Landing pages are “the web address that acts as your front door.” Making sure your landing pages are perfect is important seeing as they are the first thing a consumer interacts with and can be the key to a purchase being made or other conversion. The famous digital marketing guru Neil Patel compiled information on what he thinks are the most important practices for a great landing page. They are:
A clear call to action: The first thing you should have brainstormed before designing your landing page is a goal. For example, you could have your goal be a certain total number of conversions, or the number of people who make it past your landing page. Without a goal there is no way of testing the efficiency of your landing page. Once you come up with a goal, the next thing to do is have a clear CTA. The CTA should be directly tied to the goal and everything else on the page should focus around that CTA, making it the most important thing. My Perfect Resume, a resume builder, has a great example of a clear CTA in which everything around it is geared towards signing up to use My Perfect Resume.
Design considerations: “The simpler your page and its design, the more likely it is to convert.” There are a couple different things to consider when thinking of design which can also fall into the category of UI (user interface) which, like UX, I will talk about later on in the blog.
- The first thing to take out of any landing page is any other navigational element. Unlike a normal site which has multiple navigation buttons to browse the entire website, a landing page should only have one link, your CTA. Unless you also have a link to more information for those who are undecided, there should be no other links that could potentially confuse the consumers or draw them away from converting.
- Another important web design for your landing page is the placement of your CTA. You should always have a way for the consumer to click on the CTA without scrolling. This does not mean people won’t scroll but some visitors to the page will have already been persuaded by the link or email that brought them there and be ready to convert immediately.
- Just because there is a CTA near the top of the page doesn’t mean you don’t need to have anymore throughout the page. You want to make sure CTA’s appear at regular intervals. Make it as easy as possible for someone who starts scrolling to be able to click that CTA. For example, FreshBooks includes an additional link to their book/tour halfway down their landing page.
- One last thing to consider for design is the images and font size. You want to use one image (or two at max). Try to avoid visual clutter which can distract consumers away from the main message. Also don’t be afraid to use big fonts, as you wouldn’t want your consumer to strain their eyes. Be careful with font size though and don’t put everything in big bold letters. Have a headline with some smaller words to elaborate a little about your message.
UI/UX: What is this?
These two terms can seem like some complicated, hi-tech mumbo jumbo but they are actually a lot simpler than you think. UI refers to user interface design and UX refers to user experience design. Career Foundry had a great article about UI/UX in which they are compared and contrasted. In the article it states that “UX Design is a more analytical and technical field” and “UI Design is closer to what we refer to as graphic design.” Even though UI and UX design are different it is key to nail both of them in order to create a great product.
UX Design
From the article I mentioned above there is a great example given for UX involving a banana and pineapple. In the example they state that a banana is a perfect comparison to UX design. A banana has a protective casing around it so the mushy inside stays safe during transportation. The color of a banana indicates if it is ripe enough to eat so you never have to eat a banana too early or too late in its aging process. Lastly, bananas are very easy to peel and not messy to eat. Overall a great user experience. Pineapples on the other hand are the opposite. Pineapples are big and bulking making them not ideal for transportation. They cannot be assessed on ripeness just by the way they look and they are hard to open. Overall a bad user experience.
User experience design is “the process of enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the customer and the product.” As you can see from above, the banana fulfilled all of these criteria. UX design also requires a lot of research just like almost everything else in digital marketing. A/B testing is frequently used in order to see which webpage, ad, or other interactive tool works most efficiently.
UI Design
User Interface Design is a process of “visually guiding the user through a product’s interface via interactive elements and across all sizes/platforms.” It is responsible for the “transference of a product’s development, research, content and layout into an attractive, guiding and responsive experience for users.” UI design compliments UX by giving the look and feel, the presentation and interactivity of a product. User interface is used to enhance the user experience of a product. Many people lump UI designers and graphic designers into the same category. They may be similar but the main difference is that graphic design is usually printed out whereas UI design is digital based.
