Small Biz Tip: uber-simple landing pages

Do you want more from your email and social media marketing efforts? First look at your landing pages.

Most of what you do online - especially email and social media campaigns - include links back to your web site. You have most likely designed the best campaign you can to encourage people to respond - to click on that link! But have you spent as much time designing your landing page as you did designing the campaign?

A landing page is the web page people "land" on when they click your link.

But what happens next?

That's the key to effective online campaigns - making that 'next step' as interesting and as effortless as possible.

If the browser lands on your Home page, they still have work to do. They have to navigate through the site to find the offer / product / information that inspired them to click-through in the first place.

If you ask the browser to do more work to find what they're after, they most likely won't. So all your efforts to inspire them to click-through are wasted!

Design a landing page that points them directly to the topic of the originating link. If you're offering a 50% discount on wrapping paper, create a page with a huge image of wrapping paper, a huge confirmation of the 50% offer, and a huge "Buy now" button. All they have to do is click the button - no real effort required. If you directed them to your web site and made them find the gift-wrap section, you're asking them to do too much.

Here's an example from Staples. If you were so inclined to click the link on the email for a refurbished computer, optical mouse or printer paper, you're only one more click away from having the product in your shopping cart. Simple. Effective. Effortless.

That's how you increase your chances of online marketing success.

LESSON FOR SMALL BUSINESS:

• Every link you put out there through your marketing efforts should have a dedicated landing page.
• Those landing pages need to be simple, obvious and effortless.
• Don't forget to use web analytics to track campaign effectiveness (how many people land on the page; how many of them click to buy; how many of them actually buy and so on). Contact me for more information about web analytics tools and how to implement them (I don't sell them, so it's not a blatant pitch).

YOUR TURN:

• Any favourite landing pages... or bad ones?