There are several guidelines and tutorials to be found on the internet about how to advertise in a proper way. I wrote one aswell, about efficient and user friendly advertising. But there are just a few articles that include the converting of the visitors (to customers).

Photo by Wrote

This takes us to the second part of effective advertising. What to do with all the visitors that enter the website via advertising? What is the page on which the new visitors will ‘land’ and is it properly designed?

The (importance of a great) landingpage

One of the most important pages on a complete website. This is the page on which the new visitors will enter the site, who clicked on a advertisement. Some advertisers pick their homepage as landingpage, but this page is usually inefficient.

A far more effective landingpage would be a specially for this purpose designed page, that will inform the visitors instantly what, the product or service you’re advertising for, is all about. Imagine yourself advertising for hosting. Instead of advertising for you’re company and directing the visitors to your homepage, try advertising for a specific product and create a special landingpage.

If the landingpage is properly designed and contains all required information (read on), the user will be better informed and won’t have to search the entire site for the information. People surfing the internet are (often) lazy and prefer all the information (structured) on a single page.

What should a great landingpage contain?

Well, this differs per product and service, but I’m thinking further on my webhosting advertising campaign. Imagine the company we’re advertising for, has three key products. Webhosting, webdesign and domain registration. Each product could have it’s own page with information, but most of the time these information is scattered over a website.

We have to create three pages, as each product will get it’s own advertising campaign. We do make sure that the three landingpages are connected with each other (to allow visitors to switch fast and in a clear way) and the pages should be integrated in the design of the website (to make further surfing easy).

Now we know what pages we’re going to create, we can decide what information we want to show and what information we definitely don’t want to show (on the landingpage).

1. General information regarding the product

Back to our webhosting products and we’re going to take a look into one specific product, the domain registration. What is the most important a visitor would like to know instantly about domain registration? Right, the pricing and the available extensions.

The main part of the page will be filled with pricing and available extensions. This is probably the information the visitor wants to know in the first seconds of the visit. Don’t forget to put links or buttons like; “Order now!”, to make sure the visitor knows where to order the product.

2. Secondary information

Now the visitor is aware of the pricing and available extensions, he or she is going to look further and would like some information about reliability, service and possible upgrading (linking the domain to a hosting product, for example).

This is the secondary information, which we will position in the center of the page, near the general information. We can use a smaller font, or a less contrasting color scheme for this part of the page, to make sure the general information is the first a visitor sees.

3. Miscellaneous and other products (recommendations)

Now we have published all the information that the visitor needs to see without having to make a single click. We can start concentrating on the visitors that (accidentally) land on the wrong page and information that is not required but we would like to be available on first sight. Links to other products need to be clear, but shouldn’t distract while reading the main information.

Links to other products can be done in a way like; “Recommended products”. People who enter the landingpage willing to buy hosting and a domain name usually get packages offered, which combine both products. But it happens that a visitor that comes with the intention to buy webhosting, not a domain name, comes on the page where you provide information about domain names.

It needs to be clear like a whistle, how the visitor can reach the other products.

Lots of information in a clear way

It’s important for landingpages, that they contain lots of information in a clear way. But we’ve got to be careful not to push too much information in a page, so the overview is lost. Overview is more important than information, page which don’t invite to read due to the large amounts of text, won’t be read at all.

A perfect designed landingpage, will convert all the visitors that are willing to buy. It’s just the trick to make it perfect. For a lot of websites, it’s based on trail and error. See what works for your niche and what doesn’t work.

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