First impressions matter! In human relationships we often form a judgement of someone within a minute or so of meeting them. Although such judgements can sometimes be reviewed, more often than not they significantly shape the course of our relationship with that person.

Removing the human factor means that instant judgements are even more likely to stick. However a visitor arrives at your website, it’s important to draw them in from that point on.

Particularly when you are running a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign – where an interested consumer will click on an advert and be redirected to your website – it is essential to maintain that level of interest once they arrive at your website. Only if they hang around for a while is that interest likely to be converted to a sale.

Landing pages can either be general purpose – i.e. the same content for everyone arriving at your website from any link anywhere – or bespoke. Bespoke landing pages can be tailored for a particular advertising campaign or target audience.

A general landing page is easier to maintain and track, but bespoke page may hold the attention of the visitor better, if it is specifically aimed at them. But, whichever route we choose as part of our digital marketing strategy, we need to ensure that customers have a smooth landing when they arrive at our website!

Here are 10 Top Tips to consider:

1. Ensure the page loads quickly – If your page takes too long to load this will frustrated visitors and they may decide not to bother. This is a key issue to address! It is also worth bearing in mind that page loading speed is one of the factors in Google’s Quality Score.

2. Make your page mobile-friendly – As we reported in our March blog “What the F*ck has Google done to my website?!” it is imperative that websites are now optimised for mobile devices. Around a third of online e-commerce transactions take place on online devices so the landing page should be designed with this in mind; if a visitor is faced with a clunky desktop landing page that does not display properly on their mobile device they are likely to give up and go elsewhere.

3. Minimise navigation options – Which of us has not experienced a sense of bewilderment from landing on a website only to be greeted by a whole plethora of options! Whilst there should be a small number of logical navigation options so that the visitor does not get stuck, too many will make the landing page look cluttered and could distract the visitor from making a purchase or even put them off sharing any of their information.

4. Ensure consistency between your advertising and your landing page – If you are expecting visitors to arrive from a PPC advert then ensure that your landing page reflects consistency with that advert to reassure the visitor that they have been directed to the right place! Consistent branding, similar wording and easy to find matching of the offer in the advert will all keep the customer engaged and interested.

5. Be smart about your use of images – Ensure that your landing page has a good balance between text and images. It is a good idea to test the relevance and effectiveness of your images wherever possible as they can make a big difference as to whether customers stay on the site and proceed to conversions.

6. Get the length and depth right! – How long should a landing page be? The old adage “As long as a piece of string” holds true here! There is no absolute right or wrong. However, your page needs to be long enough to give enough detail of your product or service to portray it in the way you want to, but not too long otherwise it could put visitors off. This is something to experiment with and see what format works best for you: but do make it a conscious decision rather than leaving it to chance.

7. Include reviews from social media sites – Many visitors to website – particularly if it is their first visit – find it reassuring to read reviews and comments from other customers. So do include either on your landing page – or easily and obviously navigable from it – any reviews, recommendations and testimonials. Membership of, and endorsements from recognised professional associations and other trusted organisations also helps enormously.

8. Provide something for everyone! – Even if a customer is not at the point of being ready to buy your product or service, do provide something that will have made it worth their while visiting your site. Some visitors may be willing to sign up to a newsletter or email updates, others may have questions about the product or service that they may want to use FAQ or live chat for, or a phone number to talk to someone.

9. Include a call to action – What is the main objective of your landing page? What do you want visitors to do? Where do you expect them to go from here? Whatever your purpose, make sure that visitors can clearly find what you want them to do and that you make it more than easy for them to do it!

10. Keep things moving! – Never be satisfied with your landing page! It may be brilliant today but you can’t become complacent and expect it still to achieve its purpose in 6 months time. By careful use of analytics you can track how effective your landing page is being and see what is and is not working, then change things accordingly. In the ever-changing world of digital marketing, to stay still is to fall behind.

We wish you many smooth landings, and hope that the above tips help you and your business to move closer to all that your digital marketing strategy is aiming to achieve.