The objective of today's web site is more important and more difficult than ever, especially when it comes to a multichannel sales strategy. Consumers arrive at your web site through a variety of interactive channels: pay-per-click (PPC) and organic search, e-mail offers and print offline ads. Once there, they need to complete the objective of acting upon a promotion, or buying a specific product.

If their entry leaves them uninterested because they don't see anything appropriate to what drove them there, they're most likely to bail, having wasted their time and your marketing budget. Landing pages serve as a gateway between the marketing message that brought visitors to the site and the site functionality that enables them to take action, such as making a purchase or submitting a lead.

== Reducing Bounces ==

A web site landing page is quite simply a page that continues the momentum from the referring channel's message. A common attribute might be the pay-per-click search keywords that brought them to the web site, or a specific e-mail offer that was clicked on.

In fact, customized landing pages with keyword search terms appear more interesting to visitors who have arrived via a specific search engine query. As a result, fewer "bounces" occur. A bounce is a user who hits the landing page, stays for a very short time, then clicks the back button to return to the search engine page -- pretty much a totally wasted paid click. Customized landing pages minimize this risk.

For example, an e-mail offer for a discounted travel package would bring the user directly to a landing page that reassuringly describes the offer in more detail and provides links to check availability and book the trip. It sounds simple enough, but put yourself in the consumer's shoes and do a few interactive searches of your own. You'll be surprised at how many merchants still aren't using landing pages.

== Tacticsand Tricks ==

Creating a effective landing page isn't hard, and you can easily experiment and learn as you go. First, choose which page you'll need as the landing page for a specific promotion. You may very well have an existing web page that you can use (one that's more targeted than your homepage), but if you don't, consider publishing a new landing page. If that's the case, keep in mind these six top practices:

(1)Include a graphic along with the offer for visual appeal.

(2)Reduce navigation to keep visitors focused on the objective and reduce distraction.

(3)Keep the look and feel of your primary web site so visitors will immediately recognize your brand.

(4)Don't forget a compelling call-to-action that should tie in to the offer. For example, the copy for the travel promotion above could have a call-to-action such as ?Book Now.?

(5)Reduce data collection as much as possible to decrease bounces. If you must collect more information, try moving those fields onto a form on a second page; the effect is that by the time visitors click through to this new page, they've already generated some momentum in the conversion process and are less likely to click off the page.

(6)Whenever asking for personal information, include privacy and security statements to help establish trust.

Landing pages for lead-generation sites typically should focus on a single, specific objective -- getting the user to register or submit a lead. These types of landing pages should have a minimum of unrelated navigation or content, and should show only relevant, reassuring messaging that encourages visitors to effectively take the next step in the registration process. There are many similar characteristics to direct mail. Every piece of literature, every page, every graphic and every word in a direct mail campaign serves a very specific goal -- there's no waste. Everything is focused on getting the recipient to respond. The same goes with lead-generation landing pages.

Also, remember that you'll need to include the landing page's URL in the hyperlink of the message on the referring channel. For example, pay-per-click search, e-mail, and print hyperlinks should all point to your targeted landing page.

== Taking it Up a Notch ==

Once you've made landing pages as part of your marketing toolbox, you should look at optimizing them for the greatest success. Direct marketers have benefited from A/B split testing for decades to learn which competing ad or sales letter works most successfully, and you can do the same with landing pages.

For example, does putting your product's cost on the landing page create more sales than if you required the user to click onto the following page before showing price? Using A/B testing, or more sophisticated multivariate testing, you can learn exactly which combination of alternate offers, headlines, copy, images and calls-to-action are most persuasive to visitors.

After A/B and multivariate testing, you can also use behavioral targeting techniques to present visitors with landing pages that are personalized based on whether the user is new versus returning, time of day or day of week, and so on. Using behavioral targeting in conjunction with testing, you can easily optimize campaigns and other factors that will drive higher conversions and increased loyalty. For example:

*Utilize and test multiple landing page strategies to learn which is most successful on a segment-by-segment basis.

*Dramatically increase leads and conversions generated by PPC traffic, without increasing your SEM budget.

*Identify search terms and keywords that will yield the best quality traffic, then target those segments with specific, highly optimized campaigns and appropriate landing pages.

Landing pages are an important component that should be in every interactive marketer's toolbox. Try out the tactics outlined in this document to produce optimized landing pages for your users. By optimizing landing pages through the steps of testing and targeting, you'll not only increase the effectiveness of your interactive marketing budget, but you'll gain unique and valuable insights into what entices your users to take action.