Online Marketing is the buzzword on the internet today. It has conceived and given shape to various business models like B2B, B2C, affiliate marketing, advertising and publishing et al. And though internet marketing is an entire different dimension in its own, its still similar to traditional marketing at its core. Try to remember what’s the first thing you notice as you enter a departmental store or a supermarket? Unless you’re in for a shoplift, you will probably see the latest product on offer on a display shelf. Its unusual to think about it, but if you really think, they’re kept over there only so you could notice them. That is exactly why we have landing pages on the internet. Landing Pages are the display shelves of your website. In this and the next post, we are going to look around what Landing Pages are all about and how you can use them to your benefit.

What is a Landing Page really?
Strictly speaking, a landing page is the page on which the visitors of your websites “land” from a source. If a visitor comes to your website by typing in the URL of our website’s homepage (for e.g. http://www.galaxyweblinks.com), his landing page would be http://www.galaxyweblinks.com/index.php . If the visitor reaches our website through the contact page of our website (say, via a search engine), the landing page would be http://www.galaxyweblinks.com/contactus.php .

However in internet marketing, a landing page is interpreted as the page where you want your visitors to land deliberately. On a broader scale, its basically the same thing as above, but look minutely and you will realize that internet marketers are using landing pages as their display shelves. Landing pages are a face to your products. They are made and campaigned in a way to make the visitors notice and take interest in them.

How many types of Landing Pages?
Traditionally and in the books, landing pages are essentially classified into two categories: Reference and Transactional.

  1. Reference Landing Pages are pages that are made for the purpose of displaying information to the visitors. These pages usually do not prompt the reader to take any action. The objective of such a landing page is not broadcast, not sell.
  2. Transactional Landing Pages are pages which actually prompt (in many cases, lure) the visitor to do something that ultimately leads to the fulfillment of the objective of having such a landing page. The basic difference between such a page and a reference page is that a transactional page has – what it is commonly known as a – call to action. Such pages usually have a small form being displayed prominently and the visitors are expected to fill that form. Conventionally, the “Visitors” are called “Leads” and once a lead takes the action which fulfills the objective of the landing page (for e.g. fills the form), its usually called a conversion – though the actual interpretation of conversion depends from person to person.
    Eye Tracking Heat Map. Courtesy http://www.impactmedialtd.co.uk/blog

    Eye Tracking Heat Map. Courtesy http://www.impactmedialtd.co.uk/blog

    Apart from these two, there’s another kind of Landing Page which is creating a roar in Direct Marketing. Its called the -

  3. Squeeze Page. Squeeze pages are web pages having just one objective: capture visitor’s data. Squeeze pages are heavily targeted landing pages which extensively focus on goal conversion. (Since the goal here usually does not require the visitor to actually spend money,) These pages have an unusually high conversion rate and are used to get niche data while planning targeted email and direct contact campaigns. Squeeze pages have usually have minimum or no navigation. I’ve read somewhere that the best squeeze pages are created with such perfection that even a native who can’t read and understand a thing would know what he’s supposed to do!
I wanted to wrap up my views on Landing Pages in a single post, but unfortunately I’m not even half done here. So I think I’ll write the better part of this post later this week. In the meantime, you can check out a few of our landing pages made for our application services Examination Online and Booking Engine. Keep checking Blogoxy and do subscribe to our feed – there’s more fun to come!