Landing pages are specific areas of a website designed not only to provide a visitor with an entry point into the website, but also to drive that visitor toward some sort of goal. As a retailer online, your goal is probably to sell products, build your email list or grow your social following. To reach your goals, you need to create a strong landing page … one that moves your visitor to your goal with ease.
To get started, use the steps below as a general guideline to creating stronger landing pages:
1. Capture Your Visitor’s Attention
The first thing you need to do as an online publisher is capture your visitor’s attention. To do this, consider spending time creating a compelling headline — this will hook your visitor and encourage them to continue reading.
Another way to capture a visitor’s attention is through the use of a visual supplement near the top of the page, such as a video or image (just as I’ve included in the upper right of this post).
Once your visitors are interested, you have to repeat this process with the tag line.
2. Create A Compelling Tag Line
The tag line usually follows after the title of a page or post, so it’s often the second thing a visitor sees making it an important area to consider when strengthening your landing page.
The tag line should include a compelling promise of some sort and it should provide the solution to what the visitor hopes to achieve. For example, if you’re selling golf clubs and have a particular package ready for the holidays, your tag line might promise the visitor a way to save money while giving the best.
No matter what products you’re selling, you can bet the visitor is interested in a few things: saving money, free shipping, and excellent value.
3. Highlight What Your Visitors Are Interested In
If you create a compelling headline and tag line, your next challenge is creating content that persuades your visitor to do something, whether that something is buy a product, join your email newsletter, or follow you on Twitter.
If you’re hoping to sell a product, include helpful information about the product — not so much in a way that merely describes what the product is, but how your visitor will benefit from buying it. Paint a picture of what it might be like to own the product you’re selling, and what the benefits might be for the buyer to enjoy.
4. Including Keywords for Search Engine Optimization
In order to rank well in search engines, you’re going to need to create excellent content for your landing page so the engines understand what your page is about, and thus, position you appropriately.
It’s best to approach this organically first then go back and include the best possible keywords possible. If you haven’t already done a bit of keyword research, you’ll need to do it now in order to include the best possible language throughout your copy, including both long tail and head keywords.
5. Invite Your Visitor to Take the Next Step
No matter what your goal is, you need to invite your visitor to take the next step throughout your content.
Don’t limit yourself to inviting your visitor to buy or subscribe at the end of the landing page — in reality, they probably won’t make it that far. Invite your visitor throughout your content in order to increase the chances of that visitor converting to a sale or subscription.
The landing page is an important page for the web publisher — especially the retailer. It’s how you increase your traffic, increase conversions, increase sales, and drive your visitor toward any other goals you may have. How you go about creating your landing page is up to you, but using the steps above will help you to strengthen your landing pages from the root up.