Why does my business or website need a landing page? Why the hell should I use one?

Landing pages, capture pages, and squeeze pages all mean the same damn thing. Web marketing companies throw those terms around loosely and it confuses the crap out of their clients. For the sake of this article I’ll be calling it a landing page.

So, what’s a landing page? It’s a web page that works in conjunction with your website. Its only goal is to make a conversion: to get the user to perform an action. Landing pages need to follow a set of rules to be most effective.

1. A landing page has no menu bar. Why? If you put your menu at the top of the page, then you give your users an ‘out.’ All you want them to do is fill out the form and hit ‘send.’
2. A landing page also has no footer, with the exception of social sharing links.
3. Your landing page header should have the same message as the link text that brought the user to the page. For example, if the link under my YouTube video says, ‘Download My Facebook Cover Image Template,’ your landing page header should say the same thing.
4. The body text should be concise, describing what the user is filling out. The shorter, the better.
5. Add a small image.
6. Add 3-5 bullet points on the benefits the user gets from filling out the form.
7. The title of the form should use powerful words that make the user excited about filling out the form. In the example above, ‘Download My Facebook Cover Image Template’ is hardly compelling copy!
8. Create a call-to-action (CTA) button. For the above example, I would re-iterate ‘Download Now.’
9. Create a thank-you page or redirect the user to a pertinent page on your site. For example, a specific blog post or your process page.
10. Repetition is not a bad thing here. Just reword the action you want people to perform.

Here’s an example of this layout:

A good landing page follows the above rules to ensure that the message is congruent from the traffic source up until the thank-you page. In short, it will increase your leads and make you more money. In contrast, a bad landing page is when someone clicks on a link — say our ‘Download My Facebook Cover Image Template’ example — and gets a form that says, ‘Contact Sales.’ All this gets you is a disappointed user that will never return to your site again.

Saucal can help you make amazing landing pages. Clients that listen to us get up to 50 hot leads a month! Get started now!