If you’re involved with digital marketing in any capacity, landing pages are a key component of your processes and campaigns.

In fact, landing pages are often perceived as the most important part of a marketing campaign, as they display company/product information and drive conversions. This leads to marketers and web developers creating and optimizing landing pages to be beautiful, accessible, and convincing.

However, it is important to consider how consumers actually use advertisements and landing pages, rather than the intended purpose.

For example, the simplified digital marketing funnel is considered to be:

Advertisement > Landing Page > Conversion

But we know that many consumers do not immediately become a conversion on the first landing page they stumble across. They are likely to visit multiple sites and have a period of research before they make a decision to fill out a contact form or make a purchase.

So, while it is important to optimize landing pages for easy conversions of first-time visitors, it is equally important to focus on the return value of landing pages. Meaning that consumers can return to your landing pages when they are finished with their research, in the buying process, and ready to become a conversion.

To make a landing page with high return value, I would focus in these three areas:

1. Access to information: Relevant internal links should be available to allow consumers to continue their research on your website. Keep users engaged and informed, but let them control how they take in your information. Don’t trap them on an page with just a contact form and no other content. Allow them to explore and sell themselves as they begin to understand the product at hand.
2. Modest conversion opportunities: Contact forms, call-now buttons, and purchase links should be readily available and easy to use, but they should not be overloaded. Don’t bombard customers with high-pressure decisions and over-the-top CTAs. Allow users to become conversions when they are ready. This can also make your landing page appear more trustworthy, as conversions are not the only focus.
3. Product/Company showcase: Let users see what the landing page is selling in action. Do more than list product benefits or relevant company accolades, show relevant examples that are directly meaningful to consumers.

I am not saying to abandon all landing page practices. Of course, catching interested customers in every cycle of the buying process is important. But, we should be considering how we can tweak our landing pages to get interested customers to return as they make their way through the sales funnel.