What is a landing page and should you have one?  A landing page is a webpage within your website accessible only by a certain URL.  Usually, landing pages are used for specific ad campaigns or email marketing campaigns because these webpages provide all of the information pertinent to the product or service sought, with appropriate links to other areas of the site that are either related or necessary for the prospect to complete the call to action, which is usually to purchase, though can be anything from purchasing to signing up for an email newsletter.

So why would you need a landing page?  Isn’t your website sufficient enough?  A landing page offers several benefits that can improve your internet marketing results.  Some of these benefits are listed and described below.

1.    Landing pages provide targeted information to prospects.  If your website sells apples, caramel apples and chocolate covered apples, you might have a landing page for each so that when prospects search for caramel apples they’re directed to a page dedicated to that product.
2.    Landing pages provide detailed evaluation results for you.  If you send out an email marketing message about caramel apples that invites prospects to click on a link to a landing page devoted only to that campaign, you can find out your click-through rate in addition to determining how many of those click-throughs result in a sale.  Many do-it-yourself email marketing programs provide you click-through stats, but without landing pages, or relying on prospects to inform you that your email was the source of their purchases, you cannot know how many sales are generated from a single email marketing campaign.
3.    Landing pages provide you the opportunity to make specific improvements.  When you have an entire website influencing a prospect, if they don’t purchase your product or service, finding what pushed them away can be difficult.  Did you misspell a word?  Did a product description lack details or focus?  With a landing page, because you’re only providing select information, it’s far easier to determine what can be improved to offer prospects better opportunities in the future.

Do you need a landing page?  Not necessarily.  Should you have one?  Yes.  As you can see, landing pages provide benefits both to your company and your prospects.