When working with an online marketing firm, you’ll hear a lot about landing pages.  Why aren’t they just called website pages?

We refer to them as landing pages because it’s a more definitive way to convey the purpose. Someone may land on the page from a natural search engine result. Or, maybe you told him to visit the specific page. You can secure a referring link from another website and point it to a particular page. Maybe you bought ads through Google (pay-per-click or PPC) and designated a page generated lead or sales.

Sure, you can display your phone number on every page. Or, sometimes you may Request More Information as text or an image.

But a landing page in the strictest sense has a very limited role. Its job, if designed well, is to convince someone to do something on that page without going to another page.

Many companies make the mistake of designing a website and then driving traffic to a page without adapting the page (or making a new page) to achieve established objectives.  In other words, the page should be shaped to accomplish a very specific goal.  Often, you may not even want the navigation to appear.

For example, that’s the case when you give money to Google to send visitors to your website (when they click on ads).

If you just bought an ad on Google and someone clicks to a page, maybe he should be making a phone call or filling out a form based on that page information.  He shouldn’t have to wander around a website to make a decision.  Your page, supported by a captivating header, images, testimonials, video (optional) and a call to action can generate sales and leads.

If you spent $250 for 100 clicks, maybe only 10 visitors called or filled out a form. That’s OK – a page performed by generating conversions. For the most part, don’t dwell on the other 90 clicks. Did you land a sale from one of the 10 clicks (today, over a week or many months)? Let’s say you sold something for $5,000. Depending on the cost of materials and labor, that might be a good ROI.

Some executives I’ve spoken with seem concerned that they will pay for clicks and connect with searchers through the page only to have many of the new visitors abandon the page and move on.  It seems like a waste of money to them.  The truth is, if you get 100 visitors to a page, and 10 of them do something, that’s pretty successful.

To summarize, a landing page is the page someone reaches when they search on Google or they’re directed to a specific page from another website or email campaign. In many cases, marketers create custom landing pages – often without the navigation – to win over visitor who is invited to take a specific action on that page without exploring the rest of the website.

HubSpot has some great examples of landing pages in its article, 19 of the Best Landing Page Design Examples You Need to See in 2020.