Website Landing Page Basics

• You should consider changes to your site in conjunction with your marketing campaigns
• Targeted to the group of people you want to appeal or sell to
• Focused one 1 call to action
• Consistency
• Simplicity
While it’s crucial to have a well designed website to increase all your online goals. You can also increase revenue by  focusing on a few key landing pages as they relate to any web marketing campaigns you may be running.
A Landing page is the first page someone comes to on your website after clicking on an advertisement or link from a different site (it could also be a specific page that some of your traditional marketing tools drive visitors to). A landing page is more specific and tailored than your homepage. It asking for the visitor to do one thing (sign up for newsletter, making a purchase, sending an enquiry email etc).
The investment in a good landing page can bring you hefty returns because each time a visitor completes your specified call to action, you’ve increased your revenue. You’re already possibly paying a set amount for each visitor to land on your page (whether it be a cost per click like Google Adwords or a monthly CPM for a banner on another website). So the better your landing page, the more visitors will complete the call to action.
Example landing page items could include
a simple web banner inviting the user to click through always more effective if  you include the keywords in the banner.
Consistent landing page the visitor sees after he clicks on the banner ad.
A simple call to action
Test different versions of your landing page to see which one gets the most conversions
Depending on how much time / effort and money you are investing in your online campaigns, you may want to test several
versions of your landing page to see which one results in the most conversions. You can actually run this test for free using Google’s Optimizer.
The key to creating a successful landing page with a number of conversions is to use a clean, simple design that matches up with your web banner ad or campaign. This gives the user comfort that they made the right choice by clicking through.
Now that they are on your page, we want to show them how easy it is for him to complete the call to action. Visually show him the number of steps to finish for example
Simple message
Short steps 1-2-3
Bullet points
Links
Big Visible Call to Action
With these basics in mind, let shift our attention to a contact form page. This is a crucial page for any website. You may be using this page as a call to action from several different marketing campaigns both online and offline.
Use big buttons with clear messages like ‘register now’ ‘enquire now’ ‘leave us a message’ ‘start the quote process’
We want to show one quick little case study (for those of you considering a redesign of your website). Here is an example of a PADI member who just went through the whole process.
They used to have a website that looked like this. I don’t think it was an terrible site to begin with, but you may see some things straight off that you would change if this was your website. What might you do differently here?
One thing I notice right off the bat is they have a much more consistent color palatte, which gives them the ability to highlight only the most important things. What stands out now to you?
Contact information in the header is also quite dominant (another plus!)
I like how they have condensed all the items on the home page to fit what the user is looking for
They also have a strong social following so have included the social buttons.
They’ve also added a site search in the upper right (exactly where it should go).
Here’s what they said about their website redesign project:
Goals
There are a few reasons for the change:
1. We’d been adding more and more to the site and it was getting to the point it was becoming “too busy and confusing” to the viewer.
2. We wanted the viewer to focus on the main aspects of our business by locating them above the fold.
3. The old site was loaded with graphics and lacking in photography.
4. We determined some of the old menu bar topics needed to be removed while others needed to be added.
5. Easy navigation was paramount. We really wanted to place a stronger emphasis on our key services
In addition, the new design made it easy to add blocks for our Services
Results
First and foremost our enquires took a huge hike.
Allowed us to better share information and sped up our ability to enroll them in a program.
Our online course enrollment also increased as well as repeat traffic.
Investment
It took much longer than we expected (few months) but worth the wait. Our entire management team provided
the content as well as most of the photos. The webmaster hired a second person to help with the overall
design. Note that we have two sites, main site and the sub site. The combined cost was not cheap.
Lessons Learned
Admittedly, I’ve learned a great deal by online research
The suggestions from Google online guides have proven to invaluable.
My management team provided several quantitative suggestions and of course our webmaster and his assistant really stepped up with a fresh new design.
Mostly, I’d have done some better planning by having an established timeline, breakdown of associated costs and met more frequently with my managers and webmaster to review the needs and progress of the site.