There are landing pages and then there are landing pages – some succeed, some don’t. What differentiates yours from the ones that don’t? It’s simple – your landing page is meant for your visitor, who is your potential buyer. If your landing page is not designed to lure, captivate and retain this visitor’s interest for long enough to make a commitment, then it’s no good.
1. Simplicity
You have about 5 to 6 seconds in which you either grab your customer’s attention, or lose him or her forever. Keep your design simple by getting rid of unnecessary links, Ads, copy, design and navigational elements. Retain plenty of white space into the area which you want to be noticed first – your main offer and your CTA (Call To Action).
2. Smooth User Experience
Ensure fast load speeds; test all your transactional processes to know exactly what your customer will experience. If you find any hitch or slowdown in the information and payment processing and order fulfillment aspects, you need to fix them immediately. Use different, geographically displayed payment gateways to enable quicker transactions.
3. Attractive Design
While you need to keep your landing pages simple, by no means should they be dull or boring. An attractive page, well designed with the right colors, fonts and graphics will grab eyeballs. Make your content look good with the right fonts and colors, and use good-looking product images alongside your copy. Avoid using unnecessary design elements, even if they’re very attractive.
4. Great Product Search Feature
This is one aspect where many businesses fail – not providing a search feature. Even if your landing page gives all the product details a customer might want, do provide a strong, fast search feature. Your customer may want to check out products other than the one they came for.
5. Provide A Product Category Filter
Create a drop-down category list feature, along with a good filter so that people can easily get to the one they want. Also be sure to provide thumbnails of the products along with their names in your category index, and provide links to detailed product info in the category page, including impartial product reviews.
6. Stick To The Scent
Specifically target each landing page based on where your visitor is coming from, such as PPC Ads, search engine results and so on. It’s one thing to land on a different landing page, but if all links lead to your home page, then you’ve lost the game. Stick to the scent, and make sure that your visitor lands on a page which is relevant to their information source.
7. Effective Use Of Sidebar
Display various customer testimonials, customer product reviews and credibility statements from authority sites on your sidebar. Avoid placing links in your sidebar – you don’t want the visitor to move away from the landing page. Use the sidebar also to indicate the number of people who’ve purchased the product featured on the page.
8. Un-clutter Your Header And Footer
Be sure your header and footer are free of unnecessary buttons, links or useless statements that don’t serve your landing page’s objective. You can provide links to your Terms and Conditions, Security Policy and Privacy Policy if you like.
9. Consistency In Design
Make sure that the copy, images, color and design elements you use in your landing page reflect what’s been used in your Ad or email newsletter source. This kind of consistency builds credibility, as customers see you as a company that cares about attention to detail. Plus, repeating the same design elements and text is a way of reinforcing your message and reassuring your visitor.
10. Attention-Grabbing Action Buttons
Whatever colors you use for your text and headlines, make sure your action buttons stand out. For example, if your text elements are in black and your header is bright navy, let your CTA button be a bright orange, maroon or green. So whether your button is Order Now, Add to Cart or Buy Now, make sure even the most shortsighted person can spot it.
11. Social Proofs
Use various social media widgets to display social proofs. Customers always want to know how popular you are on social media and putting up a running tweet window helps. You can also use a widget to keep a running count of Facebook Likes as well.
12. Smooth Eye Flow
Your landing page template should have a place for your headline, then the copy, your offer and then your CTA. This creates a smooth eye flow, with a beginning and an end, and determines the visual hierarchy of your page elements. Direct the visitor’s eye towards your CTA using bold arrows. Grab attention for important elements by putting them in bold colors on a pale background. Avoid integrating anything in the middle that might distract your customer from the offer and the CTA.
Article by Stephen of invesp, a conversion optimization company that specializes in offering customized landing page designing and e-commerce optimization solutions.
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An excellent article with some great tips, thanks. Sometimes I think we’re too focused and need to take a step back. There is often a tendency to put everything on the front page but then it can look cheap and a mess!
Nice Article, i need it because im only teenager and kno basic SEO.. help me in my site
Many landing pages are designed for quick data capture. Keep your form above the fold and clearly visible. Limit the number of fields the user has to complete to help maximise the conversion rate.
This provides exactly the features I’ve been looking for, so absolutely timely. Brilliant 12 points for landing page design. Simplicity is my moto. Thanks for this lovely article.
Great advice, I must agree the landing page designs have to be kept simple and attractive.This will enable the site’s visitors grasp your objectives in the least amount of time possible.
Really Nice post.
Simplicity matters a lot.
Effective use of sidebars is very important as well. Liked all the points.
This info is just what I need. So I have to do something right now to follow the suggestions and hope to see some improvements in my landing page. You rock!
Great article! It’s important to have the right balance of elements to get potential clients to connect with you…get and increase conversion.
You all always have great articles and information. Thanks!
Thanks for the advice its always good to go back to basics. Given the algorithm updates recently I would go so far as to say this is essential advice. More and more I am noticing that visitors from major search engines land in all kinds of places on your site dependent on the terms they use to find you. As a result I would use this methodology throughout. Keep it simple and convert people
It’s a pretty good wrapup. The social proof part is probably not so good for a beginning business though. My facebook likes aren’t huge so that might give away how new it is when I want people to think it’s a popular well-established site.
Always a great source of information! I am self taught. I built and maintain my own site. I need it to be just so and did not have the funds to pay and have it updated consistently. This website has helped me more than I can say. Thank you!
Wood,
Thanks for your article while you have explained the points very well, I do not quite agree that customers are interested in the number of social connection, a particular business has. I think if a customers comes to a site and finds what he/she likes, he will most certainly complete the action to making a purchase.
That a customer decides for press any of the social network button depends on how he/she is satisfied with the experience he has on that site regardless if others has done the same or not.
Great tips. Thank you for sharing this. It really works.
This is a great article. I love that simplicity was your first point. I don’t know if that was meant to be as the most important, but I totally believe in keeping it simple…Simple = Conversions.
Great article. I am in the process of incorporating some of your ideas into the re-design if my site. De-cluttering seems to be the most difficult thing to do.
Excellent tips. We should, after all, be mindful of customer experience, and design for an audience.
It is so important that we need to consider more on landing pages. As you said if that page is not designed well or user friendly then the visitors will leave the pages and move into other competitor’s pages.
Excellent tips as always from site pro news. Though, I personally think the hardest part of it all is the social proof. It’s hard getting noticed on social media sites like facebook and twitter. Any advice?
Very True! Simplicity is the key to success. Well research information.
Stephen, this was an informative article and gave some good pointers. I do agree with Nina as far as the social interest part. Most people who land on a page are not looking to see if it ranks high socially; but rather if is fits what they are personally looking for. Everything else offers great tips, Thanks
Excellent article, short and yet so informative.
Very good tips for successful landing page design,
I also do follow those on my landing page design, you can check them here http://www.semanticlp.com/featured-lp/
Hi Stephen, sorry do dig out this article but I’m writing one on landing page designs too and I’d love to know where you got the details about the attention span from (refering to first paragraph)?
Cheers,
Robert
Nice tips. These are all useful for creating a truly effective landing page, not just something that goes viral but do not actually increase conversion. http://www.graphicfetish.com/increase-your-income-with-a-landing-page-that-never-goes-viral/