10 Landing Page Ideas for 2010
Megan Leap on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 01:54PM Landing pages should be the most exciting program you work on. Where else can you experiment freely, test easily and achieve positive results so quickly?
Landing pages are far more than headline, sub-headline, bullets and hero shot. They’re the very first experience visitors have with your brand, and they are the most efficient way to boost leads and sales.
So, to kick off the new year, here are 10 fresh landing page ideas to energize your landing page efforts.
Optimize campaign pages separately from your organic, or website pages. It’s difficult to make a website an efficient conversion machine for a all your different sources of traffic.
Do your landing pages look like everyone else in your industry? If so, then how will you win a quality conversion? To compete, you can’t copy, you need to differentiate yourself with unique, engaging experiences.
We’ve talked a lot about innovation and iteration for testing, which is a great strategy for landing pages. Here’s another way to plan your landing page tests: use A/B testing to find your diamonds and multivariate testing (MVT) to polish them. You can get some big test wins quickly with A/B and then hone your results over time with MVT.
4. Micro-pages
Think bigger than a landing page, smaller than a micro-site. A micro-page uses an interaction model (usually built in Flash) that allows users to tab through bits of information. These types of pages accomplish keeping the call to action or form on the page, while letting the user navigate through content. It stays conversion focused and gives the user information that might otherwise not fit on a landing page.
5. Targeting
Micro-targeting, hyper-targeting, geo-targeting, behavioral targeting, re-targeting. 2010 may be the year of the landing page, but it’s also the year of targeting. Targeting on landing pages can be incredibly effective. (I am skeptical of targeting on the website, and actually think landing pages lend themselves to more effective targeting—but that’s another blog post for another day).
6. Video
Visitors expect video. Enough said.
7. Mobile
This is how your users find you. We live, work and play in our mobile environments and the trend is not going away anytime soon. Are you obliging your visitors by offering up device-optimized landing experiences?
8. Social
If you are trying to grow your friends, fans and followers then you can design landing pages to help with that ‘soft’ conversion. Or put it on the thank you pages after you’ve captured the lead or sale as a post-conversion next step.
9. Engagement
Don’t bore your visitors into leaving (they will land and leave in a split second). Engage your visitors with intriguing experiences & content that matches their intent. Use behavioral scoring and grading to assess your most engaged visitors and capitalize on this information with hyper-targeting and better media planning.
10. Optimization
I don’t mean landing page optimization (“lpo”). I mean optimizing your people & your processes. Set up your landing page program to be your most efficient initiative with smart tools, smart people and the right internal support to make it happen.
A/B Testing, Landing Pages, mobil, multivariate test, social in lead generation 
Reader Comments (18)
Thanks for a fantastic list of tangible LP optimization tips.
I like them all, but particularly like #1 "Optimize campaign pages separately from your organic, or website pages." This has been my experience as well. It works best to track direct marketing processes (campaign pages) separately from the rest of your site. Most 'general' analytics tools (like Google Analytics) give you both too much info and not enough for optimizing linear conversion processes.
Hi Doug,
Thanks for reading! I just added the visiolo blog to my feed.
Hi Doug,
Campaign pages are a topic I am particularly passionate about. No matter how direct response-oriented a website page is, it can't match the specificity of a great campaign landing page!
I like your point about traditional analytics falling short on data for optimizing linear conversion processes!
@Megan thanks! I hope you enjoy my posts. I focus exclusively on the 'micropublishee' 'infopreneur' market.
@Anna it's so true, isn't it? Web pages that are part of a direct sales or lead generation process are completely different from content pages. They require a different approach and different tools.
I really enjoyed this list, in particular #s 6-8 as I believe those are the areas we have the most room for growth. You gave us some good food for thought here. Thanks!
Thanks for your comments Amy, I hope you come back and let us know how it goes! I would definitely start with video.
Excellent post and should act as a guide for anyone looking to improve the conversion rate on their website - thanks!
Thanks for the feedback Sam! Appreciate it.
Big fan of the macro-page idea,...think biger than landing page, smaller than micro-site. I like that. Thanks for the tips.
Thanks so much for the feedback Michael, I love that one too -- it's one of my favorite new approaches to landing pages, glad you like it.
This list is pretty good, but some examples would be better :D
Can you please elaborate on different targeting which you have mentioned example hyper targeting
please put up some links of landing pages you think are great examples
Hi Jackson & Sharon,
Our portfolio has great examples of high-converting landing pages. http://www.ioninteractive.com/portfolio/
We'd love your thoughts!
Great article!
My Professor sent me here for a class I am taking.
I am setting up a site for the class at What laptop should I buy
I will add video for sure and set up the site to have a static home page based on reading this post.
Thank you,
@ClayFranklin
Cool - let us know how it goes Franklin!
Oh, how I wish I knew what you are talking about. We are in the process of updating our whole website and looks like everyone has great suggestions. HOWEVER, even with almost 50 years in marketing/public relations, I'm obviously a dinosaur when it comes to web-ing. Anybody have suggestions on updating my seriously flawed learning curve?
Nita, Don't worry, you will catchup quickly! Start by reading some books. David Meerman Scott has a great one, "The New Rules of Marketing and PR". Also, "Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads" by Lance Loveday.
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And of course, stay tuned to this blog where we are always posting new ideas on conversion optimization.