Landing pages are short, simple, and free from all the other things that can distract from the one thing that you want someone to do. If the page has other links to lead the visitor away, it’s less likely to convince someone to buy something or giving your their contact info.

Do you ever walk into a restaurant, have a look around and immediately think, “This does NOT seem like the kind of place I’d like”? You were expecting a cute little diner, but instead it looks outdated, the menu hasn’t been updated in years, and it’s really hard to find your way around. As a customer, you might turn around and walk back out after that quick poor impression and miss out on a fantastic meal.

That’s what having a bad landing page is like. A landing page is the first thing customers see when they come to your site, so you have to immediately appeal to them by answering their questions.

Tell them who you are, what you can do to solve their problems, and why they should trust you. If the page they land on does that, they’re going to take more steps toward making a sale with you.

Landings pages should get you a phone call or an email to request a quote.

These days, shoppers want to research things before they purchase, they want to request more information or even talk to your sales or estimating person before they make the decision to purchase.

Convince them that you’re worthy of their hard earned dollars by demonstrating your expertise on a simple, effective landing page.

There are a few ways to go about creating your landing page:

1. You could make one within the Pages section of your WordPress website all by yourself, which is a great option if you are familiar with web design or have an in-house marketing team.
2. You could use one of those landing page software services like Unbounce or LeadPages. You can read about both of these services in Ian Cleary’s review here.
3. And of course, you could hire a web designer to make them for you!

What Should Be on Your Landing Pages?

Whether you’re building landing pages yourself or you’re having someone make them for you, you should keep the following things in mind:

1. Who is this landing page for?
2. What do I want people to do?
3. Where are these people coming from? How did they land there?
4. Why would they want to be on the page?
5. What questions would they need answered on the page?

The simpler the landing page, the better! More options mean less efficiency.

Remember: if you’re offering a discount, deal, or contest, make sure that it’s mentioned on the landing page.

The better you know your audience, the more likely it is that you’ll know what they want (and don’t want).

And not to sound like a broken record, but your landing page needs to be simple, uncluttered, and it has to direct people to take ONE action.

Not quite sure what a good landing page looks like? Check out 16 of the Best Landing Page Design Examples You Need To See.

Want to know what makes a bad landing page? Here are 14 Reasons You Are Driving People Away from Your Landing Page.

There are lots of ways to measure whether your landing page or pages are successful. The most obvious one is if your phone is ringing and people are saying they found your website. Even better if they already know all about your business, products and services.

Another clear sign is if people are taking you up on the offers you have on your ads and landing pages.

But you can dig a little deeper with analytics. Here are a few metrics to look at:

• Bounce Rate: This is a percentage of people who see your page and then leave within seconds. If people stay on the page for a little while, it shows that you’ve gotten their interest. A low bounce rate is a good indication that your page is effective.
• Quality Score: Google has a secret scoring system to rate the quality of any given webpage. The higher the score, the better. You can find your quality score in your AdWords account.
• Conversion Rate A conversion is whatever you set the final goal of your landing page to be. If you want people to purchase a product, a conversion is a sale. If you want people to fill out your contact page, a conversion is a completed contact form.
• A/B Testing: If you have a few different landing pages and you want to figure out which one is working better, run them both at the same time and see which one brings in more leads or makes more conversions.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): This is the main goal of a website: to turn more and more visitors into customers. You want a high, consistent conversion rate.

Imagine if you could accurately predict that 3 out of 10 people (or more) who land on your web page will give your business  a call. Think about what that can do for your business! An optimized landing page can be a 24/7 sales person for you, consistently generating phone calls and emails from people requesting your products and service.

A landing page that hits all of the key points we outlined above can be one of the best investments you can make for your business.

Landing pages can have a HUGE impact on your business! You’d think that more businesses would take advantage of the opportunity to streamline their online marketing, but the stats are depressingly bad.

• About 48% of landing pages have multiple offers. (Big no-no!)
• A/B testing is the most popular testing method for landing pages because it works!
• Only 50% of landing pages are optimized for mobile, which needs to be higher because at least 75% of Canadians have smart phones.

These stats are pretty compelling! You can see all 25 Statistics About Landing Pages That Every Business Can Learn From here.