Anatomy of the Perfect Landing Page
As designers, we are usually tasked with making web pages that are nice to look at. When it comes to online marketing where ROI, conversions, and managing budgets are extremely important, making a web page look pretty won’t be enough. Landing pages are dynamic in that they can be the starting, middle, or ending point of a distributed marketing campaign that generates prospects for channel partners. Prospects can arrive to a landing page after clicking on a PPC ad, or clicking a Call-To-Action (CTA) in an email about upgrading their cable tv package for example. Whether you are targeting new or existing consumers, the layout and structure of your landing page will determine and affect the performance of your marketing campaign.
In this post I will use visual examples and explain why each point is important when attempting to create an optimal landing page.
1. Use a two column layout.
Using a two column layout for your landing page allows for a couple of things. First, and most important, it will allow you to place both your form and important copy above the fold at the same time. Restricting your landing page to one column for both the form and copy creates a tough balancing act, especially if you have a good amount of copy explaining your product or service. In that situation you are faced with a hard question; form first or copy first?
2. Keep your copy short and to the point. Try to keep your form even shorter.
Since we’re on the topic of copy, its important to remember that the people that visit your landing page will most likely skip your copy. It doesn’t mean they aren’t interested but its mainly because they already heard what you had to say from the PPC ad or email they already clicked. Basically your prospect made a decision to proceed to learn more about what you are offering. Instead of filling your landing page with long lines of text, use a headline and a couple of bullet points to drive the message home.
Once the prospect decides to fill out the form, it would be nice if you didn’t ask them for too much information. Keep the form short so the prospect doesn’t feel overwhelmed or intimidated about having to fill out too much information. In most cases, obtaining a name, email, and phone number.