Webmaster forum - "landing page"

Author

"landing page"

Hawkins54321@gmail.com

2007-07-24, 10:18 pm

Hello,

I was reading some information on websites. What is a landing page?
How does a landing page differ from a home page?

Thanks for any insights

John Hosking

2007-07-25, 3:20 am

Hawkins54321@XXXXXXXXXX wrote:
>
> I was reading some information on websites. What is a landing page?
> How does a landing page differ from a home page?

Depends on where you read it. Some people use "landing page" to mean a
splash page. In this case, the difference from a home page is that the
home page is useful. A splash page is a flashy or mostly empty page,
perhaps made with an animation (e.g., using Flash) or some large
graphic, which ostensibly announce to the visitors that they are about
to enter the Web site of whoseever site it is. Artists and architects
use these to show off some, but the worth of such pages even there is
debatable, and for others ought to be avoided.

Another sense of "landing page" can be found by entering "landing page"
into your favorite search engine. Google is your friend. (Especially
since you're using them for your e-mail account and to access USENET;
did you know they have a search engine, too? ;-) )

See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page or
http://www.businessknowhow.com/inte...anding-page.htm . The Wikipedia
article is fairly opaque and possibly not too accurate, so maybe pick
some other search result. The BusinessKnowHow page claims, "if you dump
potential customers onto your home page, they could get lost. They could
have trouble finding your offer and might give up." Which just means to
me that you've got a site with a crummy design.

The home page is typically the main entry page for random visitors to
your site, when they enter your domain name into their browser. It's got
navigation to the other pages, including (presumably) a path to pages
for selling whatever it is you're selling. The landing page is supposed
to be a persuasive "closing" page to make the sale quickly.

Seems like so much doubletalk to me, but then, I'm not a marketeer.

--
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

Mark Goodge

2007-07-25, 3:20 am

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:36:36 +0200, John Hosking put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page or
>http://www.businessknowhow.com/inte...anding-page.htm . The Wikipedia
>article is fairly opaque and possibly not too accurate, so maybe pick
>some other search result. The BusinessKnowHow page claims, "if you dump
>potential customers onto your home page, they could get lost. They could
>have trouble finding your offer and might give up." Which just means to
>me that you've got a site with a crummy design.
>
>The home page is typically the main entry page for random visitors to
>your site, when they enter your domain name into their browser. It's got
>navigation to the other pages, including (presumably) a path to pages
>for selling whatever it is you're selling. The landing page is supposed
>to be a persuasive "closing" page to make the sale quickly.

The point of a landing page, in this situation, is to present the user
with a page directly relevent to the advert that they've just clicked
on. For example, if you sell widgets, and you've bought Google Adwords
specifically on the keywords "green" and "widgets" (because green
widgets are on special offer at the moment), then the advert should
link through to the page listing specifically green widgets (and no
other colour), as that's what the person clicking the ad wants to see.
That's a key aspect of Marketing 101: "Don't make your visitor do any
more work than is necesssary in order to reach the item he wants" -
however clear your front-page navigation is, if you require further
clicks between the advert and the product being advertised in the
advert then you will lose sales.

The other main reason for using a landing page as the target of
advertising is to measure the effectiveness of the ads. If the landing
page isn't linked from anywhere else - it can only be reached by
clicking an ad - then the number of visitors to it (and sales
resulting from it) are a clear indication of the advert's
effectiveness. This matters less with a system such as Google Adwords,
where you have click stats as part of the package, but if you're
buying advertising directly from a website operator who doesn't supply
reliable stats then monitoring the advert's success via a landing page
is extremely useful.

Mark
--
Blog: http://Mark.Goodge.co.uk Photos: http://www.goodge.co.uk
"Time is a valuable thing, watch it fly by as the pendulum swings"

MagnetDogWM

2007-07-26, 10:17 pm

On Jul 24, 8:34 pm, Hawkins54...@XXXXXXXXXX wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was reading some information on websites. What is a landing page?
> How does a landing page differ from a home page?
>
> Thanks for any insights

Here is an excellent article about landing pages that first introduced
me to the idea. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_...ulary_land.html

At our site www.magnetdog.com we use landing pages to drive specific
segments of our business to pages that are designed for them. We sell
customizable magnets so we have many different target groups that we
want to market to.

For example we have a Landing Page geared for real estate agents
(http://www.magnetdog.com/t-real-estate_magnets.aspx) and one for
people interested in getting married and purchasing "Save the Date"
Magnets (http://www.magnetdog.com/t-save-the-date_magnets.aspx).

We drive targetted customers to those landing pages through click-ads,
e-mail blasts,.... We also try to draw people to those pages by the
content on the page- making it optimized for the top search engines
for the groups we are trying to reach. Someone who does a google
search on "Pizza magnets" will see our pizza landing page
(www.magnetdog.com/pizza__restaurant_magnets.aspx) at the top of the
list and be directed there rather than our generic home page.

Hope this is helpful.
RJenkins
www.MagnetDog.com