How to Create a Great Landing Page
When someone visits your website you only have a few seconds to grab their attention before they decide to stay or go elsewhere, and the attention span of a mobile user is even less. It really is not long, so having a great landing page is very important. When you start looking at landing pages on the web you realise how many businesses have done this wrong, and even some of the bigger companies that you would expect to get this right haven’t. Choosing the right design and making it easy is what customers want.
Design Disasters
Here is my list of design disasters that you should avoid:
- Headlines that don’t reflect what the business is about
- Using too much bold text does not work
- White images on white backgrounds
- Paragraphs that are too long (4.5 lines maximum is enough)
- Error pages, broken links
- Multi-line headlines with centered text
- Making people sign up before they can access your site
- Menus that are hard to navigate around
Key Points to keep in mind
- What is your goal/objective
- Find your target market
- Choose what is important to your business
- Use good call to action buttons
- Text should be to the left as it is easier to read
- Small font in light colours like grey do not stand out
- Column width should not be wider than the page
- You need content but keep it brief
- Call to actions eg: Register Free,
- Include trust icons, security, guarantees
- Phone number/Contact details on every page
People do not have time to read pages anymore they only want to scan them as quickly as possible to find out if you are the company for them, so keep your content on the landing page short but sweet, less is more in this instance and no waffling is necessary. When you are developing a landing page, look at the content like you have no idea what your business is about and view it with an open mind. You can tweak your pages as you go along, so don’t panic if it is not right the first time and don’t forget to check your site regularly to make sure it is working and you have no broken links.
