These success factors are a summary of our “Perfect Landing Page Article”:
ONE. Deliver RELEVANCE.
Unlike casual visits by browsers, visitors arrive on landing page with a directed goal or intention in mind. So the first thing you have to do is instantly show relevance to help visitors achieve that goal.
TWO. INTEGRATE with referral source(s). The customer journey to your web site started elsewhere. To deliver relevance also requires consistency with what they have already read and seen to meet their expectation.
THREE. Provide sufficient DETAIL to support the response decision. For us, one of the most important aspect of landing pages, and one that is often not right, is that there isn’t enough detailed information on which the visitor can decide to signup. To help determine the right-level of information, best practice is to use design personas to identify typical information required and the gap relative to what you deliver.
FOUR. Start the user on their journey. The design should make the next step clear and minimise the number of clicks required for response since every extra click required in response will generally reduce response by 10%.
FIVE. Use the right PAGE LENGTH. This is a difficult one to give guidelines on. The right copy / page length is one that minimises the knowledge gap between what the user want to know and what you tell them.
SIX. Use meaningful graphics. Graphics must be consistent with the campaign and generate empathy for the audience. Don’t understimate the importance of quality graphics – stock graphics rarely work.
SEVEN. Remove menu options? Another guideline that causes disagreement. Removing menu options will often increase conversion rate since less choice of where to click is offered, but for those who don’t respond will give a poor experience and prevent them browsing other parts of the site. Often a compromise is best with a reduction in menu options to top-level options only.
EIGHT. Consider using a “flowable” or liquid layout design. Also known as progressive enhancement, this maximises real estate at a given resolution - Amazon do this, Orange don’t.
Although this can work well for a retailer to show more products above the fold in a category, this is achieved with a loss of control of design. For landing pages, a controlled, fixed design will often work best.
NINE. Remember search marketing
There are three aspects to this. First an offline campaign will lead to people searching on your brand or the campaign strapline.
TEN. Remember the non-responders
Provide a choice for those who don’t respond despite your carefully crafted landing pages. Provide a reasonably prominent (trackable) phone number or perhaps a call-back/live chat option. Also provide some options for them to browse or search elsewhere on the site.
ELEVEN. TIMITI!
TIMITI is a term coined by Jim Sterne, founder of the Emetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit. It stands for Try It! Measure It! Tweak It! i.e. online content effectiveness should be reviewed and improved continuously rather than as a periodic or ad-hoc process.
TWELVE. Consider landing page longevity
Landing pages are often used for short-term campaigns. If so, you need to carefully manage when they and links to them from within the nav are expired.
