Seal the Deal, Part II: 5 Tips for Designing the Ultimate Landing Page

Seal the Deal, Part II: 5 Tips for Designing the Ultimate Landing Page

Reader Comments (50)

  1. Great summary Roberta! I recently had to write a landing page for a web event that didn’t have a good headshot of the speaker. I used a stock photo of a happy-looking guy. It still worked well.

    I also find myself constantly checking to make sure that branding and language are the same from ad creative, to landing page, to registration form. Sometimes when different people create different campaign components, it’s easy for small differences to sneak in.

  2. Good post! Copywriters aren’t typically designers, but you’d better be able to speak the language. Most designers aren’t much involved in the “selling” end of the gig, and often make fundamental errors in the layout — mistakes that can cost you the ballgame in direct response.

    The ability to explain what’s needed and why it needs to be that way is critical to the success of a project.

  3. I guess the one common thing that ties all your tips together is “make it easy for the potential customer.”

  4. Hi Roberta,

    Excellent post. I am a designer and also write copy for our website and I find it very difficult to balance the two aspects.

    I used to believe that since we are in the design field, our landing pages should be “design rich” and less words. Sort of like “let our work speak for itself”.

    Over time I have come to realize, the portfolio, the overall design of the site only helps so much. These two aspects must be supported by usuability features such as the one you have decribed above.

    We are in the middle of a massive redesign of our website (the new design is now live in our blog) which will hopefully focus more on usability and less on dense graphic rich page layouts.

    Jeff Marsh

  5. Great post, Roberta. I was wondering with your second tip on placing important content in the first 300 pixels, how that relates to copy length. Do you like long sales letters?

    John

  6. John, I don’t like or dislike long sales letters as I don’t like or dislike any specific promotional format. The trick is to match the right format with the right offer to the right audience. Long form sales letters have their place, but it isn’t everywhere :=)

    And do check out GrokDotCom.com – it’s a favorite of mine on conversion topics.

  7. Thought I’d point out that more recent research has shown that users are a lot more happy to scroll down web pages than they previously were (study by NeilsonNorman group last year). Thats not to say that you have more time to grab their attention, just that its OK for important content to be below the fold.

  8. @Rory – I wouldn’t disagree except … your above the fold content has to have enough “oomph” to get folks to scroll for more message found below the fold. Thanks for your input!

  9. I’ve gotten to this series of posts rather later, but it’s very timely for me. After 2 years with my blog, I’m now conceptualizing a new one with tighter focus, more attention to building readership and new monetization strategies. This series really helps me understand how to utilize landing pages. THANKS.

  10. Out of all tips I like the most“Scrutinize your competition’s design and organization flow of their landing pages” as it is all about your competitors. To stand out you do not have to make a perfect page(if it happens to be perfect it does not hurt either). All you need to do is to see what your competitors are doing and do just a little better.

  11. Yeah good post, I bookmark an obscene amount of sites that seem to get my attention from the off just for reference, then i can use the techniques in my sites. The only problem is being 2 steps ahead because once you start to do something on your site everyone follows suit so having a few great ideas will help for the future.

  12. Hi,
    I have been visual designer for 9+ years and we are so trained to work on deadlines,package that we loose the real focus of the design, ultimately the design or even copy has to work and bring results, else it will be waste. Above points are very basic point that a designer should know.

    But we are so accustomed in our own creative world that we loose the core of it and i been in same boat realized it sooner which amke me take u-turn in my approach and started focussing on not even Results!! but User Expereince- your target audience has certian way of experiencing your product, sefvice, website. It’s not always WYSIWYG, it how to engage them in the process and have them take action to it.

    BELIEVE me the shift in saw in client decision was amazing!! Get and learn your target sudience- How will they expereince and act on it and than Design or build your product.

    Everywebsite should have a landing page and when you do SEO for project- focus on the RESULTS and PROCESS – not the website. Website, Landing Page is the most effective marketing tool for your business.

    When you design website, Online promotional stuff, ask some basic question to your designer or developer before hiring them.

    http://www.57pixelmedia.com/2011/06/top-6-questions-to-ask/. Hope you will enjoy this article.

  13. Great post Roberta! Thanks for sharing the value, I will take these tips and run with them 🙂 I’ll be testing them out with some of my LP’s. Thanks again, look forward to your next post!

  14. Great article glad the “F” pattern is still being discussed, i see many websites created that have not taken in to account how their users will actually respond to the content, can’t beat a good website that clearly guides you where they want you to go. Anyone agree?

  15. Hi Roberta. I’m researching how to write landing pages and I came across this article. Some great tips here.

    One of the nagging issue for me is how long or how short. What I get from your article is that it doesn’t matter how long or how short it is as long as the beginning and the end is very very tight and well written.

    What do you think about adding a navigation section at the beginning that will help readers go to the exact parts of the pages they want. Is it a good strategy or is it better to let them scan through from top to bottom?

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