13.2 seconds

As per Gordon Hotchkiss, President and CEO of Enquiro Search Solutions, Inc, that’s how much time you have to convince visitors once they are on your landing page, that they are in the right place and on the right site.

See examples of good landing pages here

Landing pages are those pages that prospective customers arrive on after clicking on a link or URL sent to them in a promotional email, or to which ad banners or pay per clicks ads are linked. These campaigns are used to generate interest about the product and most importantly, to get the users to take action. Therefore, landing pages are often the place where visitors are converted to paying customers!

An ineffective landing page can ruin even the most successful ad banner and email campaigns. It’s like getting the horse to the well, and then realizing that the well is empty. To ensure that your campaigns are a success it becomes imperative to convert every lead to a sale via impressive, hard selling landing pages.

Here are six tips on designing landing pages that are effective in closing the deal.

1. Identify your user. B2B (business-to-business) customers and B2C (business-to-consumer) customers are very different in their behavior and need to be treated differently. B2B buyers tend to focus a lot on research and will, in most likelihood, come back to the website to shop. The landing pages you create for B2B shoppers must be filled with in-depth product information and testimonials about the quality of the product and the company background. Reliability, quality and delivery of promised goods are imperative. Also, you can use a price range instead of a specific price for these buyers.
   For B2C customers on the other hand, landing pages must focus on making a quick sale. It is necessary to create an urgency to buy now by offering freebies and discounts to early shoppers. A single price, inclusive of shipping and taxes works best. Product photos are also absolutely essential to close the sale.
2. Maintain continuity. This is a good way to get customers to immediately recognize that they are on the right website and start browsing and buying. The graphics used in the marketing promotion must be similar to those on the landing pages. You can use the same graphic in both places to create an identity.
3. Give the information you have promised. If the marketing promotion said that users could read “10 Great tips about search engine marketing” then ensure that the landing pages deliver the promise. Nothing is more annoying than being misled by promotional emails that fail to deliver. If you deliver on what you promised you build trust within the customer. Failure to deliver results in mistrust.
4. Gather personal information. Getting a user to click from promotional emails and banner ads to reach the landing pages is the first hurdle. Once you have a user on the landing pages, you have to encourage a purchase. While some users may convert to customers immediately, most will not. Try to get some personal information about those interested, but hesitant users. Just a name and email will do (you don’t have to go into their life’s history). Offering a free report or other incentive via email is a great way to get the information you want.
5. Use targeted landing pages. For every promotion you run, create different landing pages. If you are sending the same promotion to different target markets, create separate landing pages for the different targets. The more you customize your landing pages to meet the requirements of and fulfill the expectations of visitors from various campaigns, the better your conversion rate will be.
6. Include a call to action. Effective landing pages always invite the user to browse further, to buy a product, to sign up for a newsletter. The more involved a user gets with your website, the greater the chances that he or she will purchase from it. Customize the landing pages so that each landing page has a call to action targeted to the specific group you are marketing to.

At the end of the day what you need to remember is that landing pages are where you must convert eyeballs to sales. Email promotions and banner ads can get traffic to your website. The landing page will make the sale.

original article