Landing page is very much like a book cover. It is the first thing that your potential customer sees when they enter your website. A good cover lures potential reader to pick up the book and eventually turns into fans; the same principle applies to your landing page. Despite the quality of your services or product, a poorly designed landing page could really drives customer away from your website in a matter of seconds. To prevent that from happening, here are some tips and tricks on how to design a landing page that will convert.
Remember the quote “don’t judge the book by its cover”?
It is one of those classic words of wisdom that has been repeated over the centuries. Although it is true that not all books are horrible like its cover, we have to admit that the ones with better design do sell more. This is why design has recently become one of the most crucial elements in everything that we do. It is undeniable that things with better appearance do attract more attention, and it’s a rule that’s also applies to your website; hence the importance of your landing page.
To use the book analogy, landing page is very much like a book cover. It is the first thing that your potential customer sees when they enter your website. A good cover lures potential reader to pick up the book and eventually turns into fans; the same principle applies to your landing page. Despite the quality of your services or product, to design a landing page that is poor could really drives customer away from your website in a matter of seconds. To prevent that from happening, here are some tips and tricks on how to design a landing page that will convert.
1.Wireframe is your best buddy
Although this is the fundament of web design, a lot of people neglect this when it comes to their own website/blog. Wireframe is a great way for you to see the rough layout of your page and it is very easy to do. You can also share your wireframe to your friends and family and get some feedback on your design. This way you can see people’s reaction and expectation when they see your landing page and know what to improve. Here are some great wireframe creation tools for you to check out:
2. How To Design a Landing Page – Know your audience
A successful landing page should focus on a particular audience group. Use color scheme and graphic that is appealing to your primary audience. Color can be used as a directional tool to distinguish links from text as well as making your CTA pops out. As an Example, here is Fender shop landing page:
As you can see, the color scheme is very monochromatic and masculine to match the personality and preference of their target customer. Red is use as an accent color on their logo, links, and CTA making it very easy for people to see every clickable element.
To show the importance of color, I have taken the liberty to change the color scheme on the same homepage. Even though the layout and content remains the same, you can see how much it affects the overall mood of the page:
With this new palette Fender can start losing their existing customer as well as preventing any potential buyer to come into their website.
3. How To Design a Landing Page – Keep it Simple
Simple is simply the way. The primary purpose of a landing page is to get site visitors to convert, so you want to make sure that they find what they want right after their first click. When designing a landing page always put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Make it easy for your visitors to navigate through the page. If they have to do scavenger hunt to get to your subscribe button, then expect them to simply leave in no time.
This is another one of the thousand things that Google done right. They don’t distract their audience with any background images and links. The primary focus is on the search engine making it very simple and easy for anyone to use .
4. How To Design a Landing Page – Good use of form
Ask yourself if you would spend thirty minutes filling out your information to subscribe to a newsletter? Most likely not. So when designing a form on the landing page, always keeps it short and simple. You know that you only need a few essential information from your visitor such as their name and email address and NOT where their cousin goes to school, or their grandmother’s maiden name, etc.
Netflix has one of the simplest forms for people to sign up for their service. All they need is your email address and a password to set up your account.
5. How To Design a Landing Page – Give out rewards
With the number of internet scams and identity crimes, people are afraid of sharing their personal information online. One of the ways to help you with this problem is to give out valuable material such as a gift voucher, discounts, free e-book, etc. in exchange for their name and email address. Attractive rewards can really help to increase the conversion rate.
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6. How To Design a Landing Page – Build trust in your audience
You can’t get people to sign up for your service if they don’t trust your website. A good landing page should include some form of trust signal e.g. logos of recognizable company that you have worked with, or well-known institution that accredited your business.
If you don’t have any of the above the simplest thing to do is to include testimonials and company address on your landing page. Testimonial allows audience to see that there are people who have used and are satisfied with your service, while company address shows that you are a legitimate established firm.
Fluidsurveys is a good example for a landing page with good use of trust signal.
7. How To Design a Landing Page – Deadly Headline
According to a study done by Neilson Norman Group (NNG), an average time that most people stay on a webpage is 10 – 20 seconds. However, this duration will increase if the subject finds the website interesting. This is why it is so important to have a good headline on your landing page. Compelling headline can help to grasp viewer attention and makes it more likely for them to read your content.
There are many tools online that helps you produce better headline. Copyblogger.com is a wonderful resource that you can check out when developing web content. This is a gem that will make you a better writer. They also have many articles regarding headline creation so make sure to check them all out!
Another tool that I found useful is an online headline generator. These generators are far from perfect, but they can really help to inspire some really good headline when your idea pool runs dry.
Headline Smasher is one that I usually used. It is a website that creates fake headline by meshing up real ones that were used. Often time it produce bizarre and hilarious results, but it is a good place to get your creative juice flowing. For example, one of the headlines that got over 500+ up vote is:
“21 Cooking Tips That Will Kill Us All”
It sounds hilarious and useless, but you can replace a few words and create a really good headline from it e.g. “10 web design tips that will kill your bad coding habit”
8. How To Design a Landing Page – “F” page layout
Another study from NNG shows that reader browsed through the page in an “F” formation with reader paying more attention to the content on the left side of the screen more than the right. Their attention level also decreases going down the page.
(image: unbounce.com)
This is why it is a good idea to use the generic web layout on your landing page because it is the natural way that most people read (language such as Arabic and Hebrew reads in the opposite direction). Navigation bar should be at the top for easy access and the most important content should be placed on the left side of the screen above the fold.
Final Thoughts:
Designing a winner landing page can be quite a challenging task and involve a lot of thoughts and planning. However, it is one of the most important things that you should work on if you want your website to be successful.
If you want to take thing further but don’t know where to start, at Web Courses Bangkok we offer a course in Beginner Web Design, which teaches you all the basics of web creation. If you already know how to build a website, we also have a course in UX Design where you can learn more about customer behavior and how they interact with the web.
