A landing page or squeeze page is where visitors get sent to for clicking on your ads or your search engine results. Because this is your front lineman it is important that this page looks good. When you have a nice looking landing page your chances of getting the visitor to take the action you want will increase.

Take a look at these two sites:
doolittlespetproducts.com and petstreetmall.com
Which site would you buy from if you wanted pet supplies? Now I’m not trying to be mean to the owner of Doo Little’s Pet Products… But if I was surfing the net for pet products that is probably one of the last places I would shop.

Let’s take a look and compare the two sites.

The Look
Your site needs to have a professional look and feel. You need to be an “authority” online. The better your site looks the more people are going to trust you. Color, layout, authority badges, images, and wording all play an important factor in this.

The Feel
How does your site feel. I mean… when you goto the site do you want to puke or purchase. I’ve seen websites online that look good and were professionally done, but they just make me feel sick to my stomach to browse through them. Some sites are cluttered and that doesn’t feel good surfing through a cluttered mess. Your site should have a good clean flow. Your wording on the front page shouldn’t be to much, your images shouldn’t be too many, your navigation tabs shouldn’t overpower the content or be more than the content. You get what I’m trying to say… I hope… Your website should be clean and inviting.

The What
What do you want people to do? To be honest with you when I saw the Do Littles site I thought it was an information portal. It took me a bit to figure out that it was an eCommerce site. However, when I was on the Pet Street Mall I realized right away that it was an eCommerce site. What is the purpose for your site? Do you want to pass people to another site? Do you want sign ups? If people don’t know what you want then they wont take actions.

Everyone says to make your “Call of Action” clear. Thats a must!
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE!
BUY THIS TODAY!
ENTER YOUR EMAIL TO CONTINUE!
JOIN OUR MAILING LIST!

Flashing images with pointing arrows WORK! I’ve tested my own landing pages and I’ve seen my CTR on pages increase as much as 30%.

The Headline
Your headline should grab your users attention. It should be compelling. It should give them a brief 1 line overview of whats to come!

FREE XBOX360 for participation. Offer Expires 07/10/2008!
Enter your zip code to see if you qualify. Offer Expires 07/10/2008!
Do you want to know what I do everyday to win FREE STUFF? Join My Mailing List!

Setting the date causes a sense of urgency. You can use this code to set the date to the current date.

<script language=”JavaScript1.2″>
<!– Begin
var months=new Array(13);
months[1]=”January”;
months[2]=”February”;
months[3]=”March”;
months[4]=”April”;
months[5]=”May”;
months[6]=”June”;
months[7]=”July”;
months[8]=”August”;
months[9]=”September”;
months[10]=”October”;
months[11]=”November”;
months[12]=”December”;
var time=new Date();
var lmonth=months[time.getMonth() + 1];
var date=time.getDate();
var year=time.getYear();
if (year < 2000) // Y2K Fix, Isaac Powell
year = year + 1900; // http://onyx.idbsu.edu/~ipowell
document.write(”<b>” + lmonth + ” “);
document.write(date + “, ” + year + “</b>”);
// End –>
</script>

Thats the code you need to create the date. Just insert that where you need it. I like to have an offer expiration date in the headline so that it is one of the first things people read. And because it’s a different color, they will mostly likely read it first.

The Content
Under your headline you should have 50-75 words that explains a little about your offer. What it is, why its there. Tell people that your offer is for a promotion and that it will be ending soon. The scare factor is HUGE! The scare factor gets people moving!

After your first little paragraph you should create a call to action button. Something that says click here to continue, or join our mailing list today. Something that gets people moving.

Then… include some more information. 75-100 words here is good. Enough to give people more of a push. This is an imporant part because people have already passed by your call to action button… This is where you can stop them and send them right back to the button. You can look at it as your last line of defense.

I hope this post has been able to help you in some way or another. This is the method I use for creating my personal landing pages. Sometimes a poll just wont do it. Sometimes you will find offers that require a landing page before the offer page. Now you should know how to get a good one rolling. If all else fails. Look at what others are doing. Now, you don’t want to copy them, but you do want to get ideas from them!

I’ll create one from scratch and post it here for you to tomorrow. But for now… Take a look at your landing pages… Are you a Doo Little or a Pet Street?