The Impact & Benefits of Custom Landing Pages
Let’s face facts – building a website, regardless of industry and scale, can be an arduous task. There are many factors that need to be considered and decisions to be made. What base platform or CMS do we use? How many layouts options will we need? How will the visitor navigate and search? What are our main goals and objectives? There will be hours of meetings, market research, wireframes, and compositions to form the final product that is a new website. After all that time and effort, this could be the company website for the next 4-5 years. From the perspective of the ever-changing Internet, this is a LONG time! Design trends, technology, marketing approaches and general web standards change at a blistering speed. How can a website keep up without being completely rebuilt every year? Custom landing pages is one great solution.
An Independent Framework
The beauty of a custom landing page is that it can work as an entirely separate entity from the primary web presence. The primary goal of the custom landing page is simple – to present information in a unique way and funnel the visitor back to the primary site for the desired conversion. Examples can be seen that highlight a specialized service or product line or simply display content in a different way that is more dynamic and interactive than the main website. While a landing page should always be on-brand, the design and marketing team can have a little bit more fun experimenting with animations and JavaScript to enhance the user experience. Since we aren’t interfering with the main platform, potentially causing cascading issues, there is more freedom to use the latest and greatest technology.
Tracking Opportunities Galore
Custom landing pages present a great opportunity for tracking visitors. For starters, all landing pages should be equipped with tracking tools like Google Analytics and Mouseflow to collect data on what elements of the landing page are successful in funneling traffic and what elements can be reworked the next go-around. A landing page will typically coincide with some type of web advertising campaign. If this is the case, A/B testing might be a possibility to determine which landing page messaging or style resonates with your visitors. Since we are typically only working with a few files to build a landing page, making changes can be quick and easy.
Effective Even for the Biggest of Brands
Examples of custom landing pages are easy to find – especially from big brands with high-end, custom products to sell. Take for example the German automobile manufacturer Porshe. While the corporate website is beautiful in its own right, Porshe also features custom messaging with highly stylized and interactive landing pages. The Porshe Panamera landing page includes beautiful full width photography, animations, and videos to highlight the Panamera vehicle. While the landing page is simple, it effectively conveys a message and directs visitors to the corporate site to build a car or search inventory.
Case Study: The Electrical Contractor 2016 Profile
One of our clients, Electrical Contractor, came to us looking for a solution for their latest profile report. Every two years, a report is published from a survey of over 2,000 contractors. The profile contains an incredible amount of data and statistics displayed using over 25 charts and figures. Rather than displaying the profile as a typical article on the site, they wanted to take a step further. We recommended a custom landing page that leveraged a wider display for text, imagery and interactive charts. The landing page is on brand while leveraging a fresh styling approach. The content is easy to digest and the interactive charts and figures help the visitor comprehend the data from any device. While this landing page may not be directly selling a product, it offers value to browsing vistors and introduces a fresh feeling to the corporate site and brand.
Landing pages are a great solution to the problem that a primary website framework often presents. While a new website is being built, landing pages can be used to introduce fresh messaging and marketing campaigns. Designers can have more freedom with styling and interactivity that can often get the creative juices flowing for the next corporate web presence. Want to discuss this further with our team? Contact us today or use the comments below!
