitor does when presented with your landing page. After all, that is howyou learn what’s working and what’s not.

Companies that don’t track this information cannot see wherecustomers are abandoning the process, so they can’t test to see whichincarnations of a page are working best.

Without tracking customermovements on your site, you’re working blind.

Do something useful once they’vepurchased

You need to focus on every page in the buying process, fromthe initial landing page right through to the resolution page.

What happens once they’ve made a purchase? What page do youpresent your customer with then? This is as important as your landing pagebecause, even if you don’t expect them to buy again immediately, you do want toencourage them to return to your shop in the future.

Now is the time to distract them with the full breadth ofyour offerings. Show them different products and services, highlight your blog,invite them to sign up to a newsletter. Anything that builds habit andencourages them to return.

Summarise why the visitor is there

When someone has clicked through from a paid link in thesearch engine results page, you need to show them very quickly why your page isrelevant.

If there’s a lot of information on your page and it isn’timmediately obvious how it’s going to meet their needs, they are going to clickaway very quickly. Think about how often you abandon a page because it doesn’tlook immediately helpful.

Because you’ll be using landing pages that mirror themessages in your pay-per-click advertising (see my original post), you’ll beable to make that page obviously relevant.

Whether it’s: ‘Buy fantastic hand-tied bouquets in thenorth-west’ or ‘SEOptimise specialises in delivering expert search enginemarketing and social media solutions for our clients’ – make it obvious thatyou can satisfy their need.

Show you’re trustworthy

Tip number ten. The trouble with dedicated landing pages isthat they are not your homepage, so you can’t fill them with information abouthow great and reliable your company is.

Instead, they need to be dedicated to whichever productyou’re pushing. But a customer who arrives on a landing page has probably comestraight from Google and they do need to know that you’re a trustworthywebsite.

Your page needs to reinforce your credibility from the wordgo. Part of that is having a professional-looking site. However, you shouldalso display any relevant security badges or validations, especially if you’reabout to ask the visitor to enter card details.

A final word…

Most of the guidance on this page has been about encouragingand persuading your visitor to make a purchase, so there has been very littleopportunity to urge you to keep the customer’s experience in mind.

However sales-orientated your landing pages are, try tooffer value and information to the customer elsewhere.

The best corporate websites are not relentless salespitches, they are informative troves of industry news, opinion and tips. That’swhy they are successful and why customers return more than once