Landing Pages A Couture

Runway Landing Pages

In the fashion industry, a custom made-to-measure dress for a model is referred to as a couture.  This means that the dress is made specifically to the body type and specifications for that particular model.  Now let’s think a couture when we talk about landing pages.

Hobo Landing Pages

It amazes me to know that there are millions of dollars being spent daily on internet marketing campaigns, with little regard to where all that traffic is landing.  A consultant advertising his engineering mastery, is spending $5,000 a month to generate potential customers for his business, yet all of his visitors arrive at his homepage

• which talks about his company; 
• and where they are located,
• on over 50% of the page space

The other 50% of the page is being used up by a home link, a contact us link, a services link, and a galleria link.  All wonderful things I’m sure, but what does this say to your visitor?

He is thinking and searching, "I am searching for a mechanical engineer that can advise me on what steps to take to develop an engineer this widget."  You told him, "we are located in Dayton Ohio, and we have been in business for 20 years and we love what we do, and we do it well, and we would be happy to help you and now click on a link."

Targeted Landing Pages

With the number of landing pages (yes landing pages, not websites, think of how many more landing pages there are out there) and the amount of information that the Internet has to offer; there is a high probability that this person will seek the path of least resistance, and hit the back button to keep on looking for the information they are after.  What the visitor wanted to see, for example is "I am a consultant on mechanical engineering and I walk people through the steps necessary to develop and engineer widgets, welcome to my ‘a couture landing page’"

In other words, there is way too much information on the Internet for any online marketer to assume that a visitor will read all of the information on your page simply because you wrote it.  The average Internet visitor will stay on a page less than 7 seconds, and that includes the page loading time.  If your message is not clear; if your call to action is not front and center; and if you don’t do everything possible to improve the quality of your landing pages, you may be wasting your resources on visitors that will never lead to any business.  You can have the highest click through rates in the industry, but that doesn’t mean they are staying on the set for the show.

Your landing pages should incorporate the following minimum standards, if they are going to compete favorably in the marketplace:

• they must be quickly scannable by the visitor
• they must get to the point reasonably fast
• they must centralize on a theme or message
• they must have clear call to actions
• they must be easy and friendly to navigate
• they must tell your visitor what to expect
• they must be viewable on every monitor
• they must load as quickly as possible

For example, you can tell your visitor what to expect by simply adding a How It Works tab to your navigation panel.  A few quick steps, shorts messages, and clear instruction graphics in the How It Works tab can go a long way towards improving the possibility of increased conversions on your site.

Also, if your call to action is at the bottom of the landing page, and the visitor has to scroll down 12 times with his mouse to get to it; you may not benefit completely from these efforts.  Just think of a site visitor, the way you would want to be treated.  Think of what makes a website landing pleasant for you.  Did you find what you were looking for quickly?  Was it on the page you landed on?  Did you wait 10 minutes for the page to load?  Did you receive a quick How It Works lesson on what you can expect?  And, most importantly, did you sign up or inquire about additional information?

Now go visit your website and see if what we talked about here is relevant to your site.  When some one visits your site, what is their landing page?  There are countless books available on website optimization and landing page optimization, but what I recommend you use is a program called 1.Nternet 2.Money.  It covers all of the requirements of creating effective landing pages, while deploying an arsenal of information on conversions, traffic, content, and optimization.  It’s not 350 pages.  It’s just 12 chapters.

You built a beautiful website, now have it do what it’s supposed to do.

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