The Principles Behind Successful Landing Page Layouts
Obviously the design element of your landing page is important, but it is equally important to have a good organization schema for your page. Landing pages which are well organized and tidy have a higher conversion rate than one which is all over the map; it’s a sign that you are actually dedicated to your product and thus you are more trustworthy. The goal of your landing page is to turn a customer from a browser to a buyer and that means every element is geared towards making that process as smooth as possible. Organize your landing page along these lines and you’ll find that your conversions from your flash banners get easier.
- Showing Importance is Good, but Don’t Go Wild
Many landing pages over-emphasize their important element and cause ‘banner blindness’. Banner blindness is when you have huge graphical elements that are surrounded by white space and are ignored by your traffic. The reason for this ‘blindness’ is because people have been trained to file away over-the-top phrases as spam and thus unimportant to them. Instead, emphasize your important parts, but make it more subtle by using things like different color font and underlining instead of massive text.
blind computer The Principles Behind Successful Landing Page Layouts
- Consistent Graphics
Plan out your graphics ahead of time and make sure they all match up. For example, you don’t want to have a photo right beside clipart; it just looks peculiar. Once you’ve figured out your graphics, make sure that the file size is small enough to load quickly without losing too much quality. Any photos someone can enlarge (product photos for example) are obviously the exception to this, though the thumbnail should be small. - Don’t Stop Your Readers
Horizontal line breaks or separators are actually stop signs to readers, much like a wall. Even sudden changes in your background can make a reader disoriented and stop reading on any further.
Too much white space has the same problem: they cast a reader adrift so to speak and make them think that there’s nothing further to be gained here and so he or she hits the address bar and goes somewhere else. Make sure that you are carrying your reader from beginning to end before letting them go.
- Make the Critical Stuff Obvious
Navigation links, transaction buttons and things like that should be near the top of the page as well as natural places like the bottom. People don’t like to scroll through a huge amount of information in order to get where they need to go. A traditional setting is to have the navigation bar on the side and then the transaction button on the top and bottom. But you can set things up however you like, so long as it’s easy for your readers to use.
landing page optimization 600×426 The Principles Behind Successful Landing Page Layouts
- Animation Damnation
While animation in its place is fun and interesting, it probably has no place in a landing page. Animations are just plain irritating: they slow down loading time, they cause crashes and they are distracting. Instead of putting in animation, put in an option for animation should the reader choose and only if it will be of any use to illustrate your point. Flash technology falls in the same category. Save the funky animations for your flash banner ads or for later in your site as an optional thing for your readers.
If you absolutely love the idea of animation, make sure it all loads swiftly and is small and discreet instead of being in one’s face.
- Color Connection
It is universally known among artists and graphic designers that one can touch a person with color. The wrong color scheme puts people off, the right color scheme bring them in. For your landing page, it is important to choose the appropriate coloring and palette for you.
Avoid bright colours and patterned backgrounds because they are hard to read
Use common sense when it comes to color
Text background should be extremely light in color so that the text is easy to read
Colour text should be avoided or used sparingly and hyperlinks should have a distinct color again (usually blue)
Your color scheme should be consistent, professional and match your product or services; remember, color is as much a part of your branding as your logo.
Your color scheme should be able to both convey your company’s personality and at the same time, be welcoming and easy to navigate for your reader. It’s not easy and takes some practice, but you can pull it off.
- Connect Your Images with Your Visitor
Images are a tricky thing to add to your landing page. On the one hand, they can be a great visual aid for your message (hey, a picture is worth a thousand words!) On the other hand, they can be terribly distracting. If you want to add images to your landing page, keep the following in mind:
Your images should be relevant to your content
Your images should show off your products in their best light
Your images could show off normal looking people
Any images better be neatly cropped and a very clear composition
You should avoid the following in your images if you want to keep people in your site:
Fake, contrived, slick or staged images
Stock graphics that are unrelated to your content. (stock graphics that are related are fine)
Overly bright and flashy images which look more like advertisements than support
If you’re going to choose any images at all and you can pull it off, pictures of people are a good idea. When a visitor sees a picture of a person, they are hardwired to look at the picture and then the thought ‘I want to be like that person’ creeps in unbidden and it can be easier to get a conversion and a customer out of it.
The layout of your landing page, with things like graphics, navigation and color scheme are all incredibly important. This is the stuff that will subconsciously attract or repulse a person even before you start talking to them about your products and services. With that in mind, it’s very important to take the time to make your landing page visually appealing and easy to move around so that your browsers will actually enjoy being there and be more likely to buy from you.