Trapping Your Visitors - Dont Do It If:

From Yield Software:

Many landing page best practices dictate that you trap your visitors inside your landing page and not allow navigation to other pages within your website. The logic here is that you are after a conversion, so keep the visitor focused on converting rather than letting them wander around and forget to provide you with their info before they leave your site.

While the trapping technique can be quite effective for some advertisers, we've seen it result in complete failure for others. How to know what to do? Here are some simple criteria you can use to determine whether or not trapping your visitor will bring you the highest conversion results.

When trapping is not likely to work:

Your product offering or market space is not well-known. Do you have a new type of product or service that you are trying to sell? In this case visitors need to learn more about your offering before they will be ready to fork over their contact details or make a purchase. Your website should serve as an educational vehicle to help them understand what you do and how it will help them. Guide them through this educational process through your site with a strong emphasis on conversion along the way.

Your brand is not a known. Are you the new kid on the block? Are you the smaller, local guy trying to compete with bigger well-known national brands? In this case your website needs to be a credibility building vehicle. People are not likely to give you any information until they know they can trust you. Help them get to know you and why you are reputable throughout your website pages. Comparisons, testimonials, awards, as seen ins can all be helpful here.

Multiple offerings or conversions are available. Sometimes it's good for you to have your visitors wander around. The more they wander, the more they are likely to buy or the more conversion opportunities that exist. Also, if you have multiple offerings for them to sign up for it that are all standard, it's good to let them gather this information and choose the package that's right for them. So use your website as an upselling vehicle and let them wander and spend.

Your website facilitates the full conversion process. If you have an ecommerce site, or your website is built to facilitate the purchase of what you are offering, let the user wander around to gather all the information they need, select what they would like and complete their transaction. Some examples here include ecommerce sites and hotels.

When trapping is effective:

You have a commonly known product. If people know what they want and are familiar with your product or service, they are likely just looking for the best provider for them. In this case they don't need to comb through your website to figure out what you have to offer. It's more important to focus on the conversion when they first land.