“We don’t need a landing page, we have a brand new website,” said the regional sales manager, right before he became the regional sanitation manager.
Now Sammy cleans the ball pit at McDonalds.
Where did Sammy go wrong?
First, he ordered a McDouble instead of the Aussie BBQ & Egg Burger – seriously though, that burger!!! – and secondly, he didn’t understand the difference between a website and a landing page.
Don’t make the same mistake Sammy made.
Here’s the difference between the two, condensed into as few of words as possible because I am extremely hungry right now.
Website
The purpose of a website is to provide an information hub for your audience. Websites cater to your entire audience and communicate your brand, product information, services and/or everything else under the kitchen sink.
Landing Page
The purpose of a landing page is to capture the contact information of your audience to communicate with them and/or generate sales. Landing Pages cater to a specific audience for a specific purpose – an announcement, a new product and/or a special offer that is too good to miss.
But what makes a landing page take off?
All effective landing pages have three things in common:
1) Aesthetically pleasing and trustworthy design.
2) Clear messaging and instructions.
3) Fast and simple process to complete the transaction and close the deal.
Any landing page that looks shady, confuses the user with too much information or is way too time-consuming to complete the transaction will fail miserably.
Here are two examples of effective landing pages:
The design of our very own Website Planning Guide landing page is on-brand, yet simple enough to keep the message clear and process to close the deal very straight-forward. The disclaimer “No subscription. No obnoxious spam. No phone calls. Just one email, with TONS of value” and the testimonial from a past client both add to the trustworthiness of the company and relieve any anxiety to complete the transaction.
Our good friends at MailChimp made creating this landing page extremely easy and affordable, offering a landing page builder, a Facebook/Instagram ad builder and an automated email follow-up system all integrated into our MailChimp account.
The design of SPCS’s Student Insurance landing page is more robust than the first example. The goal is to encourage students to apply online for insurance coverage, but at the same time offer information and a point of contact for those requiring more details as the user scrolls down the page. The design is on-brand, messaging is clear and the process is as easy as pie.
Mmmmm, pie. Soooo delicious. Wait, where were we?
Oh yeah, landing pages. You want them, we got them. Email me. I’ll be at McDonalds.
