No more landing pages

I came across an interesting blog the other day extolling the virtues of no more landing pages and it got me thinking. The argument goes (from their blog):

"No more landing pages does not mean no more landing experiences. To the contrary, our point is that the landing page has itself become indiscriminate, boiled down to a one-size-fits-all, single page format. It may be better than nothing — although with many crappy landing pages out there that’s questionable — but we can do much better as marketers."

I guess there is some truth to this. But let's extend this thought a bit further by asking why we online marketers build landing pages in the first place? Of course to increase conversion. But increase it over what? The page that a visitor would find themselves on if the landing page didn't exist of course.

Landing page conversion optimisation is about matching user experience to user expectation. If someone is coming from a search result, make sure the page gives them what they're after. But if the content and (critically) usability design of our main content is good enough then there should be no need for specific landing pages. (Of course SEO is key here...to ensure visitors find the content that is appropriate to their search.) We should look at each page on our sites and ask "what would I do if this was the first page I see?" Does the page lead me down a path (to 'conversion' in whatever sense that may mean for the site).

So I agree with the principles behind the no more landing pages thought. By building great content and focusing on usability and user goals, every page on a site should create a great 'landing experience'.

Usability & holistic SEO

SEO should never be seen as an activity separable from the build of a website. It should be totally integral to that build - taken into account when defining

- the site architecture (how do I structure the site in a way that search engines will like?)

- the design (should I use graphical headers and if so, how can I make these search-engine friendly?)

- and the copywriting (what keywords should I be including in my copy?).

The guys over at cre8pc.com have some interesting view on web usability and SEO. Including “No matter how hard you try, there is always something wrong with your website“…there are always improvements that can be made to usability that affect conversion, referral and traffic.

Here’ their list of top 10 things that drive visitors crazy - that we should all take note of when designing our sites.