A Clear Message on Your Landing Page

Home pages and landing pages should have a clear message and call-to-action. Sometimes this can get lost in that amazing Flash navigation you now have or wanting to tell everyone about this one new great feature. So, how can you tell if your landing pages and their messaging are effective? Just check everyone's favorite web metric - Bounce Rate! In Google Analytics, just hit the Top Landing Pages report under Content.

There are a couple things you can do to help bring your bounce rate down. First examine your own landing pages. If you are looking for the user to take a specific action, don't hide it under a bunch of text as a tiny little link! You've gotten so far as to getting the visitor to the site, so why should they have to struggle now that they are here? If you want someone to sign up, put a big ol' sign up button in front of them above the fold. Want them to search? Put a big search box front and center. It will make you and the user much happier.

Okay, so maybe you have a great call to action and a clear message to the visitor. You are telling them all the great things about your service/product/self, but they still seem to be disinterested. It's time to drill a little deeper into the Top Landing Pages report. Pick one of your landing pages and then Click on the Entrance Sources and Entrance Keywords (if a search engine driving the traffic). This will let you know how people found that landing page. If the referring site's content doesn't jive with your own, then maybe you can re-work your content to match what people would expect to find. If people can't find what they want, it leads to frustration (and heading back to Google to find what they needed).

Ok, so head over to your analytics package and check out your landing pages! And let me know about your new found love of Bounce Rate in the comments.