Even the best content is worthless if it is poorly conveyed. When it comes to landing pages, as is the case of websites in general, optimal user friendliness (usability) is required. The user must be able to quickly get an overview and orientate themselves without any problems. The structure and design of the landing pages should inform the user and lead them to their target. If the page is too complex, the user might quickly lose interest. If they end up aborting the operation, the bounce rate will increase. Canceling pages before they’ve loaded and short retention times not only prevent conversions and leads, but also have a negative impact on search engine rankings. The most important information should, therefore, be compact and placed in single blocks on a page as well as being easily visible.
A good landing page isn’t an abstract work of art, but rather an appealing, clear, and purposeful page. The visual design is like good makeup: it’s relevant to the offer and is attractive, but is not too over the top. In terms of color and image composition, the design should support the content and not superimpose or distract from it. A matching color scheme should be nuanced, harmonious, and conform to corporate identity (CI). If the CI is rather conservative, the landing page should not be too boring. Artistic landing pages, on the other hand, must not be too chaotic or glary as this can confuse the user or deter them.
The style of the original ad (e.g. an advertisement banner) is typically also found on the landing page i.e. the color, font, and images. Optimizing for mobile devices means that your landing pages should have a responsive or adaptive design for smartphones and tablets. This way, you ensure that content is well displayed and can be used without any problems. This means that users can access the page when they’re out and about. This also improves the search engine ranking.
Arrange the content of your landing page sparingly so that what you’re offering is accessible without the user having to click on anything or search around a lot for it. 'White spaces' should be used to make the document look less crowded and to create an overview. Depending on how much information you want to include, it makes sense to place all essential content in the browser view so that the user doesn’t have to scroll at all. The perfect landing page follows a strict plan – it’s compact, quick, and clear:
- Introduction: logo, title, and brief introduction with representative image
- Product description: most important information, USPs (unique selling points), price, advantages, features
- Call to action with text and/or image
- References: testimonials, certificates, quality certificates
This isn’t just for optical reasons; too much data, high-resolution images, unnecessary plugins, and senseless additional features can also slow down the landing page’s loading time and cause error messages that will discourage customers from staying on the page. This makes it important for the performance of the landing page to adapt these regularly and to continue to optimize them with data analyses, A/B tests, and error checks. Only when you know which elements of the landing page customers are drawn towards, can you make them more efficient and profitable in the long run.