Landing Pages – How To Get Them Right

Let’s think about what happens just before, and just a few seconds after, someone lands on your site. This is a highly critical few seconds, in which you start a conversation that may (or may not) result in a sale. If you fail here, on the landing page, then whatever marvelousness exists on the rest of your site will be entirely wasted, it may as well not be there.

So, how can we get landing pages right?

Well, users have pitched up on your landing page having selected your listing to click through over all others in a nearly instant judgement. They have mission in mind, and they may be at any part of the customer journey. Cognitively, they are primed with their own mission question, and it is almost as if they had voiced this question out loud, and, seeing the Google listings, they are overwhelmed with a barrage of replies, all shouting loudly for attention – ‘Pick me! Pick me! But they can only pick one of these possible conversations to go with at one time. So they scan and decide in the blink of an eye: “OK, you … … you go ahead … talk to me!”

they scan and decide in a blink … you go ahead … talk to me!

So, you have to be doubly good:

• create a listing that gets picked, in a blink.
• create a landing page that correctly opens the conversation.

OK, here is an example from the real world, just to show this is not all some psychobabble. The prospect’s mission is ‘Find prices and availabilities of flights to Barcelona from Manchester’. So she types ‘flight to barcelona’ in Google, like you might.

So, see what you think. I have taken screengrabs from the top four sites that clickthough from the top three sponsored and the top natural entry. Do they carry on the conversation effectively?

First, all things being equal in this shouting match for attention, the top listing will, in many cases, win. And in this case the BA sponsored listing is adequate. It mentions Barcelona – they all do – and it says low price. It ticks the boxes. But what does the BA Landing Page look like?

I would argue that this is pretty awful. Having attracted interest, the landing page conversation is about something else entirely – the location of the airport, the sights to see. It tells you of ‘sizzling catalan culture’. But the prospects mission is to get price and availability. FAIL! Close it down! In a blink! The bad news for BA is twofold. First, the top position is worth a fortune, and this has been lost, but lost doubly because of Google’s view of relevancy where poor landing page clickthrough rates are penalised by a greater cost per click. BA, very poor.

The prospect having clicked and clicked again, then navigates back and would probably go to number two – bmibaby. I don’t even think I need to describe how poor this page is. At least the BA page mentioned Barcelona, even if it was a travelogue. BMI Baby talks flights, hotels and credit cards! What was the question, bmibaby? It was ‘flights to barcelona’. Wrong answer, by a mile! FAIL! BIGTIME

Luckily there is hope on the horizon for our frustrated prospect. The final sponsored link – Easy Voyage – and the first natural listing – Skyscanner – both do pretty much the right thing, showing the so called big players how to get landing pages right.

This isn’t rocket science. This is relevance. Both sites will succeed by getting clickthroughs. Both sites prefill a search box with ‘barcelona’ and offer a big ‘search’ button. It answers the question. Whichever listing the prospect picks becomes the issue, once the landing page is relevant. Either could get the business. BA and bmibaby will not, their landing pages are dumb sales assistants, talking about catalan grub and credit cards. If they were human, they’d be sacked!

Easy Voyage, Skyscanner, well done. I am very impressed, you listened and answered, you didn’t ignore my question! You’ll do well!