Inside tips on creating a successful landing page.

Landing pages are important to anyone running a pay per click campaign. Some people may disagree. In fact, I know there are many people that believe there is little use in spending time on them at all. These are usually people that have never attempted to optimize their landing pages. Several large and medium sized businesses use pay per click. Some have even taken the step to make all their "buy" pages landing pages. If profitable businesses take notice of landing pages, shouldn't you? So what is a landing page and what are the benefits?

Landing pages have everything a visitor needs to make a decision and purchase all on one page. You may be asking if this is necessary. Couldn’t you just link to the home page? If you do that, the visitor now needs to surf to find what they want. Trust me, they won’t. It is easier to hit the back button and try another site. Landing pages go hand in hand with your ad. If your ad is mentioning a specific product, the link should take them to the page featuring this product. Your site’s landing pages should be accessible from your site map. It needs to be indexed but doesn't need to be viewable by your visitors unless they are coming in from your PPC ad.

Some inside secrets:

Some people will leave your landing page without scrolling down or reading the content on the page. Whatever layout you decide to go with, keep that in mind. If visitors can't find what they need within 10 seconds, they'll likely move on to someone else's page. Make sure your photo, content and "call for action" are in immediate view of the visitor.

Use the same heading for your title page on your landing pages. This will help reassure your visitors that they are on the right site. Use words for your hyperlinks. Worded links tend to catch visitors eyes first. Use this to your advantage. Links can be whole sentences if so desired. Bold any words that may be of interest to the visitor. Words such as free, guarantee, low prices and other similar words will guide the reader to where you want them to go. Also, most visitors will jump through a few hoops to purchase your product. Just don't make them jump too often. Make your forms simple and easy to fill out. If your form takes longer the 2.5 minutes to fill out, you may lose the sale.

Here are some small factors that can make a big difference in sales. Try:

* Changing colors
* Lowering shipping charges occasionally, and indicating it to the visitor
* Reassuring buyers with a money back guarantee or BBB seal
* Limiting navigational options
* Simplifying content (Just list the information a visitor needs to know to make a purchase)
* Making it as easy as possible for the visitor to make a speedy purchase (If the shipping and billing addresses are the same, do they really need to fill it out twice? Why not use an automated indicator box?) Offering better customer service options (If you can, give them the option to call you - especially if you offer 24 hour telephone service)

Test other layouts. Try adding different photos, text, fonts and colors. Make each landing page different. Then compare your clicks vs sales. The landing page with the highest conversion may be the one that works best. If you see a remarkable difference in your click to sale ratio, implement the same layout to the other pages. Your conversion rates should move up. Remember to keep your pages simple. In this case, less is more. Remember to keep a close eye on your conversions and adjust accordingly. You should see your ROI increase.

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