The use of a landing page is normally included in most businesses located on the internet. Many however may still question what EXACTLY is it suppose to accomplish? Oh yeah we all know you've got to build a list and this page is where we get visitors to leave their contact information. In fact compiling a list of subscribers is an essential part of building an online business. The question here is besides collecting contact information does our landing page have any other objective? Can we ALSO try to sell a product, or sell ourselves, just promote a free giveaway, or perhaps all of the above?

Your landing pages will be the first page any website visitors will see on your site. This page, known commonly as a squeeze page, serves to greet visitors and sometimes gives a brief overview of the benefits to be gained from a product or service located on the sales page.

The most common intent however of the squeeze page is to get the visitor to leave their contact information. It is quite usual that the offer of a free gift is made in exchange for this information.

Like our sales page, our squeeze page needs to have a definitive purpose or intent. When website visitors arrive at this page they should have no question as to what it is you want them to do. With that said the objective of any squeeze page should be clearly understood by these visitors. Attempting to accomplish too many things on this page will only serve to CONFUSE them. This confusion usually leads to inactivity on the part of any visitor to your site.

Landing pages should accomplish one of the 5 following objectives:

1. Gets a visitor to leave their contact information granting you permission to follow-up with them via email. This is the PRIMARY goal of any squeeze page and as mentioned earlier the offer of a free gift is effective at accomplishing this.

2. Dispenses useful information to the website visitor.

3. Compels visitors to click on a link to visit another webpage.

4. Encourages a visitor to spread the word to a friend or perhaps shares the information they found on your page at their own site.

5. Convinces or persuades website visitors to purchase something.

When constructing your landing pages the need to MINIMIZE the number of objectives you want them to accomplish is critical. Choose the objective and build your page to support and accomplish this singular intent.

Your landing page is just ONE component of your overall marketing strategy so build it and allow it to focus on just that ONE thing.

The landing page plays an integral part of any online business. Consider it front doorstep of your website. By assigning this page, or any others on your site for that matter, too many responsibilities, you will be decreasing its effectiveness. This will translate into any website traffic turning away before they ever even enter your site.