What is a Landing Page?
In the purest sense, a landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. However, when discussing landing pages within the realm of marketing and advertising, it’s more common to refer to a landing page as being a standalone web page distinct from your main website that has been designed for a single focused objective. This means that your landing page should have no global navigation to tie it to your primary website. The main reason for this is to limit the options available to your visitors, helping to guide them toward your intended conversion goal.
Landing pages are specialized, optimized web pages that visitors are taken to upon clicking an ad. Landing pages can feature specific products featured in the advertisements themselves, or they may include prompts for users to provide the advertiser with more information, such as web forms. Landing pages can be used to convince prospects to complete an action, such as making a purchase, or function as another step in a longer “funnel,” such as requesting additional information or downloading a piece of content for lead generation purposes.
A landing page can be commonly defined as the page beyond the click in a digital marketing campaign context. Landing page optimization is a central issue for:
- Display Campaigns
- Pay per Click (PPC) ads
- Affiliate marketing programs
- Email marketing campaigns
- Some offline campaigns - with QR Codes for instance.
Types of Landing Pages:
There are 2 basic types of landing page, Click Through and Lead Generation (also referred to as Lead Gen or Lead Capture pages).
1. Click Through Landing Pages
Click through landing pages (as the name implies) have the goal of persuading the visitor to click through to another page. Typically used in ecommerce funnels, they can be used to describe a product or offer in sufficient detail so as to “warm up” a visitor to the point where they are closer to making a purchasing decision.
All too often, inbound advertising traffic is directed at shopping cart or registration pages. This leads to poor conversions as the ad doesn’t provide sufficient information for someone to make an informed decision.
This is where the click through page comes in. As a result, the destination page from a click through page is typically the shopping cart or registration page – now with a much higher chance of conversion having passed through the details of the landing page.
2. Lead Generation Landing Pages
Lead generation landing pages are used to capture user data, such as a name and email address. The sole purpose of the page is to collect information that will allow you to market to and connect with the prospect at a subsequent time. As such, a lead capture page will contain a form along with a description of what you’ll get in return for submitting your personal data.
There are many uses for lead gen landing pages, some example uses and the items given to the user are listed below:
- Ebook or whitepaper
- Webinar registration
- Consultation for professional services
- Discount coupon/voucher
- Contest entry
- Free trial
- A physical gift (via direct mail)
- Notification of a future product launch
Some websites may have hundreds or thousands of automated landing pages created specifically for digital campaigns.
Landing pages are key factors of campaign effectiveness and ROI, and are still sometimes insufficiently taken into account. Many failed digital campaigns are due to poor landing pages. Landing page design and optimization rules differs according to industries, product categories, traffic sources and campaign goals. Some landing page design services may offer several hundreds of landing page templates.
There are many kinds of landing pages:
- Product landing pages
- Lead gen landing pages
- Facebook landing pages
- Dynamic landing pages
- Automated landing pages
- Personalized landing page
- Mobile landing pages
- Responsive landing pages
- Co-branded landing pages
- Co-branded affiliate landing pages
- B2B landing page