In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page", "single property page", "static page", "squeeze page" or a "destination page", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result, marketing promotion, marketing email or an online advertisement. [1] The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement, search result or link. Landing pages are used for lead generation. The actions that a visitor takes on a landing page are what determine an advertiser's conversion rate. A landing page may be part of a microsite or a single page within an organization's main web site.
Landing pages are often linked to social media, e-mail campaigns, search engine marketing campaigns, high-quality articles or "affiliate account" in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales or leads. If the goal is to obtain a lead, the landing page will include some method for the visitor to get into contact with the company, usually a phone number or an inquiry form. If a sale is required, the landing page will usually have a link for the visitor to click, which will then send them to a shopping cart or a checkout area. By analyzing activity generated by the linked URL, marketers can use click-through rates and conversion rate to determine the success of an advertisement. [2]
There are two types of landing pages: reference and transactional.
Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript that uses cross-site scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that uses Adobe Flash. They can also be generated by other vulnerabilities/security holes in browser security.
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. In 2021, more than 38 million websites used AdSense. It is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies.
Findability is the ease with which information contained on a website can be found, both from outside the website and by users already on the website. Although findability has relevance outside the World Wide Web, the term is usually used in that context. Most relevant websites do not come up in the top results because designers and engineers do not cater to the way ranking algorithms work currently. Its importance can be determined from the first law of e-commerce, which states "If the user can’t find the product, the user can’t buy the product." As of December 2014, out of 10.3 billion monthly Google searches by Internet users in the United States, an estimated 78% are made to research products and services online.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives: build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings and increase the Call to action (CTA) on the website.
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research and assess and improve website effectiveness. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. It can be used to estimate how traffic to a website changes after launching a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views, or creates user behavior profiles. It helps gauge traffic and popularity trends, which is useful for market research.
Contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising for advertisements appearing on websites or other digital platforms, such as content displayed in mobile browsers. Contextual targeting involves the use of linguistic factors to control the placement of advertising material. The advertisements are selected and delivered by automated systems, taking into consideration the context of a user's search or browsing behaviour. As advertisers and marketers increasingly prioritise brand safety and suitability, contextual advertising has emerged as a crucial aspect in safeguarding the reputation and value of a brand.
Marketing experimentation is a research method which can be defined as "the act of conducting such an investigation or test". It is testing a market that is segmented to discover new opportunities for organisations. By controlling conditions in an experiment, organisations will record and make decisions based on consumer behaviour. Marketing experimentation is commonly used to find the best method for maximizing revenues through the acquisition of new customers. For example; two groups of customers are exposed to different advertising (test). How did consumers react to advertising compared to the other group? (measurable). Did the advertising increase sales for each group? (result).
Bounce rate is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave ("bounce") rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site. Bounce rate is calculated by counting the number of single page visits and dividing that by the total visits. It is then represented as a percentage of total visits.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of users or website visitors to take a desired action.
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. It has significantly transformed the way brands and businesses utilize technology for marketing since the 1990s and 2000s. As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people increasingly used digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones, callbacks, and on-hold mobile ringtones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.
In marketing, multivariate testing or multi-variable testing techniques apply statistical hypothesis testing on multi-variable systems, typically consumers on websites. Techniques of multivariate statistics are used.
Post-click marketing is emerging as a practice that aims at improving sales and marketing results by focusing on website visitors when they respond to online marketing activities such as pay per click advertising, HTML e-mails, and paid searches with the objective on increasing conversion rates.
Transpromotional ("transpromo") is a compound expression formed from the words "transaction" and "promotional". By adding relevant messages, companies can piggyback promotion or even advertising onto existing transaction-related documents, such as statements, invoices, or bills. Transpromotional documents combine CRM and data mining technology with variable data printing and location intelligence.
Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used in order to achieve the following business goals: attract attention and generate leads, expand their customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage a community of online users. Content marketing attracts new customers by creating and sharing valuable free content as well as by helping companies create sustainable brand loyalty, providing valuable information to consumers, and creating a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.
Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting.
Multivariate landing page optimization (MVLPO) is a specific form of landing page optimization where multiple variations of visual elements on a webpage are evaluated. For example, a given page may have k choices for the title, m choices for the featured image or graphic, and n choices for the company logo. This example yields k×m×n landing page configurations.
In e-commerce, the conversion funnel is the journey a consumer takes through an Internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website, and finally making a purchase. The consumer is seen as being "converted" from a visitor to the site to a buyer.
In electronic commerce, conversion marketing is marketing with the intention of increasing conversions—that is, site visitors who are paying customers.
A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links or other elements.[ citation needed ] The idea is to isolate the visitor in this landing page from any other distractions, like full website menu or "similar products", and surround the visitor with all available information about the targeted product to convince him to take action and get captured.
The "References" landing page type should be a transitional stage before the second type which is the "Transactional" Type.
