If you advertise through click-exchange traffic programs or GPTR programs, then you should have an idea of what a timed visit is. Basically, people have to view your page for a certain amount of seconds before they can get credit and move on. And that certain amount of seconds is all the time you have to catch their interest. Lets average it out at 20 seconds that your visitor has to view your site before they can move on so you need to catch them by creating a what is known as a...
Lead Page
A lead page is a very brief, straight to the point webpage that is intended to capture the name and email of your visitors so you can respond and followup with information about your business, product, affiliate program, etc. The webpage should consist of three different sections:
Catchy Title
The title should clearly state the whole purpose of your webpage in a few short words. Your title needs to speak out to your visitors and tell them why they should put their details in the form. The title should also lead smoothly into the next part of the webpage which is:
Brief Details
Whatever it is you are promoting or selling, state its benefits in a short paragraph under the title. Maybe you can also include a free gift if they decide to request further information. Your details are your last chance, if they're not satisfied at this point, you've lost them. If they do decide to submit their details, that leads us to the last part of a lead page, a signup form...
Signup Form
After you create your title, and list some brief but beneficial details, you need to create a form for your potential customer to subscribe to. When they input their details, you should have an autoresponder setup to reply to them discussing your business or product in further detail and including the url to your main webpage so they can visit it. This way you are bringing all of your lead page visitors (who already have an idea of what your product offers) to your main webpage where they can explore it furthermore.
Now heres the scenario: You only had around twenty seconds in the advertisement to introduce your business and concept, but once you've gotten contact details, you have plenty more time to strategize a plan that covers your business' benefits and opportunities.
Also, you shouldn't put any header or any sort of graphic on your lead page. You need to have it load within a few seconds and all a bunch of pictures will do is slow the load time.
Remember, you may only have a few seconds. This doesn't just go for timed visits, many people surf the internet hastily and may never consider your offer straight from your sales site because they don't know you or your product. If they catch some interest in your lead page and input their contact information, you have just the chance to introduce yourself and your business and product.
Eric McArdle is the publisher of the TrafficaZine Online Marketing Newsletter which is a publication intended to provide the marketing or web designing entrepreneur with high quality tools and resources that they can effectively apply to their business. http://www.trafficazine.com