A 7 Step Guide Toward Quality Landing Pages – Part 3

We shall now conclude our series of posts documenting how to fully optimize those ever so important landing pages.

If you missed the previous posts, be sure to refer back to parts one and two at your convenience.

2. Sell not just your product, but your company

As an online merchant you have to battle to sell and promote your product line; but just as important is the ability to sell your own company as well. A potential customer who is visiting your site for the first time has no idea if you’ve been a reputable business owner for the past 20 years, or if you’re a shoddy reseller that just popped up under a new assumed name.

Credibility is indeed one of the most important aspects of selling online (it is our #2 point on this list after all ), so the more confidence that you can provide a consumer to make him/her feel safe, the better.

Here are a few starting points that we can delve into deeper at a later date:

• Provide an easy method to contact you, preferably by phone; but if you lack the resources, at the very least promote an e-mail address that one can use that provides a quick turn around time
• Include a brief synopsis of your company (perhaps under an “About Us” page), so that a customer can put a “face to the name”. Your site then becomes a story rather than just being another .com
• Post some testimonials or feedback that you’ve received (if you don’t have any, try to get some). See our right hand side for such an example
• Bonus: Get a security certificate to provide that extra layer of confidence to consumers. Companies such as McAfee and thawte provide certificates to qualifying sites that can be posted. Consumers can then shop with little fear that their personal information will be compromised (click on the above links for more information). You can think of it as a restaurant getting a stamp of approval from a health inspector.

4. Provide customers with as much details about your product as possible

While the more savvy of shoppers out there may be able to recognize that Widget Model 311.25cg provides a charge of 1.21 gigawatts and can run purely on refried beans, many of your potential customers probably won’t realize as much.

The more details you can provide then, the more assured that customers will know that they will get exactly what it is they’re looking for, and not pass up on you due to a lack of certainty.

In addition, more details on the page results in more information that a merchant can include in his data feed, and as a result that specific product will show up under more search terms. And in the case of Google Base, this results in more free traffic/exposure.

6. Match the searched product with what is clicked through

This may sound like an obvious one, but there are times when a consumer will search for a product, click through to a merchant’s landing page, only to find a different product featured.

As it turns out what they were actually looking for was an accessory to that product that is featured toward the bottom of the page, requiring them to scroll down to find.

This makes for a relatively bad first impression, and while some consumers may be able to spot what it was they were looking for and end up make the purchase, a majority will have exited as soon as they realize what they see is not what they wanted.

Let’s briefly recap the 7 main points that we’ve gone over in the past week:

1. Page Load Time – longer wait times results in a greater likelihood a consumer will leave your site
2. Sell not just your product, but your company – higher levels of credibility = more trust = greater likelihood of a sale
3. Good Image(s) – an image removes the disconnect between the consumer and product, so make it a good one
4. Provide customers with as much details about your product as possible – more details = more assurance of what one is getting
5. Checkout Simplicity – fewer steps between the initial impression and final checkout makes it less likely that a consumer will click away
6. Match the searched product with what is clicked through - a mismatched link will cause many consumers to immediately find another destination
7. Condense all important details - making all pertinent purchasing information as easy to spot as possible makes it more likely that a purchase will be made

There you have it then; while implementing these 7 steps won’t guarantee an immediate increase in sales, it can greatly enhance the likelihood that a visitor will be well informed of what it is they’re buying and increase their level of trust in you. As a result they will be more likely to make a purchase on that initial visit, and perhaps future visits as well.

We’ve seen too many merchants out there (though seldom one of ours ) underestimate the importance and value of their landing pages, and end up losing out on potential business when a quick fix or two would remedy it.

Don’t let this happen to you then. Stick with the principles above, and you can be sure that your destination pages will be just that–a destination, rather than a point of departure.

Have any tips of your own? Post them in our comments section.

And with that, we’ll see you on the engines.

-Tien