Seriously it does. My landing page sucks too, so you’re not alone. Actually, from what I’ve seen, a lot of landing pages out there on the internets suck.

What’s a landing page?

Just to make sure that we’re all on the same page, a landing page is the first page that people land on when they hit your website. For the majority of us, the landing page is our homepage, but technically whatever page a visitor first visits on your site is the landing page.

Why is a landing page important?

The biggest thing about your landing page or pages, is that you need to make sure that they meet the visitor’s expectations. If your visitor finds what they are looking for, they are more likely to purchase from you, and you’ll get better quality scores to boot.

What’s a quality score?

Adwords, which is Google’s advertising program, has a measurement called “quality score.” The higher your quality score, the less you’ll pay for your ads.

For instance:

Situation#1:

You run an ad advertising specials on leasing Toyota vehicles.

Your landing page talks about leasing vehicles in general.

Situation #2

You run the same ad advertising specials on leasing Toyota vehicles

Your landing page has information about leasing a Toyota.

In the above example, there is a big but subtle difference in quality of the pages.

In situation 1, your prospect will click your ad if they’re interested in leasing a Toyota, when they get to your page, they find only general information about leasing a vehicle. The visitor is likely to leave since they didn’t find what they were looking for. You still had to pay for the click though.

In situation 2, the prospect will click on your ad, go to your landing page and find exactly what they are looking for. Since they find exactly what they are looking for, they fill out the capture form on your landing page and give you permission to call them back and lease them a car. You paid for the click, but since the visitor found what they were looking for and didn’t bounce off your page at first glance you get higher quality score and paid less for the click.

Pay attention to your landing pages and make sure that they meet the expectations of the visitor.

For the record, there’s no rule that says that everyone has to land on the same landing page. Create multiple landing pages so you can make sure the meet the expectations of your visitors.