The purpose of the transactional landing page is to persuade a visitor to take action by completing a transaction. This is accomplished by providing a form that needs to be filled out. The visitor information is obtained in order to add the visitor's email address to a mailing list as a prospect. An email campaign can then be developed based on responses to transactional landing pages. The goal is to capture as much information about the visitor as possible. The ultimate goal is to convert the visitor into a customer. [ citation needed ]
Landing pages originated with the IT departments of Microsoft in late 2003 in response to poor online sales of Office.[ citation needed ] The process was tedious and time-consuming. As a result, in 2009, several startups, including Unbounce, were formed to simplify and streamline the process. The rise of cloud computing and e-commerce around 2009 provided ideal conditions for these startups to flourish.[ citation needed ] Since then the customer requirements changed, requesting integrations with other solutions such as email marketing, lead nurturing and customer relationship management systems.
Landing pages often contain clear, concise action-oriented headlines.[ citation needed ] A good landing page explains the product offer in a clear manner and places visual emphasis on the value of the product or service presented.
Marketing experts recommend websites remove the navigation menu and limit internal and external links on the page. [3] Any signup forms on the landing page should reflect the value of the offer. For example, a free offer or newsletter sign up form may only request an email address, whereas high value offers may have longer forms with more details required. They may also include a relevant image, animation or short video. These pages also tend to contain small icons (i.e. of Facebook or Twitter) to facilitate social media sharing.[ citation needed ]
With the proliferation of competing social media and music distribution platforms a minimal landing page referred to as a smart link has appeared. These are a short url, typically shared to existing fans, which leads to a landing page which only has links to the same content on multiple different platforms – enabling customers to choose where they complete their transaction. [4] [5]
Landing page optimization (LPO) is one part of a broader Internet marketing process called conversion optimization or conversion rate optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that becomes sales leads and customers. A landing page is a webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks an advertisement or a search engine result link. This webpage typically displays content that is a relevant extension of the advertisement or link. LPO aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences.
There are three major types of LPO based on targeting: [6]
There are two major types of LPO based on experimentation:
Experimentation-based LPO can be achieved using A/B testing, multivariate LPO and total-experience testing. These methodologies are applicable to both closed- and open-ended experimentation.
A/B testing, or A/B split testing, is a method for testing two versions of a webpage: version "A" and version "B". The goal is to test multiple versions of webpages (e.g. home page, product page or FAQ) or one specific element that changes between variation A and variation B (such as having a lead form on the left-hand side or having it placed on the right-hand side), to determine, which version is most appealing/effective. This testing method may also be known as A/B/n split testing; the n denoting more than 2 tests being measured and compared. The data for A/B testing is usually measured via click-through rate or an alternative conversion tracking method. [8]
Testing can be conducted sequentially or in parallel. In sequential testing, often the easiest to implement, the various versions of the webpages are made available online for a specified time period. In parallel (split) testing, both versions are made available and the traffic is divided between the two. The results of sequential split testing can be skewed by differing time periods and traffic patterns in which the different tests are run.
A/B testing has the following advantages:
A/B testing has the following disadvantages:
Multivariate landing page optimization (MVLPO) accounts for multiple variations of visual elements (e.g., graphics, text) on a page. For example, a given page may have k choices for the title, m choices for the featured image or graphic and n choices for the company logo. This example yields k×m×n landing page configurations. [ citation needed ]
Significant improvements can be seen through testing different copy text, form layouts, landing page images and background colours. However, not all elements produce the same improvements in conversions and by looking at the results from different tests, it is possible to identify the elements that consistently tend to produce the greatest increase in conversions. [ citation needed ]
The first application of experimental design for MVLPO was performed by Moskowitz Jacobs Inc. in 1998 as a simulation/demonstration project for Lego. MVLPO did not become a mainstream approach until 2003 or 2004. [ citation needed ]
MVLPO has the following advantages:
MVLPO has the following disadvantages:
Total-experience testing, or experience testing, is a type of experiment-based testing in which the entire website experience of the visitor is examined using technical capabilities of the website platform (e.g., ATG, Blue Martini Software, etc.). Rather than creating multiple websites, total-experience testing uses the website platform to create several persistent experiences and monitors which one is preferred by the customers. [ citation needed ]
An advantage of total-experience testing is that it reflects the customer's total website experience, not just the experience with a single page. Two disadvantages are that total-experience testing requires a website platform that supports experience testing, and it takes longer to obtain results than A/B testing and MVLPO. [ citation needed ]
Various eye-tracking tools have proven that people scan webpages in various patterns, but one of the most common for both desktop and mobile takes the form of a letter "F". In this pattern, most website visitors see the top and left side of the screen first and only then move to other parts of the screen, line by line. As a result, web developers include the most important website content in the first lines and first words of the text to improve visitors' understanding and impression of overall content.
Message matching is the idea of matching the pre-click message to the post-click message on the landing page. [9] The goal of message matching is to create a landing page that directs individuals to a page on a product or subject they are expecting.
This could be done by displaying a statement to the visitors using the same keywords and the right images on the landing page that was found in the advertisement they clicked on. [10]
The messaging on the page reinforces the reason for their click, reducing or removing confusion and therefore increasing conversion rates. This improves overall user experience and reduces the bounce rate (individuals leaving the site without converting or navigating to another portion of the site) for the page. Good message matching can increase conversion by up to 50% in many cases. [10]
Design matching takes the design on the display ad and repeats it on the landing page. Ensuring the look, feel and sentiment is the same in order to smooth the transition between clicking the ad and completing a conversion.