A landing page is a custom web page developed to meet, assist, and convert visitors into customers. Most landing pages appear when a potential customer clicks on an online ad or a search-engine result link. The page will typically display content that is a logical extension of the ad or link, and will be optimized to include specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. They can also be customized to measure the effectiveness of different ads.

The key to a successful landing page is to make sure it creates a custom experience for the visitor. Your visitors should answer “yes” to the following questions:

• Is this what I expected to see?
• Does this look credible and trustworthy?
• Is this interesting enough to spend more time here?

By custom, we don’t mean that your  landing page should look completely different from your website. It should be consistent in look and feel but custom in its content. Each product or service you offer will have its own content and its own series of questions from visitors.

For each landing page, provide the following information:

1. Learn more options. If you answered every possible question on the landing page, it would be a very long one. Explain the basics and offer links to more information. These could be downloadable PDFs, other pages, FAQs, blog posts, etc.

2. Call to action. If your visitor is ready to become a customer, don’t make it hard to find how to do so. You need to have a clear call to action so visitors always know what to do next.

3. Alternative calls to action. Your call to action may be too strong for some of your visitors. Offer an alternative. For example, if you want visitors to sign up for your newsletter, offer links to back issues… if you want visitors to buy your product or service, offer them links to a demo or a free trial.

4. Contact information. Visitors may have more questions. Make it clear how to contact you for that specific product or service instead of making them find the generic “contact us” page.

A well-crafted landing page can make a tremendous difference in converting visitors to customers.