Webvanta Blog: Creating Effective Websites

Better Landing Pages: Designing for Conversion

When designing web sites, we usually think about usability and findability. We want visitors to be able to easily find the site through search, find what they’re looking for once they reach the site, and navigate with ease. We want to provide breath and depth, and make it easy to explore the site.

As obvious as these goals may seem, the are actually the wrong goals when designing landing pages.

Why Are Landing Pages Different?

A landing page is the page to which any advertisements should point. If you are paying for ads and sending people to ordinary web pages, you are wasting money.

When someone clicks an ad, you’ve paid for the visit, and you typically want to capture the user’s contact information, or perhaps drive them directly to a purchase. The design of the page should be 100% focused on that goal.

In general, that means landing pages should not have navigation, or links to other pages. This is so counter to usual web design principles that it is hard for many designers and site owners to accept, but there is a large body of evidence to back up this assertion.

Another counter-intuitive point, backed by considerable evidence, is that interactive elements and animation are generally bad for landing pages. You already have the visitor’s attention; you want to keep them focused.

The analytics service KISSmetrics recently sponsored a webinar, presented by Oli Gardener from Unbounce, titled The 7 Principles of Conversion Centered Design. Oli does a superb job of explaining how to optimize your landing pages for conversion, with a series of examples and principles. If you do any online marketing, you owe it to yourself to watch the recorded webinar.

Topics: Landing Pages

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