When it comes to designing websites you have to understand and make note of how people interact and travel through your website (The user journey). Not all of your website visitors will enter via your homepage and therefore the messages on homepage such as what you do, your positioning statement. your most popular products etc have been completely missed. The page a visitor lands on first is therefore the landing page. A well optimised website will encourage visitors to land on pages which are relevant to their search terms and avoid the need to have to enter via the homepage and then make the visitor work hard to find the relevant content.
If you think about, this means every page on your website is essentially a landing page. But are you treating it as one?
If the objective of your website is to generate leads then you must think about sign posting visitors who land on content based pages (about us, manufacturing, our directors) to the pages which are meant to convert visitors into leads. Those who land on converting pages (product pages, contact pages, subscribe pages) should be able to do what they need to do on that page without having to navigate away.
For example, in the sitemap below, a well optimised website should be able to get a visitor searching for Product 2 directly to that page. A website with no optimisation or very poor optimisation will force a visitor to land on the homepage and then you will have to make them work to find Product 2. Most will leave your website from your homepage if this happens.
Example of a sitemap
Now if I was a visitor coming to your website and landed on Product 2 I will have missed all those corporate messages on your homepage such as ‘who you are, what you do, who for and where’. I will have also missed your latest news story or case study displayed on your homepage. So you have to make sure that targeted landing pages, effectively every page, contain the necessary information or links that will help or enhance the user journey reach the goals in order to convert them into a lead. Don’t put everything and anything on a page. This takes careful consideration and testing.
So what does a good construction products landing page look like?
As a marketing team you will need to decide on which bits of information is deemed as important to specifiers and architects and which are supplementary or can be held on another page of your website. The call to actions can vary page by page and product by page. Read my post on 10 types of goals you could have on your website to get an idea of what can be possible for lead generation and brand building. Remember, you don’t need to show everything, just what is important to your audience, not you.
Example of a construction products landing page
1. Contact details
It is important to display your contact info in a clear position. Customers always visit websites just to find a phone number of email address. Give it to them as quickly as possible. By including it in the header, it’s visible on every page.
2. Reassure visitors they have come to the right page
Clearly state what this product is used for. It reassures your visitors that they have found the product to solve their problem as quickly as possible. Do this first and don’t make visitors read copy before they realise it’s not the product they require.
3. Display product information clearly
Different audience will require different bits of information. So without having the need for long text heavy pages or information on different pages (e.g. click here to view installation details) a set of tabs may be the right solution for your audience and allow them to view all the info on one page and without having to leave the page altogether.
4. What is your most important call to action
During the planning process of this particular website we determined that the quick enquiry form would be the most important goal on any page. Obvious as it sounds, usually a contact form sits on the contact page doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to.
5. Link to related pages
A product usually applies to one or a set of applications or sectors. By including links to related applications visitors can also consume more information about how the product is used or the type of projects it is applicable for. “OK, this is the product I require. Can I use it on my particular project?”
6. Show the product being used
Give your visitors the option to watch a product video, it may answer a question which hasn’t been answered within the copy. Clicking on this particular video opens up a pop up video player and darkens the background. The visitor does not need to navigate away front he page to watch the video.
7. Downloadables
Some visitors may be researchers so only require the downloadable information for the time being. One click of the button and a PDF can be downloaded containing all the product info including installation and maintenance type of info.
8. Technical information for specification
Most Architects and Specifiers use manufacturer websites as a first point of call for technical information. Make sure all the relevant specification information is easy to get to and accessible.
9. Newsletter sign ups
A goal for generating email address and nurturing leads into purchasing customers, distributors or suppliers. This particular goal on this website was deemed not as important as the elements above it.
10. Social share buttons
As part of the overall website template every page on the website can be shared with friends and colleagues. Make it easy for people to share your content directly from the page. Allowing people to share your content is also good for SEO purposes too. For more on this watch episode 8 of MDiTV about search engines and social sharing signals.
11. Related case studies
“Ok, I’ve found the product I need, tell me where this product has been used and demonstrate your expertise”. You can answer this question by displaying relevant case studies applicable only for the product the visitor has landed on.
The red line
The red line represents where the fold would be on my screen. Anything below the fold the visitor will have to scroll down to view. Notice how the video button on the right is placed just so that the ‘view this product in action’ is just above the fold. Think about what the visitor will see when they land on your landing page. Don;t take up to much space with images and headlines. Space is a premium, use it well.
BONUS TIP:
Monitor what visitors search for in the ‘search box’ on the product page. This will tell you what type of information is missing on the product page that visitors were looking for. Often it’s dimensions or weights and sometimes part numbers too. Product brochures contain part numbers so it could be visitors who have come to your website after receiving a hard copy brochure.
Test, test, test and test some more
A landing page is never perfect, you have to measure, test, analyse and act on the data you collect using Google Analytics. What would happen if I moved the video button to the top and moved the enquiry button to the middle? Test it. What would happen if I moved the downloads button to the bottom? Test i.
So there you have it. A good landing page is one which is well optimised so that visitors get get to it directly from search engines. Try searching for ‘tie for stabilising failed lintels’ in Google. You see the landing page above listed first in Google. A good landing page is also one which contains all the relevant information for your audience. A good landing page also contains at least one call to action to generate you that data capture for further marketing to the enquiry itself.
Awesome post Pritesh, quite comprehensive and super useful!
Thank you for the kind comments Shaad.
The trick is to test various elements I guess, it’ll never be perfect as this particular client has so many different audiences. Testing is something which we shall be doing over the next few months now (until I have enough data to be of any significance) and hopefully get to try out the new Content Experiment tool in Google Analytics too.