What is a landing page and when is a good time to use one for my business?

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By the end of this post, you will have learned:

• The definition of a landing page
• The advantages and disadvantages of having a landing page
• The problems that a landing page can solve for your business
• The kinds of businesses that would benefit the most from them
• When and when not to use them

By the way, if you ever find that this post has imparted some valuable information that you can take back to your business, please feel free to share this on Facebook!

Let’s get started!

What exactly is a landing page?

A landing page is a webpage solely dedicated to a single product or service that your business offers. Landing pages have a very clear call to action. That is key: you wouldn’t want your customers ending up on the page and not knowing what to do or how to proceed!

What are the advantages of having a landing page for your product or service?

I personally love how easy it is to set up a landing page! It can be up and running in as little as two days, especially if you have your content ready to be incorporated.

Another thing that landing pages offer is the ability to perform something called A/B testing. A/B testing is a way to gauge your customers’ reaction to several versions of a new page. A/B testing is very useful in knowing what the most effective, engaging iteration of a web page is. It’s done by directing traffic one way and having your customers come across different versions of a page at random. In this example, let’s say your page for a new product has two versions: version A and version B. Some customers will be landing upon version A, some will end up on version B. You notice that more customers engage with version A, and more of them push through with version A’s call to action. You can slowly tinker with the percentages of the traffic driven to each page (say if you start with 50/50, you can go to 70/30) just so you can examine your customers’ interaction with each version further. By the end of your A/B test, you can use the data you’ve gathered to know which version of your page to keep, and which one to drop altogether.

Because of the telling results it delivers, A/B testing or split testing is very useful in saving money for your business when it comes to online paid advertising!

Advantages & Disadvantages Of Landing Pages

Landing pages aren’t always seamlessly incorporated into a website’s architecture. I would even go so far as to say that they’re not great. Because of their poor integration with a website’s structure, and because of the other bells and whistles going on with landing pages (like the aforementioned A/B testing, etc.) they sometimes don’t run as fast as the other pages in the website. These impairments with speed and structure don’t make them too great for organic search; what they’re really good for is online paid advertising.

Another thing to consider is that, because landing pages exist outside a website’s infrastructure, they often require completely different skill sets to maintain and update. They are frequently created using software such as unbounce.com, instapages.com, or leadpages.com, which may be different from the software you have been using for the rest of your website. Of course, using new software for your new landing pages would require you to learn new skill sets for you to be able to operate them properly.

Furthermore, landing pages can be more expensive to maintain than a regular web page. Simply having your website hosted can already cost you 50 to 100 US dollars per month. Adding the hosting expenses for your new landing pages to the mix will surely make you rack up some bills.

The tracking process for landing pages can also be very specific and hard to follow. What you can do to make the tracking process more organized is to change the contact details you display on your new landing page: phone numbers, email forms, etc. Make sure that the new contact details will be directing the incoming information to the appropriate departments within your business. This is so you can pinpoint where the buzz is coming from in the first place, and which aspect of your business is generating these inquiries.

I often see business get fixated upon their desire to launch an entirely new website; in my opinion, creating a new landing page is all that’s needed in many of these cases. Sometimes, what a business truly needs is to generate income for one aspect of the business only; landing pages are perfect for that.

What are the kinds of companies that landing pages will serve best?

Companies that aim to focus on one product at the time benefit the most from landing pages. A new startup company that currently only offers one product or service is a perfect candidate. On the other hand, larger companies with a multitude of products and services that want the traffic to be driven towards only one department will also make good use of a landing page.

They are especially useful when you’re meaning to launch a new product and an accompanying paid online advertising campaign. This is because the results of an advertising campaign anchored on a landing page are very easy to monitor. You will be able to fine-tune your campaign based on the test results over a very short period of time.

Companies that frequently use special offers or rewards to hike up awareness of their business also benefit greatly from landing pages. You can use landing pages to highlight limited-time offers. When customers see that the offer that’s available on your landing page (say, a slashed price) is not available anywhere else on your main website, they are more likely to follow through with the call to action you presented.

If you are interested to learn how much we charge to build a bespoke designed landing page please visit our pricing page and check out our Spark product.

That concludes my short introduction to landing pages! I hope that, from this post, you have taken away something you can apply to your business.