12 Traits of Successful Landing Page Design

There are landing pages and then there are landing pages – some succeed, some don’t. What differentiates yours from the ones that don’t? It’s simple – your landing page is meant for your visitor, who is your potential buyer. If your landing page is not designed to lure, captivate and retain this visitor’s interest for long enough to make a commitment, then it’s no good.

1. Simplicity
You have about 5 to 6 seconds in which you either grab your customer’s attention, or lose him or her forever. Keep your design simple by getting rid of unnecessary links, Ads, copy, design and navigational elements. Retain plenty of white space into the area which you want to be noticed first – your main offer and your CTA (Call To Action).

2. Smooth User Experience
Ensure fast load speeds; test all your transactional processes to know exactly what your customer will experience. If you find any hitch or slowdown in the information and payment processing and order fulfillment aspects, you need to fix them immediately. Use different, geographically displayed payment gateways to enable quicker transactions.

3. Attractive Design
While you need to keep your landing pages simple, by no means should they be dull or boring. An attractive page, well designed with the right colors, fonts and graphics will grab eyeballs. Make your content look good with the right fonts and colors, and use good-looking product images alongside your copy. Avoid using unnecessary design elements, even if they’re very attractive.

4. Great Product Search Feature
This is one aspect where many businesses fail – not providing a search feature. Even if your landing page gives all the product details a customer might want, do provide a strong, fast search feature. Your customer may want to check out products other than the one they came for.

5. Provide A Product Category Filter
Create a drop-down category list feature, along with a good filter so that people can easily get to the one they want. Also be sure to provide thumbnails of the products along with their names in your category index, and provide links to detailed product info in the category page, including impartial product reviews.

6. Stick To The Scent
Specifically target each landing page based on where your visitor is coming from, such as PPC Ads, search engine results and so on. It’s one thing to land on a different landing page, but if all links lead to your home page, then you’ve lost the game. Stick to the scent, and make sure that your visitor lands on a page which is relevant to their information source.

7. Effective Use Of Sidebar
Display various customer testimonials, customer product reviews and credibility statements from authority sites on your sidebar. Avoid placing links in your sidebar – you don’t want the visitor to move away from the landing page. Use the sidebar also to indicate the number of people who’ve purchased the product featured on the page.

8. Un-clutter Your Header And Footer
Be sure your header and footer are free of unnecessary buttons, links or useless statements that don’t serve your landing page’s objective. You can provide links to your Terms and Conditions, Security Policy and Privacy Policy if you like.

9. Consistency In Design
Make sure that the copy, images, color and design elements you use in your landing page reflect what’s been used in your Ad or email newsletter source. This kind of consistency builds credibility, as customers see you as a company that cares about attention to detail. Plus, repeating the same design elements and text is a way of reinforcing your message and reassuring your visitor.

10. Attention-Grabbing Action Buttons
Whatever colors you use for your text and headlines, make sure your action buttons stand out. For example, if your text elements are in black and your header is bright navy, let your CTA button be a bright orange, maroon or green. So whether your button is Order Now, Add to Cart or Buy Now, make sure even the most shortsighted person can spot it.

11. Social Proofs
Use various social media widgets to display social proofs. Customers always want to know how popular you are on social media and putting up a running tweet window helps. You can also use a widget to keep a running count of Facebook Likes as well.

12. Smooth Eye Flow
Your landing page template should have a place for your headline, then the copy, your offer and then your CTA. This creates a smooth eye flow, with a beginning and an end, and determines the visual hierarchy of your page elements. Direct the visitor’s eye towards your CTA using bold arrows. Grab attention for important elements by putting them in bold colors on a pale background. Avoid integrating anything in the middle that might distract your customer from the offer and the CTA.

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Article by Stephen of invesp, a conversion optimization company that specializes in offering customized landing page designing and e-commerce optimization solutions. Post from: SiteProNews