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7 Landing Page Best Practices to Keep in Mind When Designing

Landing Page

By now, you probably already know that quantity is one of the landing page best practices you need to follow. But having more is not enough, quality is just as important. Having epic landing pages will lead you towards a better conversion rate.

This post will guide you on the landing page best practices in design. Just a few tweaks will do wonders even if you’re not a designer. Don’t worry, there won’t be deep coding jargons ahead; just simple actionable steps for mere mortals.

Let’s jump in!

Simple and clean is in

Minimalism is getting trendier everywhere, from house interior, mobile design, and people’s lifestyle in general. Even your landing page design should keep up with the trend too.

You’ve probably heard about the shortening of human’s attention span. Keep that in mind when planning your designs. You are competing with thousands of other businesses and service providers for your client’s attention. Your job is to make it easy for a visitor to make a decision.

So how do you do that? Reduce complexity. Remove clutter. Only go for what is essential. A compelling headline, few details to reduce friction, and an obvious call-to-action are all you need. The landing page must have only one goal. If you need to show other topics, then create a separate landing page.

Make it familiar

Your landing pages are not walking on a runway. You don’t need to come up with something new every time. Now is not the time to show off your pizzazz because it might backlash.

Marketing goes hand-in-hand with psychology. You have to understand how your clients think or “not think”. Learn what compels them to do an ideal behavior or what obstructs them from taking action.

The human brain follows what is familiar. Unfamiliar objects often trigger skepticism. If your landing page “doesn’t look like a landing page”, you might be scaring off your visitors. Again, your job is to reduce complexity. Make it easy peasy for your visitor to make a decision by using a familiar template.

Add social proof

The innate need to belong is embedded deep within sometimes even irrationally. So what does this mean to you as a designer? Meet the need for belongingness in your landing page.

Show them that by responding to your call-to-action, they will become a part of a community. You can do this by adding customer testimonials, the number of users, or your social media following.

This page by Asana uses “millions of users” and “192 countries” as their social proof. This is a great approach if your business has grown hundreds of thousands or millions of users. Aside from the social proof, they also followed another landing page best practices such as a descriptive, bold, and striking CTA which we’ll cover more on the next number.

Research showed that 92% of users are more likely to trust non-paid endorsements compared to other forms of advertising. Make it authentic. Make your social proof be about real people.

Let your testimonials be from customers who have genuinely benefited from your product or service. Specific and heartfelt stories work best. A plain “this business is great” won’t cut it. For example, you can use something like “Since I have worked with RankWatch, my e-commerce profit doubled in less than a year.”  But of course, it has to come from a real customer. Edit it a bit with their permission, but the core message must come directly from your customer.

Go for descriptive, bold, and striking CTA

For the nth time, you should reduce complexity. So, your CTA should be obvious. If all they do after arriving on your landing page is to click on it, then your mission is accomplished.

The label should be descriptive. It should tell exactly what’s going to happen if you click on it. Avoid vague CTA’s such as submit and next.

Your visitors should not need to find your CTA. Again, it should be broad daylight obvious. Use a color that contrasts with the background. Of course, the color should still be aligned with your brand. Just because I said a contrasting color, don’t go for orange if it appears out of place on your website.

Speaking of orange, Payoneer has a striking orange CTA and it fits perfectly well because orange is one of the brand’s colors. Aside from that, they also practiced other landing pages best practices like using images, position, and location of their clients for their social proof.

Be mindful of the details

Mehmet Murat ildan said that “Little details have special talents in creating big problems!” Indeed, the small details can make or break your landing page.

The colors you use, size and shape of your buttons, and typography all have an effect on your conversion rate. There is no hard rule for the best elements you can use because every user is different. That is why it is important to have the A/B test, more of that on the number.

Meanwhile here are more details you should watch for when designing.

Ø  AVOID ALL CAPS. ALL CAPS ARE MORE DIFFICULT TO READ AND SCAN. You see. So please, go easy with the big letters.

Ø  Align labels on top. Forms with top aligned labeled have better conversion rate than those Top-aligned labels also translate well on mobile.

Ø  Ensure that the headline matches the ad that they clicked before they landed on your page.

Ø  Use bullets instead of long paragraphs.

Optimize your design for mobile

Statistics show how much revenue you are gambling to lose if you don’t optimize for mobile. There are currently 3.7 billion mobile Internet users growing at an unprecedented speed. By 2020, mobile will comprise 45 % of all e-commerce transactions.

Make your landing page responsive so mobile users won’t need to scroll, zoom, or pinch for ages to view your entire page or find your CTA. Your button should also be convenient enough to be clicked on using the thumb.

If your desktop version is already minimalist, your mobile version should be the simplest it could be without cutting the important elements. Filler words will only crowd out the page.

The font sizes should be easily readable on mobile. The ideal base font size according to Google is 16 CSS pixels. If you have few coding skills then go ahead and read this article on the ideal typography for mobile design.

Run A/B Tests

As much as we’d like to pretend that we fully understand our consumer behavior, we don’t. The human brain is crazy, wonderful, and ever-changing. We can never fully understand how it works.

So how do you know if your landing page will be received by your clients perfectly? Test! Test which CTA works well, which headline engages more, which color converts better, etc.

Conclusion

The best landing page practices start with the client in mind. What is interesting to the user? What is easier for the user? What can compel the visitor to convert? These are the questions you need to answer before starting to design your landing page.

To sum up, make your landing page simple, familiar, and trustworthy by adding social proof. Use compelling CTA and be mindful of the details. Don’t forget to make it mobile-friendly. After that, test. Do what works. Drop what doesn’t. Rinse and repeat.

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