Continuing the’ optimise a landing page’ series, I will be looking at how to optimise a lead capture page in this article. Last in the series saw me look at optimising an infomercial landing page which can be seen to be the TV advert equivalent of a landing page. However, with a lead capture page, the way to optimise it is far different to that of an infomercial or even a click through landing page. A lead capture page has a different objective (conversion) to that of the other types of landing pages which means it will be different from the rest in optimising it.

What is a Lead Capture Page?

A lead capture page is a type of landing page where the main objective of the page is gather as much information as possible from PPC traffic. This means that lead capture pages usually involve the web user filling in their details etc.

The reasons advertisers might want to use lead capture landing pages can be for the following reasons below:

• As a form of market research. Pay per click advertising makes it easy to target a certain group of web users. For example, by making a campaign which targets keywords such as ‘fix broken iPad’ will target web users that are willing to pay for someone to fix their iPad screen (and also makes clear that they are willing to repair their electronic devices than sell them as faulty). Market research can be difficult to obtain on the internet. Therefore, using a lead capture page can prove to be very effective at gaining you relevant research.
• To sell a product/service to. By having web user’s contact details, you can then get in contact with them (by email, SMS, post etc.) and sell them your present and future products/services. Having an email list is good especially at gaining potentially new customers.

Don’t ask for too much Information

A large problem with some lead capture pages is that they ask for far too much information from the web user. What you need to understand is that web users are on your landing page for free and are giving you their time. If you are going to want information from the web user for free, you need to make sure you do not take up too much of their time. If you want any more information than that from web users, you will have to offer an incentive such as a prize competition to win ‘____’ or an actual reward that they are guaranteed to get.

Concentrate on the Conversion

Another important aspect you need to remember is that a lead capture page should concentrate its whole entire effects on the conversion: to gain information from the web user. This means that there should really be none of the following on the web page:

• Many links
• Irrelevant information
• Lots of content

However, what you decide to put on your lead capture page depends on what type of information you want to gain from the web user. If you require lots of information from them, you may decide to put content on the page which includes an incentive to the web user whereas if you simply are asking the web user one question, you won’t need to include as much of an incentive.