A landing page, simply put, is where your visitors land after clicking on your SEO-optimized search result or one of your advertisements. Landing pages are often tailored specifically to these advertisements, and often coincide with special offers or promotions that the website is offering.

Why do you need one? Simply put, for conversions and lead generation! Here are several examples of why landing pages are useful:

• Promotions: Say your online company offers dozens of products and you are having a special promotion on one. Rather than having your advertising link go to your home page, where the visitor may have to click through several pages to get to the page to order your product de jure, you link to a special page that offers only that product, and the customer can order it immediately. Remember, conversions decrease with every extra step the client is expected to take.
• Free Giveaways: Maybe you want to give away something to your visitors, like a free e-book, in exchange for their e-mail address or subscription to a mailing list. This is called Lead Generation, and the same principles apply. People are less likely to do something the more steps there are to it. There is also the added benefit of not linking to the rest of your site until after they submit the required info. This keeps the visitor focused and less likely to be distracted and wander around. Which leads us to:
  
  
  • Targeting: Your landing page is about the product (or service), and only about the product. Think of it as an interactive full page ad. No links to the rest of your site makes it less likely that the visitor will wander. All of the content can be specifically talking about this particular product, where home pages often have to showcase many things. It is an immersive experience, and can also be useful for…
    
    
  • Testing: A home page (and often the rest of a site, especially if it uses a Content Management System) will often use a template, which is difficult to change. In addition, a site can only have one home page at a time. However, you can set up multiple landing pages for the same product all at once, simply by linking to different ones with different ads or ad placements. You can change things on these pages easily, like layout, graphics, calls-to-action, and so forth. Then you can sit back and gather statistics about which version seems to be performing the best, in order to maximize your conversion rate. If you tried to do this with a home page, you would be required to change it frequently, which could be confusing for your visitors. If you are using a Pay-Per-Click advertising system, like Google Adwords, there are even tools available to let you compare and measure specific parts of these different landing pages.

So if you are at all interested in maximizing your profits and turning leads into sales, landing pages can be a cost-effective and flexible means to do so. Experiment with them today! You will be glad that you did.