by Chris Brown of Daylight Consulting 2006
RULE 1 - Do not let your online adverts send visitors directly to your homepage.
The first thing to realise is that you do need landing pages in order to run effective online advertising. Whether you are running pay-per-click adverts such as google adwords, banner advertising or email marketing, the hyperlink on the advert should take visitors to a specific page built especially for the purpose.
On the landing page, you should not include your website's standard navigation bar.
If someone clicked on your advert then it did its job, You now know what they want. If your advert was for 'widgets' Your advert worked! Now, two things can happen.
a) You can sell them a widget right now and be confident they will buy it.
b) You can show them the rest of your store and gamble on them not getting distracted from buying widgets.
The first option is a much better idea to follow.
Rule 2 - Your landing page must be focused.
The job of the page is to sell widgets. Any word, sentence, link, gif, jpg
form or other device that does not help sell a widget needs to be removed
from the landing page.
Rule 3 - Let them actually place an order from the landing page. Make the process as simple as possible. Ask as few questions as possible in order to get the sale closed.
Rule 4 - Optimize your landing pages. A good search engine position is the equivalent of a free advert. Never turn down free advertising.