A welll-designed landing site can be two things: a useful tool to make online businesses or a voodoo amulet. It rarely is both at the same time.
Once, on a previous post, I mentioned something called "magical thinking": The kind of mindstate on which supernatural properties are attributed to an object. I think that we need to have faith in something, but this not exactly a productive thought when it comes to Internet marketing. Many times we believe that a particular detail (a certain kind of graphic or web design, some contents, some elements at the Home page) will guarantee that people will be eager to make effective conversions. Although it is true that some kind of hook is needed to attract customers, solid bases are needed to transform each visit in a closed business.
Landing pages, in the end, serve a function: deliver a call-to-action. They give useful information about products and services, they provide the channels to contact the company and we can get information about customers and prospects.
I ask you: is that enough?
A contending web page is not like a tin-can telephone. That means, it's not just a bidirectional communication channel. Multimedia possibilities allow to have a sales process without any human interference.
That's exactly the limitation of a landing page.
The function of a landing page is quite simmilar to the one a brochure has. Its digital advantages over a traditional, printed media has reached many and they have learned to ignore most of the results thrown by a search engine.
I hate customer services lines. What could be a quick, albeit human, process turns into something not unline playing Simon (Remember the 80's, when computers worked with floppy disks, we would play with only 8 bits and Rick Astley ruled the Earth?). A sequence of buttons and bleeps, pressed accurately, would luckily take us to the second stage, where sequences become a waiting game. I lose my temper easily and I end up hanging the phone just to look for the customer service department and, if I find it, I send a letter. Sometimes I get an answer, sometimes I don't.
And lest we mention the electronic hold-on music...
The small hope of receiving an answer from someone (anyone, as long as I'm not forced to waste my time randomly pushing numbers), makes me feel less upset.
A landing page cannot replace marketing work.
It's necessary to understand that there is no such thing as a miraculous tool to have an upper hand on Internet businesses. Conversions can only be achieved when the structure of the campaign is clear to those who direct it and when it fulfills the customer's expectations. There is a bit of trial-and-error in all this. Sadly, landing pages cannot please anyone.
But don't get angry. You and I can read the articles within this blog and consult landing page professional designers. It's a pivilege, isn't it?
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