Tom EllisWelcome back to Monetate’s summer blog series: “Lunches with Brett.” If you missed the first installment, allow me to introduce myself, I’m the guy in the picture, Tom Ellis, a Wharton MBA summer intern here at Monetate, and I’m busy gathering nuggets of marketing knowledge from Brett Bair, the ecommerce mastermind here at Monetate.

In the first installment Brett revealed some great ideas about landing pages (if you haven’t read, it, you should, now, then come back and read on). Fortunately, when you’ve got someone like Brett on your team, there’s more where that came from, which brings me to this week’s theme: The Landing Page Anchor.

What is a “landing page anchor?” I asked Brett over a particularly tasty turkey club sandwich over here at our headquarters on the north side of Philadelphia.

Brett began his answer by explaining that the landing pages which a site visitor sees upon clicking the best search results tend to contain the most relevant information, by design. Typically, these are pages that…will maximize conversions and sales for that given search topic. A lot of marketing folks have spent a lot of time and effort making sure of that. The problem is, as you may recall from last installment’s Takeaway #1: customers like to browse, to wander from the landing page.

“Okay Tom, I got it—customers like to wander—what’s the big deal?” is what you may be thinking. Well, given the critical role of this optimized landing page, wouldn’t it be nice if the wandering user could easily get back to that landing page?

“Yes” is the right answer, of course, and according to Brett the essence of the landing page anchor is to enable that quick-and-easy return to the landing page. In essence, the landing page anchor is a personalized banner that follows a visitor around as he or she browses through the site. Any time the visitor clicks the banner they are transported back to their original landing page, which enhances the user experience and ultimately your bottom line.

It has been Brett’s experience that, as consumers filled with curiosity wander through your site drifting away from the optimal page to drive sales, they need to be reminded of that original messaging; they need an easy way to access this information that helps them buy what they want.

The bottom line: Having a personalized landing page anchor active on your site does exactly that, helps online shoppers buy what they want. So if you’re an online retailer looking to maximize sales, the landing page anchor is a tool you should not be without.