There are a number of templates for creating fresh and engaging landing pages for apps. However, before you even get to those templates, it helps to look at the domain name as well.
While the content on these landing pages is important, and it is essential that it is effective and contains a good call to action, the work for SEO and proper key wording starts a level up from this. From the domain name alone, will customers understand where they are landing, and will they trust your landing page?
Here are some simple steps to make sure they do, especially if you have several top-level domain names to choose from.
Is it relevant?
Does the domain name relate to the call to action on the landing page? If a customer lands on a page asking them to subscribe to a newsletter or download an eBook that seems unrelated to the domain name, they might be understandably suspicious. It is important that errors like this one are avoided from the beginning.
This will result in high bounce rates rather than conversions. If the domain name is not relatable, consider using an alternate one, even if you have to search for and purchase a new domain.
Be sure to look at relevance from a user’s perspective. If the content on the page is only tangentially related to the domain name, consider ways to make it more so. Change the title or subheads in the call to action to show how the content and the domain name make sense in the same space.
Is it simple?
The name of your landing page should be equally as simple as the domain name itself. Both should not only be relevant to one another but should be easy to spell and easy for the customer to understand. For instance, fromdev.com/newslettersignup would be a great URL for a landing page. The website and the page name are both simple, and the meaning is clear.
Avoid clever plays on words, puns, or other language tricks that may seem like they would be engaging. Save that for your content. Those things can easily confuse users in a domain name, and cause a lack of trust in your site.
Don’t Use Numbers or Symbols
Numbers, hyphens, and symbols in your domain name are typically not a good idea. They might appear in your subdomain page, like newsletter-signup in order to set words apart, but they should never appear in the website name itself.
This is because such little tricks make it difficult for a user to type in the URL to your landing page if they have seen in on a business card or some other piece of promotional material. You want the domain name to be easy to type and difficult to mess up with common typos. Numbers and symbols are harder to type on mobile, and this is where most internet activity takes place.
Is it both easy to say and to spell?
If a customer is telling another person about a website, they should be able to tell the person verbally, and finding the website from their memory of the spoken words should be easy. You can test this by telling someone the domain name, and then ask them to type it into their phone or a computer a few minutes later.
If they cannot do it, you probably need to look at a different domain name or modify the existing one in one way or another. Again, this comes down to avoiding clever pronunciations or spellings, like a “y” where an “I” should be, or odd and easily misunderstood abbreviations.
Remember, your customer is your focus. If it isn’t easy for them to do something, they probably won’t.
Can it be taken the wrong way?
Make sure when using domain names, especially combining them with landing page names, that they cannot be taken the wrong way.
For instance, American Scrap Metal is ameriicanscrapmetal.com. This can be read as American’s Crap Metal instead, an unfortunate mistake. There are several other examples of names like this that can be taken the wrong way. As a general rule of thumb, you should run your potential domain name by at least 3 people not associated with your business to gather some outside feedback.
Be sure to show the domain name and the page name to several people outside your organization, including the two names together so there are no unfortunate errors. After all, no one wants to be known as the acronym for the American Ski Society.
When developing landing pages for apps or for any other purpose, the first thing that matters is the name of both the site and the page. It’s a part of content marketing that is often forgotten and rushed through, but it makes a real difference to your customers and future customers searching for your site.
Be sure that yours is relevant, simple, easy to say and spell, and can’t be taken the wrong way before you go any further with design and development.