A few tips on effective landing pages

Often an afterthought to an online lead generation campaign, a landing page is actually pretty crucial. Due to its power to convert visitors into qualified leads, it can make or break a campaign. Each campaign must have its own, dedicated landing page.

As a PPC and online lead generation professional, I hate to see companies spend money on a paid search campaign, only to waste their money by having the landing page be their company's home page. It also frustrates me to see websites that have offers, with the offer taking the visitor to a generic product page or, if the offer is a case study, analyst report or white paper, to a page within the resources section that lists a bunch of other resources. It's led me to believe that many people don't either don't see the importance in landing pages from a lead conversion standpoint or don't understand how to build an effective landing page.

Remember - your goal is to increase conversions. In that spirit, here are a few tips:

1. The landing page should be one click away from the call to action. You don't want the person to change his/her mind and leave your site before filling out the form, so don't put too many steps in the way.

2. The form should be "short and sweet". Don't scare people away by having long forms that ask way too much information.

3. Strip away all or most of the navigation. Don't give the visitor an "easy way out". You want the person to spend time on the landing page and to fill out the form, so if you strip away the navigation, the person will have fewer "exits" from the page.

4. Make sure the form, and any other information for that matter, is above the fold. People are impatient, so if you require them to scroll down, you may lose them.

5. Write the copy so that it fleshes out the offer. For example, if the offer is "take a demo of our software", make sure the copy discusses the benefits of the product and makes it easy for the visitor to answer this question in his/her mind - "why should I take a look at this product? how will it benefit me?"

6. Position your privacy statement next to the submit button. Letting the visitor know that you're not going to sell his/her contact information will give that person confidence that the information is in safe hands.

7. There's debate about what label to give the submit button. We've done studies that prove that labels like "download the white paper" work better than "send me information now" because the latter implies that a sales person is going to call the visitor right away.

8. Test, test, test. Continuously test the copy, layout, form and offer. Use your analytics package to learn about user behavior on the page, and make adjustments accordingly.

Here's a landing page that I think is pretty good because it satisfies the tips listed above, in my opinion. http://www.lyris.com/lunarlanding/default.aspx?source=resources-stellarsubjectlines