Re-Thinking Landing Pages
This post was made Feb 03, 2010 by Carlos del Rio
Jon Mendez wrote and interesting article about social media check in sites.
As Natasha says, the check-in links syndicated through social media verge on unclickable. The reason is rather simple. The landing pages provide no value to the referrer. Yet, the landing page is the spot where the triangulation of goals must align. The whole value chain for this product converges at the landing page.
After reading the article Jeff and I feel there is something that is a bit off about Jon’s assessment. I’m going to use the same graphic that Jon uses to illustrate the points.
1) Immediately reiterates that you are in the correct place. It also extends information by including the address and phone number.
2) The amount of check-ins and visitors indicate whether the location is popular amongst the community members. Is the Mayorship attainable? Is this a big pond or a small pond?
3) Who has been here is a quick thumbnail of whether your friends visit the establishment.
4) Map based services allow you to have a pictorial understanding of location; not everyone understands location by street address (especially if it is in a city you don’t live).
5) When you are logged into this service you can save, or add, tips for your visit to the location.
6) Tagging is pandemic on the Internet. Is it useful? In this case you can game the system to find other related business that you can take a more easily claimed Mayorship.
At the bottom line the web face of a social check in site is not the main purpose, or main channel, for the service. The value comes from support actions:
- Expansion of and increased efficiency of logging tips you want to add
- More efficient means of connecting to people you know based on location rather than media connection
- Reducing time constraints on interacting with the platform
- Tracking game element of social check in
I agree with Jon; there are opportunities to be leveraged that many venues don’t act on. However, comparing a support platform for a MOBILE app to a sales landing page is like comparing an orange to a kayak. If you don’t play Foursquare, as in engage the game elements, the web interface isn’t going to be valuable. It is the same reason why the fantasy football at ESPN doesn’t confer value to me–I don’t actually have a connection point to game.
What are you saying about fantasy football? Do we need to have a smackdown? *shakes fist
I don’t even know where to begin answering that question.
I think you have some good points there. A landing page should be goal oriented. It depends what you want the page to achieve. If you want the user to register, you need to design it in a different way then if you want to be bookmarked.