5 Keys to Great Landing Pages
A few years ago, we did a deep dive into how people interact with our website when looking to book a trip. Guess what we learned? LOOKING for a trip was so frustrating for many people; they weren’t signing up.
When you work hard to find people for your pilgrimage, you don’t want to confuse them when they finally go to sign up, right? So we set out to make it easy for you to share your trips with a “Landing Page” on our website. Rather than send people looking through hundreds of trips, you send them to your landing page, where they only see yours! There, they can learn a little bit about you and a lot about your trip, and they can enroll easily on the trip with less friction than ever before.
So, how do you make the most out of a Landing Page on the Select International Tours’ website?
1.) SMILE! Get a Welcoming Picture
We know you’re probably not into selfies, but people want to see a warm and welcoming smile when it comes to a Landing Page. This picture is reassuring because it tells your potential pilgrims that you are friendly and that they are going to enjoy your trip.
Now is NOT the time to send some pictures of yourself from ten years ago that you copied off of Facebook. Use your cellphone, get in good light (outside or near an open window is usually a good choice), and take a nice picture of yourself smiling. We find pictures from the waist up (rather than just a headshot) work best, even though we may crop them to headshots for your landing page.
Our Graphic Designer will ask for a picture of you while creating the brochure. So have a recent photo ready, as described above, and you’ll be on your way to an inviting Landing Page.
2.) Have a Short Bio Ready
Obviously, anyone you personally invite will know who you are. Hopefully, they have friends and family who want to join them on your trip. They might not know much about you. A short bio helps people get familiar with you and what you do. If they resonate with your bio, it will make it much easier for them to enroll on the trip. After all, as human beings, we want to be in the company of people who are of a similar mind.
If you have a longer bio, we can always continue it further down the landing page. When online, people have extrordinarily short attention spans, so a short (2paragraph) bio works best.
3.) Record a Short Video or Write a Letter of Invitation
A personal invitation is always the best way to get someone to say yes to a pilgrimage, but a short (2 minute) video or letter inviting them to join you is a great first step when they find your trip online. Use this time to tell them why you are excited to go, how you’re pilgrimage will be different, and how you will be praying for them as they decide.
This is your chance to show potential pilgrims who you are and how you’ll interact with them on pilgrimage, so be warm and inviting, and encourage them to join you on pilgrimage!
4.) Link to Your Work
While it’s best to keep you landing page snappy and brief, some people will want to learn more about your work. Please, link to your ministry, your writing, videos, podcasts, and any other work that you are doing. Not only is this a great way to help people join you on pilgrimage, it’s a great way to get more eyes on your ministry.
Linking goes both way! If you have a website, please link to your landing page from there. A “Join Me on Pilgrimage” or a “Travel with Me” button on your website is a great way to get people to find you trips on your landing page.
5.) Keep Things Fresh
Keeping things fresh on your landing page is both easy and rewarding. When you have all you upcoming trips on the site, it is easy for people who have traveled with you in the past to join you for another trip. AND, we know from experience that people who travel with you on one trip are far more likely to join you on another one. Also, if you have something exciting happen, let’s add it to your landing page. It’s a great way for people to know that you are active and involved.
You might be wondering how to update your landing page. Well, that’s just one of the many services that Select offers you when you book with us. Send us pictures, links, videos, etc. and we can usually have them live on the website the next day. Sometimes, faster. Just email our Matt to get started.