It’s the page your website visitors arrive at after clicking on a link. It could be your home page, or any other page in your site. Also known as a lead capture page. It appears when a user clicks on search engine result links or on an advertisement.

The main objective of a landing page is that, “Each page of a site indexed by search engines is ranked for any term and propels traffic to the site from search engines.”

You can customized the landing page to measure the effectiveness of different advertisements. You can control where people will be coming from. By adding a parameter to the linking URL, marketers can measure advertisement effectiveness based on relative click-through rates.

Landing Page should do wel. It should provide a customized sales pitch for the visitor. While making landing page Keep in mind that from where the person has come from, and who they are. It wil increase the chances of appealing the visitor and automatically your conversion rate will also goes up.The interest level of the visitor is maximized by matching the right visitor, the right place, and the right time.
Landing pages are useful for checking the effectiveness of paid ads and to supply copy, images.

There are two types of landing page, reference and transactional.

The main motive of ‘reference’ landing pages is to presents information that is relevant to the visitor. Pages may include display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other online elements. Reference landing pages seek to fulfill the objectives of the publisher, whether it is content management in the case of associations, organizations, or public service entities. The effectiveness of reference landing pages can be measured by the revenue value of the advertising that is displayed on them.

A ‘transactional’ landing page will attempt to convince a visitor to complete some sort of activity such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page,or any other form of measurable action which would be desired by the advertiser, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service.

A visitor taking the desired action on a transactional landing page is referred to as a conversion. The desired action can take many forms, varying from site to site. For example sales of products, membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any activity beyond simple page browsing. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by its conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action.

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By: BBC

Yahoo and Google, the world’s two biggest search engines, have announced a two-week experiment that will see them share advertising space.

During the pilot, Google will be able to place ads alongside 3% of search results on Yahoo’s website.

Analysts say the move is designed to frustrate Microsoft, which has offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.6bn), or extract a higher offer.

The news came as both sides were reported to be forging other alliances.

Microsoft and News Corp are discussing making a joint bid for Yahoo, according to the New York Times.

The idea would be to combine three of the world’s most visited websites: MySpace, Yahoo and MSN.com.

News Corp had previously discussed working with Yahoo to see off Microsoft’s offer.

At the same time, Yahoo is looking to Time Warner’s AOL to keep out of Microsoft’s hands, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It reported that the deal would involve Time Warner making a cash investment for 20% of the merged firm, which Yahoo could then use to buy back shares.

Microsoft criticised Yahoo’s advertising trial with Google, saying any lasting deal would not be in the consumers’ interests.

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel said.

But Yahoo said the testing did not necessarily mean that “any further commercial relationship with Google will result”.

Investors reacted positively to the announcement, with Yahoo shares rising 7%.

“Yahoo has made a really clever move here,” Cowen and Co analyst Jim Friedland said.

“It looked like Microsoft had all the cards, Yahoo is at least now able to use this for leverage to get Microsoft to pay more,” he said.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer on Saturday gave Yahoo three weeks to agree to the company’s offer or risk having the offer lowered.

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Let’s assume that Yahoo fails to agree on a deal with Microsoft in three weeks’ time. Microsoft, presumably, will launch a proxy battle to take over Yahoo’s board.

First, Yahoo has to send out its proxy materials to shareholders, which includes information about its board nominees. (Yahoo recently extended the deadline for nominating board members to 10 days after it announces its annual meeting, and the company still hasn’t scheduled that yet.) Given that Yahoo’s shareholder meeting was in June of last year, that could imply that the deadline to nominate candidates for the board would fall in May.

After Yahoo sends out its proxy materials, Microsoft sends out its own set of proxies to shareholders. Microsoft would solicit votes for its slate of handpicked board nominees, assuming that if it can take over Yahoo’s board, it can steer the company’s strategic direction, which would likely increase the chances of a merger.

“It’s not a foregone conclusion that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal will happen immediately [if Microsoft takes over Yahoo’s board],” says Barry Genkin, an attorney and partner at Blank Rome. “The moment someone becomes a director [on Yahoo’s board], his or her fiduciary responsibility is to determine what’s in the best interest of Yahoo shareholders. The board has to look at all ways to enhance shareholder value, and it has to carefully consider the price of a Microsoft deal.”

Genkin says a proxy battle can cost millions of dollars, but it’s a cheap way to gain control of a company, versus outright buying a corporation through a tender offer, which could potentially cost billions of dollars. (In a tender offer, an acquiring company buys outstanding shares of a company directly from shareholders.)

Historically, proxy battles have been somewhat rare in the tech sector, but Genkin says they are likely to become more common.

“We’re already seeing it,” he says. “We’re seeing it with Cnet right now. [Proxy battles] used to be rare, because tech stocks traded at such high multiples. But since the sector’s been hammered, you’re seeing a lot of hedge funds with big positions in a company, launching proxy contests to effect change. I think you’re going to see a host of contests in the coming year.”

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Source: blog.wired.com