Intro and Landing Page Best Practices

I'm just wrapping up my third week here at Viget and it's been great so far. I've met several people, gotten ramped up on clients and projects, and most importantly learned a TON. In addition to passing the Google Advertising Professionals (GAP) exam, I’ve been reviewing effective landing page strategies. After all, a landing page can, and oftentimes is, the first page a visitor sees when they click on a paid ad or link from an email.  This page is customized to fit the specific call-to-action of the said ad or link. Effective landing pages include elements of strategy, optimization, and design; and each of these elements play a part in driving the visitor to take a certain action. I compiled a list of my own best practices, and below I've listed a summary of each. Check them out and let me know what you think.

1.  Direct your target audiences to the next step in the conversion funnel. 

• It must instantly communicate purpose of page, grab attention, and encourage viewers to stay.

2.  Keep Designs Simple.

• Do not use standard webpage navigation  (this primarily means your typical nav. bars at the top and bottom of a page), it might distract visitors from the main goal.
• Do include elements of your homepage (except the standard navigation of course), like texts, graphics, and imagery so visitors know that they are in the right place.
• Use images that portray the biggest benefit your product or service offers and/or use images that relate specifically to what you offer.
• State the strongest benefit that your product offers in your main headline. As the first thing a visitor sees, your headline serves as the biggest opportunity for improvements in conversion rate.
• Make the main copy brief and easy to read; use bulleted lists (for easier readability) to highlight your benefits from strongest to weakest.
• Put your call-to-action above the fold, focus on your primary objective, and  make links as clear as possible.

3.  Optimize your page to make it SEO/PPC friendly.

• Relate your page directly to search terms; match specific keywords – this not only includes copy but also images and call-to-action phrases that match those of PPC ads.

4.  Test multiple pages.

• Create multiple landing pages to target different customer segments.
• Keep them live for enough time to gather measurable results.

5.  Measure results by using various tools to gauge traffic.

• Google Analytics is a great way to track several metrics such as goals, conversions, time on page, bounce rate, etc.
  That's all, short and sweet - a brief summary of my recommended best practices. If you have anything to add, designers and marketers alike, feel free to comment below!