i believe the most valuable lesson conveyed is quite possibly the simplest – 'Don’t blindly follow “best practices;” use your judgment and test alternatives.'

thanks for sharing

I have a slightly different naming convention for some things, but I think the major elements are common to the list here.

Mike

This really is a great article. I'm in the process of building an E-commerce site now and have been studying landing page design and layout for a few weeks now. I am working with a professional organization to assist me in the development of it and I found this information to be right on with what they are teaching me. There are even a few things here that I didn't know and found to be really helpful.

I completely agree with the part about NOT blindly following "best practices". That has caused me some grief in the past also.

I'm sure everyone that reads this will really appreciate it very much. Keep up the good work.

Take Care,

Chris Simpson

Work At Home

What is important, and you highlight in relation to ppc and ad copy, is the 'scent' of the motivation for clicking on ad and following through onto the landing page so the 'aroma' draws the visitor in and towards the required goal.

It also plays a part in relation to every page of a site. The same relvancy of 'scent' can be applied, albeit to a lesser degree, for organic search 'landing pages'. Not all visitors land on the home page.

Poorly optimised pages result in high bounce rates as the term/keyword 'scent' is not followed through effectively on the page.

Bounce rate is a simple and easy measure of page effectiveness. Well themed pages will reduce bounces and increase the opportunity for conversion.

It is not too difficult, with analytics, to identify the sending keywords for any visited page and either modify the page or create another which is more tightly focused and maintains the scent trail.

Have you got any other landing page pearls to share…?
.-= jonathan Houston´s last blog ..Where Does Social Media Fit In? =-.