10 musts for an effective business Web page

Consumers tend to pass judgment quickly on the Web.

In fact, it takes as little as 50 milliseconds, or 1/20th of a second, to lose their attention once they've landed on a site.

So if your landing page -- the place consumers end up when they click on an ad, link or search engine result - doesn't capture their attention, your business is going to lose the very visitors it's paying to attract, say experts.

"The landing page is the first thing a person sees when they get to your site," says Boris Grinkot, senior manager of research and strategy for MarketingExperiments, a Jacksonville Beach, Fla.-based marketing and sales research lab. "It has to capture their interest immediately."

To improve your landing page results:

1. Keep it relevant. If users click on an e-mail offer or pay-per-click ad, they expect to see the offer that was displayed once they get to the landing page, says Grinkot. Don't send them instead to a generic home page or a landing page that has nothing to do with the promised offer, he notes.

2. Eliminate the guesswork. Your landing page should have a clear call to action that lets visitors know what their next step is (i.e. "call now for a free consult" or "click here for coupon"), says Grinkot.

"A lot of times the page has a lot of information, but it's not clear what action you expect the person to take," he notes.

3. Be cognizant of design. A poorly designed landing page can instantly turn off visitors, explains Bruce Chamoff, chief executive of HotWebIdeas.net, a Web design and Internet marketing company in West Babylon.

"Every design element on the page will determine if that person leaves," down to the color and font, says Chamoff.

Tailor the design to the audience you're trying to attract, he notes.

4. Don't overwhelm visitors. If a landing page is overloaded with too many services and offers, you may lose the customer, says Chamoff. Perhaps put your three best services on a landing page. Anything more may be overwhelming.

5. Optimize your pages.The landing page should be embedded with keywords most relevant to a visitor's search, says Gary Cucchi, vice president of Progressive Marketing Group, a strategic marketing and branding firm in Melville.

For example, the company recently developed a landing page for the South Oaks Child and Adolescent Center of Excellence in Amityville (south-oaks.org/child.php) and included such keywords as Long Island, mental health, substance abuse, rehabilitation, psychiatric, children, etc. in the landing page, he says. For key words, Cucchi suggests checking out adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. (Click here to connect.)

6. Perform testing. You'll never know what works unless you test it, says Ross Mahler, Progressive's director of Web services.

For instance, you might try out two different landing pages or pay-per-click ads to see which works better, he says.

7. Be mindful of copy. "Nobody reads on the Web," says Tim Ash, author of "Landing Page Optimization" (Wiley, $29.99) and chief executive of SiteTuners.com in San Diego, which specializes in landing page optimization. "We scan."

Companies often jam the landing page with too much text, notes Ash, who suggests clear headlines, short bullet points and summaries.

8. Eliminate fear. Your landing page needs to establish trust instantly, says Ash. A professional design helps, as well as including logos  and/or names of established clients and perhaps trusted symbols like the Visa logo, says Ash.

9. Avoid visual distractions. Don't overwhelm customers with lots of photos/graphics unless they support your conversion goals, says Ash.

10. Questions your visitors  ask.  These are the questions visitors have immediately, which the design must answer quickly.

1.

Where am I?

2. Did I end up on a relevant page?

3. What can I do here? What's the call to action?

4. Why should I do it?

5. What's the benefit?

Source: Boris Grinkot