A landing page is actually a “second impression.” The first impression is the ad through which the visitor clicked to arrive at the landing page. Since they left one page to go to another, it behooves you to make sure they know they arrived at the right place. Tell your visitors that the landing page is relevant to what they clicked through. Use the same colors and logos if you can. Use the same title as you used for the original ad. If you made a particular offer in the ad, it should be clearly visible on your page. Some landing pages that visitors arrive at through sponsored links on search engines even include search text: “You searched for Gibson guitar,” for example.
Once your visitors know they’re in the right place, it’s your job to keep them focused. Most people have a shorter attention span for online activities than they do for offline things. That’s even true for something as simple as reading. No matter how good your monitor is, it’s still much more restful to read a book or magazine offline than it is to read online (especially when many of us already stare at a computer screen all day at our jobs). This makes users restless; they’ll fidget, and fidgeting can mean they click away from your site if they’re bored.
Format your page for the shorter attention span and you’ll calm the fidgets. Think short paragraphs, bullet points, and highly relevant content. Consider your target audience carefully, starting with the search they did. Are they looking for information about a type of product, the features for a specific product, or what?
For example, in Roche’s blog entry, he compared landing pages from several different companies for a “chiminea” – a type of outdoor fireplace. He gave good marks to the second landing page he checked because it gave him definitions for several related products, as well as buying tips. He discovered that what he really wanted wasn’t a chiminea, but a fire pit. Normally, you’ll want to keep the copy on your landing page relatively short, as I emphasize above, but if you’re selling a product or service that requires some explanation, you may need to go into some detail to avoid confusion. To that end, you’ll want to test different landing pages, and different aspects of your landing pages, to compare how well they convert.
