Landing page: role, optimization, examples and best practices
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 10:44 am
A landing page, landing page or destination page in French, is a web page used in any good inbound marketing strategy . Its role is all the more crucial because it must transform the visitor into a potential prospect, then the prospect into a customer .
Generally speaking, a landing page offers content that is primarily focused on presenting a specific offer, product or service. Its goal is to encourage the visitor to interact , whether by downloading a white paper, making an appointment, requesting a quote, etc., all by means of a call-to-action.
As you might expect, there are a multitude of best practices for building and optimizing a landing page to make it even more effective. And that's exactly what we're going to cover here.
A woman works on the wireframes of a landing page
Landing page: definition and role
As we mentioned in the introduction, a landing page is an essential tool for your inbound marketing strategy. It is a page on your website created with the aim of converting your visitors into prospects, then from prospects to qualified leads, and from qualified leads to customers.
It therefore allows you to maximize the conversion rate of your traffic by guiding users from one stage of their journey to the next. But if the landing page is dedicated to the presentation of one of your offers, it is not a page like the others. Indeed, its role is to offer content with high added value in exchange for information communicated at key moments in the visitor journey.
Also, keep in mind that it is a single page that your users arrive at after clicking on a link or button, hence the name landing page. In other words, the visitor lands on the landing page after clicking on a specific call-to-action button (download a white paper, book an appointment, request a quote, etc.).
Here's an example of a call to action (CTA) sending people to a landing page:
Example of a CTA that sends to a landing page
This page is not accessible outside of this CTA, unlike regular pages on your website.
Note that incoming traffic to your landing page can come from different sources and channels , such as:
social networks;
an advertisement (SEA);
emailing;
one or more blog posts from your company ;
one or more pages of your website.
As we saw previously, if the landing page differs from other ig database pages of a website by its inaccessibility outside of a CTA, it also stands out by the fact that it is dedicated to a single, very specific offer .
But to do this, the landing page must communicate in an impactful way about a specific offer, in particular through a value proposition that includes an immediate benefit for the visitor ( white paper , subscription, product or service, etc.).
Be careful, it's not just about making a value proposition for the visitor, the idea is to get something from the latter when he performs one of the desired actions.
Yes! Let’s remember that the role of the landing page is to maximize the conversion rate of visitors by providing something meaningful for your business:
an email address or other contact details;
a newsletter subscription;
a request for a quote from the prospect;
a product or service;
a download;
etc.
Of course, if a landing page is dedicated to a single, limited offer, it must also meet a single conversion objective .
Example of a form on a landing page
Also, keep your inbound marketing strategy in mind when determining the most appropriate conversion objective.
E-BOOK
Download our ebook: Inbound Marketing, the 100% practical guide!
Download the e-book
Creating and optimizing landing pages that convert
Now that you understand what a landing page is for, let's focus on creating a landing page that converts , knowing that you will also need to work on acquiring traffic for your website if it is too low (SEO, SEA, social networks, etc.).
Indeed, a landing page is not intended to attract traffic, but only to convert said traffic. To put it another way, you can have the best landing page in the world, if no one comes to your site, it will be useless. Conversely, you can have a lot of traffic, but not (or hardly) convert your visitors if you do not have a landing page.
Define the type of content to offer (value proposition) on landing pages
A common mistake is to want to make CTAs, and therefore landing pages, without thinking about the different stages of the visitors' purchasing journey . Unfortunately, it is not enough to put all your brochures, white papers or others in landing pages for the magic to work.
Indeed, not all of your users are at the same level of maturity in their purchasing thinking. On this subject, you are probably aware that a purchasing process is broken down into at least 3 distinct phases: awareness (discovery of the problem), consideration (search for solutions) and decision (purchase of a solution that addresses the problem). This is the principle of the conversion funnel .
Generally speaking, a landing page offers content that is primarily focused on presenting a specific offer, product or service. Its goal is to encourage the visitor to interact , whether by downloading a white paper, making an appointment, requesting a quote, etc., all by means of a call-to-action.
As you might expect, there are a multitude of best practices for building and optimizing a landing page to make it even more effective. And that's exactly what we're going to cover here.
A woman works on the wireframes of a landing page
Landing page: definition and role
As we mentioned in the introduction, a landing page is an essential tool for your inbound marketing strategy. It is a page on your website created with the aim of converting your visitors into prospects, then from prospects to qualified leads, and from qualified leads to customers.
It therefore allows you to maximize the conversion rate of your traffic by guiding users from one stage of their journey to the next. But if the landing page is dedicated to the presentation of one of your offers, it is not a page like the others. Indeed, its role is to offer content with high added value in exchange for information communicated at key moments in the visitor journey.
Also, keep in mind that it is a single page that your users arrive at after clicking on a link or button, hence the name landing page. In other words, the visitor lands on the landing page after clicking on a specific call-to-action button (download a white paper, book an appointment, request a quote, etc.).
Here's an example of a call to action (CTA) sending people to a landing page:
Example of a CTA that sends to a landing page
This page is not accessible outside of this CTA, unlike regular pages on your website.
Note that incoming traffic to your landing page can come from different sources and channels , such as:
social networks;
an advertisement (SEA);
emailing;
one or more blog posts from your company ;
one or more pages of your website.
As we saw previously, if the landing page differs from other ig database pages of a website by its inaccessibility outside of a CTA, it also stands out by the fact that it is dedicated to a single, very specific offer .
But to do this, the landing page must communicate in an impactful way about a specific offer, in particular through a value proposition that includes an immediate benefit for the visitor ( white paper , subscription, product or service, etc.).
Be careful, it's not just about making a value proposition for the visitor, the idea is to get something from the latter when he performs one of the desired actions.
Yes! Let’s remember that the role of the landing page is to maximize the conversion rate of visitors by providing something meaningful for your business:
an email address or other contact details;
a newsletter subscription;
a request for a quote from the prospect;
a product or service;
a download;
etc.
Of course, if a landing page is dedicated to a single, limited offer, it must also meet a single conversion objective .
Example of a form on a landing page
Also, keep your inbound marketing strategy in mind when determining the most appropriate conversion objective.
E-BOOK
Download our ebook: Inbound Marketing, the 100% practical guide!
Download the e-book
Creating and optimizing landing pages that convert
Now that you understand what a landing page is for, let's focus on creating a landing page that converts , knowing that you will also need to work on acquiring traffic for your website if it is too low (SEO, SEA, social networks, etc.).
Indeed, a landing page is not intended to attract traffic, but only to convert said traffic. To put it another way, you can have the best landing page in the world, if no one comes to your site, it will be useless. Conversely, you can have a lot of traffic, but not (or hardly) convert your visitors if you do not have a landing page.
Define the type of content to offer (value proposition) on landing pages
A common mistake is to want to make CTAs, and therefore landing pages, without thinking about the different stages of the visitors' purchasing journey . Unfortunately, it is not enough to put all your brochures, white papers or others in landing pages for the magic to work.
Indeed, not all of your users are at the same level of maturity in their purchasing thinking. On this subject, you are probably aware that a purchasing process is broken down into at least 3 distinct phases: awareness (discovery of the problem), consideration (search for solutions) and decision (purchase of a solution that addresses the problem). This is the principle of the conversion funnel .