The term "landing page" crops up a lot in marketing articles; in marketing terms, it's a specialised page that visitors are directed to once they've clicked on a link, usually from an outside source such as a Pay Per Click ad. The page is usually tightly focused on a particular product or service with the aim of getting the visitor to buy or take some form of action rapidly that will ultimately lead to a sale. Another view is that a landing page also refers to every single page on your site. Many site owners believe that the way the visit to sale process works is this:

1. Client arrives on their home page
2. Client selects an option from a menu or an offer on the page
3. Client arrives on the page with the offer/product
4. Client purchases.

Some marketing experts will tell you that a landing page should be wholly and solely dedicated to one offer, and nothing else. Others will say that it's good to provide easy access to other areas of your site and mention other offers in case the visitor isn't interested in the main offer.
The right way for you to go will be down to experimentation, but in general if you are using PPC advertising to drive clients to a specific offer, then writing a dedicated page with little mention of anything else is the best strategy. After all, PPC ads are usually very targeted, so traffic from this source will be quite focused.

There a few questions to ask yourself when creating a landing page:

• What are you offering?
• Who do you wish to appeal to?
• Why would they be interested in your offer?
• What do they need to do to participate/purchase?
• Write down all your ideas, make it as lengthy as you like. Then, bring it down to it's core elements, making it as motivating as possible without it being over-hyped.

• Call to action
  Ensure you have included a call to action towards the top of the page. This will work on more impulsive people or those who are already familiar with what you are offering. There should be calls to action sprinkled throughout the remainder of the content as different people have different tipping points in the sales process. The call to action should be linked to the order page or subscription form.
  A call to action is simply telling the potential client what they need to do in order to receive whatever you are offering e.g. "purchase today!", "buy now, limited offer!" or "subscribe now!"
• Short statements
  There's no need to get long-winded on a focused landing page. Your sentences should be brief or dot-points, but provide valuable bite sized chunks of information. Always offer an avenue of communication for further information for the more inquiring and discerning potential clients.
• Length of pages
  This will vary greatly and there doesn't appear to be a general consensus as to how long a page should be. I feel that the more costly an item is, or the more unique it is, the more content will be needed to convince a buyer to purchase or explore the possibility of purchasing further.
• Personal Information
  Don't try to collect too much personal information. Be careful what you ask for, or you may get nothing. If you have a free, downloadable white paper or research report, it's ok to collect a name and contact information. Most online visitors don't expect you to share really valuable data completely for free.
  Naturally, you want to know who's responding to your ad and it would be nice to be able to follow up with them with more information or additional non-invasive ads (adware and spyware certainly don't count!).
  A visitor may be willing to fill out a survey in order to receive other benefits, but keep that optional unless the ad specifically listed it as a condition. Always include a link to your privacy policy so visitors will know how and when you plan to use their personal data.
• Ask and answer questions
  Ensure that the major questions someone may have are addressed in your marketing copy. Pose a few questions yourself, then provide the answer. For example:

  "Are you tired of paying big money for Flombles?
  Save 50% on these quality Flombles - purchase today!"

• Logical sequence
  Ensure your marketing copy follows a logical sequence and that you don't bounce around from point to point as it will only serve to confuse.
• White space, headings and colours
  Where appropriate, use headings and blank lines to organise your content so it is neat instead of a textual barrage. Separate some elements with different, but complementing colours.
• Provide a bonus
  Everyone loves a freebie and on a landing page it can be especially effective. Even if the visitor doesn't take up on the main offer, by offering a free report that requires their email address in order to download, it will give you a second chance at acquiring their business through ensuing follow ups. For example, a free newsletter subscription will allow you to build a relationship over time with more cautious clients.
• Use of images
  Studies recently carried out in eye tracking indicate that a visitors eye is usually first drawn to images on the page. If the product promo image is on the right hand side, it requires more effort for the visitor to move their eyes back to the left, where your marketing copy will be. It sounds like such a minor detail, but in the online world every second counts when trying to convince a potential client that you are offering what they need. Landing pages are definitely not the place to have unnecessary, superfluous images.
• Testimonials
  A couple of testimonials can be a big help in converting a browser to a buyer - just be sure that the testimonial is believable and traceable. When trying to sell a product, a testimonial from "J.S" certainly doesn't have the power that one from "John Smith, Portland USA, john@dlkldfdlf.com " along with a photo does.
• Fast load times
  Remember, not all the world has a broadband connection, and even if the bandwidth is available, you shouldn't feel you need to use it all. You need to get your message to the potential client as quickly as possible, so while your page needs to look good, it also needs to be lean.

If you're still at a loss in regards to ideas for landing pages for your product, try searching on Google on terms such as:

landing page case study industry
.. where "industry" is your industry or niche of interest.

Get a double benefit from your landing pages by submitting them to search engines. Search engine spiders love landing pages that contain lots of good, keyword-rich test. In fact, landing pages are obvious targets for search engine promotion because they are so targeted. Search engine visitors love them because they get taken directly to the relevant information they were searching for.

If you are creating multiple landing pages with only slight variations in text, it's wise to ensure that these pages are kept away from search engine spiders. Make your general purpose landing page available for indexing, but use a robots meta tag or robots.txt directive to exclude the others. This is to prevent search engines from assuming that you are trying to spam their listings and consequently having duplicate content penalties applied.

• PPC Driven Landing Pages
• Testing Your Landing Pages