Landing Page Best Practices

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Landing Page Best Practices

by
Harry Bartlett

Picture from Inbound 2015
It has been over a week since the last day of Inbound 2015 and we are still on an inbound marketing high. I can’t possibly fit all of the Inbound awesomeness into one blog post, so this week we will look at the “Four Corners of Conversion”, a standout session by Oli Gardner, the co-founder of Unbounce.

As Oli points out, there is a lot of really bad marketing out there that we should not be subjecting our customers to. Instead, we need to delight our customers with exceptional experiences! So, how do we make everyone have the best possible experience? According to Oli, we must understand and properly employ the “Four Corners of Conversion” in landing page design. The four corners consist of Copy, Design, Interaction and Psychology.

Copy
Copy should always come before the design. Copy should inform the designer, not the other way around. So before you plan on creating a beautiful new website, you should always first decide on your final copy.

Another great copy tip is to switch your headline with your sub-headline. Usually, the headline is a throw-away attention grabber, while it is the sub-header that contains the most clarity. So write your header and your subheader and then make the flip!

Design
Design is all about attracting attention and removing distractions. In order to get more conversions on your page, remove all distractions and make the next step for visitors stand out. The object that stands out, or the “anomaly”, should draw the user’s attention. Another helpful hint -- avoid any distractions near the Call-to-Action button, as proximity of elements is extremely important!

Interaction
Every interaction should be delightful and honest, which means avoiding manipulation and bad interaction trends. It also means avoiding friction on the page, such as incomplete instructions, difficult captchas, and more. Creating a great interaction for users means doing usability testing, making sure the website is responsive and any errors are properly handled.

Psychology
Did you know that there is a difference between asking people to download “Your” free ebook vs. asking them to download “My” free ebook? Yes, there is psychology behind which words you should use in order to increase click through rates! According to Oli, all of these words matter and they effect the interactions and clicks on your website.

Here are a few helpful hints based on psychology:

  • Choose “Get MY Free eBook” rather than “Get YOUR Free eBook”

  • Choose “Click” rather than “Get”

  • Surprisingly enough, “FREE” can look deceiving to visitors, so consider de-emphasizing that

  • Captioning your visuals (videos/images) greatly improves views

  • Avoid “stop” words, for example, nobody likes to see negative words in close proximity to the Call-to-Action

Oli talked about plenty of interesting things involving conversions (did you know that your form fields work best with either 1 field option or 7?) that you can learn more about by visiting his website, unbounce.com.

Our team was so happy to partake in the 2015 Inbound Conference and we can’t wait until next year. Follow our experiences as we blog more about it over the next few weeks! If you need help with the landing pages on your website, just let us know and we can help!

 
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About the author

Harry started BI in 1998 and focuses on integrating best practices in branding, user experience design, Internet marketing, and technology to increase the value of an online presence.
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