Landing Pages 101
What are landing pages?
They’re not your home page and should not act like one.
Hypothetically speaking imagine your business deals in productivity software and is aptly named “The Very Good Productivity Company”. Catchy I know.
Lots of different segments land on this page, and you’re trying to route them all to the correct place:
- New Customers
- Returning Customers
- High Value Clients
- Low Value Clients
- Your Mother
- Your Grandmother
Your list may vary, but one thing is for sure, they all have different problems to solve. So what the hell is a Landing Page?
Landing Pages come in many different shapes and sizes.
Almost everyone has found themselves at one point or another on a landing page. Landing pages come in quite a few different varieties; the most popular tend to be:
- Lead Capture: Typical of service-based industries where the conversion may be offline or the customer journey a bit more complicated.
- Email capture: A straight forward email capture form where you provide an exchange of value with the visitor. Usually an email for content, a trial or something else.
- Sales: Self-explanatory the page is trying to sell you something directly and convert you fast. Quite a hard conversion but can work in the right circumstances.
That’s just scratching the surface, but the one commonality between landing pages is…
They typically have one specific goal or focus per page.
Landing pages are very tailored and typically specific to a particular segment.
Luckily “The Very Good Productivity Company” also has a landing page for each of their products. One of which is a productivity board for managing tasks and projects. This page is focused only around this product and has one consistent CTA to drive users into the free trial signup process:
You have a beautiful home page explaining everything your company has to offer. There are three different products, and your homepage describes each alongside company information and a selection of CTA’s leading to other areas of your website:
Pages like this keep users focused, and they are less likely to lose their way through the content.
Why you should invest in landing pages
Wordstream reported a 4.4% average conversion rate across all verticals and page types for paid advertising.
Wordstream manages billions of dollars in Ad Spend and compared the average conversion rates across industries. What they found was an average conversion rate of 4.4 % across the search network. This study includes both landing pages, homepages and other classic webpages.
Unbounce research reported an average conversion rate of 9.7% for landing pages.
Unbounce a landing page platform recently conducted a study on conversion rates across their clients landing pages. They surveyed 186 million visitors across 18 different industries and found that the average conversion rate for users landing directly on landing pages was 9.7%. The study reports on the median and average conversion rates across a selection of industries:
Research suggests Landing Pages convert at a much higher rate than other pages.
From the two studies we can see a big difference in performance:
WordPress = 4.40% CR for pages of all types.
Unbounce Landing Pages = 9.7% CR for landing pages.
That’s an astronomical difference; the message is clear landing pages perform significantly better than standard web pages and should be a tool in every marketer’s arsenal.
But why do landing pages convert so well?
Normal web pages tend to be quite generic and appeal to a few different segments.
Standard web pages have too much heavy lifting to do; they have to cater to an extensive range of customer segments all with different problems. Having more than one call to action dilutes the attention each of these pages can have. There may be five, ten or even more CTAs on some standard web pages all vying for your attention.
Split focus leads to generic and broad messaging, which is terrible for users and subsequently, your conversion rate.
Landing pages allow you to laser-target specific customer segments at a particular point in the customer journey.
On the flip side, marketers can tailor landing pages around one specific customer segment at a particular point in their journey. Drilling down into specific customer segments allows you to structure better your content and objection handling instead of being too broad.
There’s an overwhelming amount of content out there now, and the volume will only increase. Marketers need to now more than ever try and talk directly to consumers in a personalised manner. Using 1-1 messaging allows you to empathise and connect on a deeper level.
Personalising by customer segment does not need to be complicated.
Let’s take the Kan-Do landing page above as an example. At the moment your business has one landing page around this product which is more specific than your homepage but still quite generic. You know that many different segments use your software based on your internal data. You see:
- Web Developers
- Marketers
- Small Business Owners
- Students
These are all very separate segments that have different needs and concerns. Web developers will need to manage big projects with strict deadlines, and they might also need to drop code and files into their task cards. A small business owner might need a place to hold their large stack of “To-Dos” or plan out upcoming launches.
It’s always important to build out landing pages for each of your key target segments. The pages will convert at a much higher level as users will see their problems and concerns addressed directly.
Looking at your data and building a specific strategy for your landing pages may be a daunting experience. We’re always happy to jump on a call and provide some guidance and ideas, don’t be afraid to get in touch, and one of our experts can give you a free consultation.
