Creating a landing page in Wordpress I – Introduction

This is the first post in the series Creating a landing page in Wordpress.

1. Creating a landing page in Wordpress I – Introduction
2. Creating a landing page in Wordpress II – Architecture and Design
3. Creating a landing page in Wordpress III – Coding and Implementation

What is a landing page

A landing page is a custom page tailored and designed specifically to target and engage new visitors. In this sense

• A landing page serves as a tool to pitch the new visitors
• A way to marketing and promote your content
• An advertisement of your blog and content.
• A central page which paves the foundation for visitors quest for exploring your blog.
• It draws the visitors in and and leads them into the depth of your blog content.

The Marketing Principle(s) behind the landing page

I think we performed well. We flaunted (the fact that we were different).
- Bryan Smith

A landing page should suitably give you visitors as many choices you can offer to lead them into exploring and bookmarking or subscribing to your blog. When you have a landing page you are basically showcasing your blog for the first time visitors and introducing them to it. It is in many senses quite like the first day at the new office. You are inducted to the organization to know and understand it better while preparing yourself for the work. Here the visitors are being welcomed and inducted to your blog so they know what the blog is about, what content interests them and if they would like to follow the blog or bookmark the content. Also on a landing page if you are able to provide as much information and choices of content to the new visitor you are basically getting them to pay attention to the overall richness and quality of your content. This information, its quality and quantity must be overwhelming thus striking the right cord with the visitors to bookmark your content to subscribe, come back, read and explore again.

• Showcase the quality.
• Showcase the quantity.
• Present choices (This is not deception. Every post of yours gets buried into the archives. Make them sticky.) possibly overwhelming the visitors so they bookmark, subscribe or follow your blog.

What are we going to achieve

• In this series we are going to architect the design of a landing page – what and how much to present and how to present.
• We will be coding some PHP to pull specific content to showcase the visitors. We will use a few specific Wordpress loops to pull this content.
• We are going to arrange that content so that it provides a lot of choice of content to the visitors, is overwhelming while not being cluttered or unpleasing.
• We shall draw the visitor to the blog thereby earning some loyal subscribers.

I implemented a landing page here on Binary Turf and doubled my visitors in two days. Given all other things are equal a landing page creates the first and the everlasting impression of your blog thereby almost doubling the visitor conversion. In this post we have seen what is a landing page, its purpose and how we plan to make one. Keep watching this space for the next in the series.

Photo by chrisjohnbeckett