Your web site is really an employee (if you pay for it) or a volunteer (if someone manages it for free). Its actually there, in front of people, 24/7. Yes its not a personal contact but more and more it can get closer to being that - something that some people treat as being 'face-to-face' - than you may have imagined.

If you want to reach some clientele, it can be a far more effective way of reaching out to them than any leaflet, poster or advert in a paper, or it can be where you direct some people as they make their decision about what help you can give them - or how they could help you.

Reaching younger people, say through Facebook, could be the way to go rather than attending a meeting, or going along to a regular community group.

For those who could help you, if they lead busy lives then browsing your web  site may be mid evening, after they've finished their evening meal having had a really busy day at work. If you try to make them contact you to progress say a donation, you could be losing a donation, but a well designed Landing Page could convert some people there and then, or help you know what someone wants when they decide to call you.

Landing pages are individual pages, on your web site, that are there to do just one thing for you. Having a splash page that appears over your generic web site is not a Landing Page. It might be asking for an e-mail (for a newsletter), or more likely a donation, and the testing that lots of people have done indicates that if it appears the moment your web site loads, you are losing potential donors, volunteers or just generic interest etc etc. Its too direct and too soon.

It may link to what could be considered a Landing Page but the key problem is that it won't have a continuity of message, actually be part of a (possibly long) journey that the person looking at your web site is making -- their journey, not your version!

A button saying 'Make a donation' that then leads to just a form to fill out is making a 'hard sell'. The key to a successful Landing Page is that there is a continuity between the imagery and design of the method you used to persuade someone to click to reach the Landing Page, and what is actually there when a visitor arrives. A Landing Page may not look like the rest of your web site but it will be very similar to say the Facebook post that got someone to visit you.

Some examples - say for young mums you post about support you can offer, on Facebook (or say by now using Messenger), the words on that copy need to be very close to the words they will see when they arrive on your web site, and the images need to be related, as does any colourways you use. The same applies if you use a hard copy leaflet - continuity.

For someone who reads a Tweet you post about ''Our Work in Africa', then the imagery needs to be consistent and your Landing Page needs to be about that work, not a message from say your CEO (sorry CEOs!). The best Landing Page will have a call-to-action on it (they all really have CTAs) that then gets something done - as many times as possible when someone visits that page.

You can make your own decisions about little things that you'd like on a Landing Page, but every decision could lower the conversion rate for a page. It might be by 5%, it might be by 50%. People test (there is software available) everything to get the best Landing Pages. They test a page using customers/clients. If 100 people come to a page and 10% leave because the headline doesn't match, then another 40% leave because say a picture isn't what they expected, you've only 54 people who will consider doing something. The colour of  a button could put off 50% of those who remain.

This isn't to say that you can get all 100 of those visitors to do something every time they visit a Landing Page. You can though do as much as possible to retain and convert as many people into donors, fundraisers and clients. This is a guide to the 15 things you can check to try to make a Landing Page work as best possible for you.

Its from 'the commercial world' but 'they' test everything, probably far more than we do in our Sector. Some of the advice is technical, some about the design and structure you should consider. Its a big help in making sure that your Landing Pages (and you will have them soon if you don't already use them) work as best they can.

 

Hope this is helpful. If you've a Landing Page your are really proud of (and have data that shows how well it works) then please put its URL in a reply, so that you can inspire others! Or if there are examples you really like - and would like to have something similar yourself - then show the Charity Connect Community the best you've seen.