Landing Pages: The Secret to Online Sales

Aug 14, 12 | 12:06 am

By Angela Stringfellow

Location. Location. Location. We all know it's one of the most basic principles of marketing. A good location helps draw customers and increase sales. With the advent of the Internet and digital marketing, location has become less important, but it's still critical to consider where you're sending your customers when incorporating digital advertising into your marketing mix.

Instead of just sending potential customers to your company's homepage, it has become more critical to send them to dedicated sales pages, also known as landing pages, which increase conversions and maximize ROI. "Landing pages are a great opportunity for small businesses to get the most out of their online marketing efforts," says Tom Demers, co-founder of MeasuredSEM, a search-engine marketing company specializing in SEO services for small businesses.

Demers says that landing pages tend to work well because they allow you to create a special message and experience for potential customers coming from specific destinations. For example, a landing page can be created for a specific sales promotion, which then can be linked to a paid search campaign.

A Tailored Experience

The specificity of landing pages is perhaps their biggest advantage. In other words, a landing page "fulfills the promise of the place visitors come from, whether that is an ad, a search result listing, or another site sending referral traffic," Demers says. Simply put, if you promise your customers the opportunity to sign up for a free trial by following a link, be sure that the page they land on (hence the term landing page) provides a place for them to sign up.

Are Landing Pages Effective?

Do landing pages really work? Absolutely. Demers says that his clients have seen an increase in conversions simply by updating their landing pages. One such client, Zintro, a business networking company, watched as their conversions increased from 2.1 percent to 12.5 percent after landing page optimization.

Before landing page optimization, Zintro was seeing a 2.1 percent conversion rate with this basic page.

After landing page optimization, Zintro saw a nearly 600 percent increase in conversions just by making their page more specific to their offer and their consumer.

Source for full article: OPEN Forum