Website vs Landing Page: What You Need to Know and When You Should Have One

There’s pretty much less of a need to explain on how a website works so let’s drill down to the essentials of having one.

First, let’s look at some of the things we can do on how to optimize a website because owning one for the sake of having is a huge waste of resources if it does not bring additional business for us.

On Copy

Many website owners tend to write about themselves, what their achievements are, how awesome their products or services are, or what separates them from their competitors. This is fine if all you want to achieve is flatter yourself.

Read on if you want to know how to write an effective copy for your website.

1.      HEADLINE – What good is your copy if no one reads it. The primary objective of your headline is to attract ATTENTION and keep your visitors to continue navigating your site. Check out this headline of New York School of Interior Design.

2.      KEEP IT SIMPLE – Your copy should be simple. Don’t try to impress them with jargons or highfalutin words. If they cannot understand you, they will be scrambling to leave your website. Write as if you are talking to a friend.

 3.      ANSWER YOUR CLIENTS’ OBJECTION – Have a clear understanding about your clients to know their common objections. Anticipate and answer these common objections. Find out what these are here https://bit.ly/sales_objections.

 4.      SOCIAL PROOF – Testimonials build credibility on the quality of your products or services.

• Put numbers whenever possible.
• Photos or “headshot” makes it more credible
• Best to have their names and job positions
• If you can have one, ask happy customers for a video testimonial and embed it on your website.

 5.      MAKE IT READABLE – Choose appropriate font, font size, and use proper spacing. Many site visitors tend to skim contents so it is best to use bullets and short paragraphs.

6. BENEFITS OVER FEATURES – People buy the benefits, not the product itself. Think about Disneyland. Why do you think their slogan is “The Happiest Place on Earth” and not “The Best Rides on Earth?” Check out my post https://bit.ly/happiestplacedisney

7.      “AFFILIATIONS” – adds more credibility

8.      CALL TO ACTION - Whether it’s a long-form or short copy that you’ve crafted for your home page, the next step for your visitors to take should be clear. A CTA (call-to-action) should be well defined whether it is to book a call, email an inquiry, or add to cart.

Each page should have CTA to keep visitors going to one specific goal.

Your CTA should stand out as part of your design. Have it in bold and in contrasting color that make it clear on what to click next.

On Design

Even if you don’t sell anything on your website, you need to look at it like a home or office where you invite potential clients to look around and see if your offer will fit their needs.

The design of your website often will make that first impression about your business and your BRAND.

9.      NEAT DESIGN – choose a neat design instead of throwing a bunch of colors into your website that will confuse visitors on which icon to click. Texts, images, clickable links should be well contrasted not be hidden from any background color.

 10.       WHITESPACE – Often whitespace is used to help highlight important elements in your website. Your product, your copy, your call to action. Here is an example of how big brands use it for their website.

11.       IMAGES / VIDEOS - Make use of photos that will not look pixelated when enlarged.

 12.      MAKE SURE IT IS MOBILE RESPONSIVE – The past decade has seen significant growth in mobile phone use. This means that more and more, consumers are in front of their mobile phones than in desktop or laptops.

Websites that are not mobile responsive are pretty hard for visitors to navigate leading them to leave. Thus, another loss of potential sales for the business owner.

Other Elements

13.      SOCIAL ICONS – If you are active on social media, which most businesses are, putting a social media icon to link where they can follow you adds to your credibility and number of your followers. Big brands do it, why won’t you?

 14.      COLLECT SITE VISITORS’ CONTACT INFORMATION – Email marketing is another means to increase your revenue through your website. It allows you to follow through and communicate directly with your prospects in the absence of the noise in social media.

Email is one of the return paths used by business owners in their marketing funnels (we’ll discuss this separately). This is because consumers typically do not purchase during the first engagement/visit to your store or website. Other return paths include FB or Instagram ads which require you to spend money.

 Create a Lead Magnet, aka some valuable tips to your prospects that will give them a quick win when they implement it. These may take the form of e-book or cheat sheets that you can give away in exchange of their email addresses.

 15.      ABOUT US PAGE – Show site visitors that you’re human and the people who run your business. Tell them your humble story, on how your business started and how it reached today’s success by helping your clients. Have a photo including that of your team’s.

 16.      CONTACT US PAGE – Make it easy for customers to contact you. It can be a CONTACT US FORM, a live chat, or even your phone, email, and office address. More importantly, make sure you respond when customers message you.

 17.      CHECK FOR BROKEN LINKS – and other site issues. You may have encountered 404 errors when visiting other websites and such decreases trust of site visitors, causing them to leave.

 18.  PRIVACY POLICY

 19.  SSL / SECURE HOSTING – See that padlock in the address bar? Sometimes, these certificates may be quite tricky to set up so be sure to check with different browsers that no warnings will be shown when they reach your website.

 20.  OPTIMIZE FOR SEARCH ENGINES- – Don’t let the acronyms SEO (Search Engine Optimization) intimidate you. It simply means optimizing your website to rank in search engines like Google or Yahoo. Though social media is useful for finding prospects, SEO is another way for them to discover about your business through your website and take the action you want them to (such as booking a call).

 If you’re a local business, target local SEO. Use long-tail keywords in your blog posts, and be sure that your site page loads fast by having a good ISP plan.

 21.  BLOG POSTS – Nothing beats giving value upfront. Give insightful tips your visitors can follow and you’ll be sure that they’ll keep coming back. It also helps boost your ranking on search engines.

LANDING PAGE, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE

Now that we understand some of the essentials of a website, let's take a closer look at how a #landingpage works.

Basically, a landing page is a standalone web page that is meant for a single purpose. It may either be to generate leads or gather contact information, sales, or even subscription.

The sole purpose of a landing page is for conversion which is why it is commonly used by successful marketers & business owners for ad campaigns.

One might ask, why is it more effective than sending them to your homepage?

Reason is that a landing page has only one call-to-action while a homepage will have many and may confuse the visitor on which action to take.

Imagine this. If they land on your homepage, they are bombarded with various links. Link to your blog post, contact page, and even your social media pages. These links are "leakage" to conversions since they are brought to another site and may forget the reason why they clicked on your ad in the first place.

Make no mistake. Having both is beneficial for your business.

You simply need to understand the purpose of each.

A website primarily acts as a brochure of your products or services. If you're in the service industry, it would best showcase your previous projects and show the transformation you've brought for your previous clients.

Often, traffic source for a website is organic or through search engines while paid ads for landing pages.

Lastly, to optimize a landing page is pretty straight-forward. This is often done through split-testing of different headlines, copy, hero shot, and even the call-to-action.

Hopefully, these information will be of help. Let me know your biggest takeaway in the comment section.