Putting Your Landing Pages to Work - Seeking Information
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Anyone who searches online is looking for information, usually very specific information. Your landing page needs to give visitors exactly the information they're looking for. You must achieve a careful balance, however. With online attention spans typically shorter than they are elsewhere, you don't want to give your visitor so much information that they feel overwhelmed. On the other hand, you don't want to give them so little information that they can't make the decision to convert.
So where can you find that balance? I wish I had a magic formula for you, but I don't. I've certainly seen advice indicate that your landing page should contain everything within a page that does not require the user to scroll down. I myself don't hold with that theory, but I suspect the right length for your landing page has more to do with what you're selling and the kind of consumer you're trying to reach. If your simple blue widgets sell for $25 each and provide your customer with obvious benefits, you'll probably want to go into less detail than you would if they cost $2500 each and weren't an obvious improvement on plain red widgets selling for $250.
I actually had a real-life example of the latter recently, when I went to the Florida State Fair. One of the presenters was selling pots and pans that can do waterless cooking. The full show took about half an hour, and the presenter actually cooked food in front of us and then let us eat it, all the while going into great detail about all the advantages of their cookware. As you would expect, the full sets were very expensive, but even I was tempted (and I hardly cook at all these days). You can only buy these pots and pans at state fair shows and in-home shows (kind of like the ones that Tupperware does, but for cookware). In that case, you're dealing with a semi-captive audience, focused on your product -- and even then, the presenters did all they could to extol the benefits and keep people entertained (without going off topic). Compare that with the short and succinct displays for pots and pans in places like Wal-mart, which are relatively inexpensive!
Now if your product attracts a number of different kinds of customers (and many do), life gets a little complicated. You may find yourself asking how you can provide enough information for the person who likes to know everything before they buy, while not boring or overwhelming the person who likes to read a simple and clear document. Well, there are things you can fiddle around with. For example, if you're selling products with lots of specifications, such as laptop computers or digital cameras, you can include tabs on your landing page that go to each model. If you really want to get interactive, and it's appropriate for your product or service, you can even include a configuration builder on the page, so users can put together the exact package they want and see how much it costs.
In an article on landing page tips, Econsultancy featured a screen shot of a very nice landing page for car insurance. The page was divided into three columns. The first column featured the words “Save Up to 10% when you buy [name of brand] car insurance online.” At the bottom of this column you could click a button to “Get a guide,” which, one assumes, might do anything from walking the visitor through a tour of the options to connecting with a live person for an online chat. The second column listed the benefits of the insurance, in three short paragraphs. The third column was simply a picture. But in my opinion, one of the best parts of the page was at the upper left hand side, where four tabs directed the visitor (now better termed a “user,” perhaps) to more information.
Here's a point worth noting: that page did not include any Flash. When building a landing page, you don't want something that will take too long to load. It's so easy to click away, and consumers are suspicious of ads to begin with. If you start with a page that takes a while to load, your prospect will assume (perhaps subconsciously) that you're not going to respect their time. And if you aren't going to respect their time, why should they spend any of it with you?
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