The key to success for any online business starts with the landing page. A good landing page has the potential of converting casual visitors to purchasing customers.
It takes users a very short time, 1/20th to 1/50th of a second, to judge the aesthetics of a website and predict its functionality. This is as per the findings of a 2012-based collaborative research between University of Basel and Google.
Some websites have incredible landing page designs, while others unknowingly make a mockery of themselves. If you are looking for inspiration for your landing page, you can try Crayon Inspire. On close analysis of the videos, text, colors and structure of the top 1,000 landing pages of last year, it has become obvious that some designs work better than others. We are here to study exactly that.
The beauty of the Internet is that there is enough room to be daring in your landing page design. In other words, you don’t have to stick to laid-down norms or lame rules. If you want to outwit your competitors, the following landing page designs are trending – and it is important to know them.
1. Content marketing is still very much in vogue
The logic that content marketing is a dying field is not applicable, and this has been gaining an audience. This logic does not hold true, and the analysis of the top trending landing pages proves it. Content marketing is gaining more ground than ever, likewise the extent of its content. Compared to earlier times, content marketing has grown in importance, with details winning over limited matter.
The average word count in these web pages is 2,106 words. This equals the length of a post on a highly informative and substantial blog. It is not clear if it’s down to SEO strategy, or any other marketing technique aimed at leads conversion. The clear thing is that more text content on the landing page is required to garner visitor attention.
2. Successful landing pages have a single goal
Many successful designers like Shar Biggers, founder of New York-based PROVOKE, and others agree a landing page should have one goal. The goal of a landing page design should be the first issue addressed, before copywriting and sharing inspiration through content.
The design of the landing page should tally with your intent. Figuring this out is not as straightforward as it sounds. It often hinges on the answer you provide for the following questions: do you want to acquire user data? Is your aim to convert a sale? Or do you want to introduce a new brand? There are some who may want to do all of the previously mentioned. But, whatever your answer may be, it must come into consideration in the design of your landing page.
3. Marketers use landing page in a different way
For marketers, a landing page is kept short and enticing when it is designed. There are a lot of short landing pages, but 45 percent of 'sign up' pages have below five hundred words.
In most cases, the attention ratio of a landing page is 1:1. Attention ratio is calculated as the ratio of possibilities available to a user as to what they should do. For a successful marketing campaign, this is one. That is, out of the list of available options, the user is expected to do only one thing.
Transactional pages try as much as possible to cut down the number of distractions so that the user can focus on finishing the 'sign up' process. This is what you will observe on websites like Spotify. Check it out now and get one step closer to making an interesting landing page for your website!
4. Video on a landing page is dicey
Only a few companies, about 14 percent, are willing to include videos on their landing pages. This means there is still room for companies to experiment with multimedia on their landing pages.
There are a few problems with including multimedia on a landing page. The first is that it makes the landing page heavy. Your landing page takes a longer time to load and this can cost you your audience. The statistics from Kissmetrics shows that 47 percent of consumers expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less. 40 percent of the remaining others will abandon the website outright if it goes beyond 3 seconds in loading. The second problem is that it is often difficult to make the multimedia complementary than distract the flow of ideas and conversation on the page.
5. Avoid too many colors on your website
The more colors, the less the attention it grabs. Neutral colors are still performing incredibly well compared to websites that are laden with colors. 41 percent of the top-ranking designs still make use of gray or black. 35 percent of the remaining uses a combination of the classic blue-and-green color scheme.
There is a possibility that companies have observed more conversation on their websites when they use neutral colors. But, sometimes, bold designs are necessary when companies want to separate their brands from the crowd. Neutral colors are traditional and offer less distraction than other color schemes. This may account for their better performance.
6. Information hierarchy is an important ingredient
How will you feel when you discover that all the wonderful content left on your landing page is not read? A research showed that 79 percent of web users don’t read the page but scan through them. The more obscure your landing page is, the more difficult it will be for you to achieve the desired result. Don’t make the user struggle to find the matter or the conversation rate will plunge downward.
Use information hierarchy to order the elements on your website's landing page. The most important details should not only be at the top, but express visual dominance. The elements should flow naturally and connect to each other.
One way to judge a good landing page is to look at the really bad ones - it gives you perspective. You can find nine of them on Unbounce.com – where bad landing pages have been extensively talked about.
7. Test your landing page consistently
There are several ways you can test a landing page – as well as many elements to be tested. One of them is to take the ‘Squint Test’. To carry out the squint test, squint at the page for clarity, or apply Gaussian Blur on a screenshot of the page and observe the clarity. Check if the important elements stand out. Evaluate if they would be enough to properly interpret the page and so on.
Landing page testing is mostly a routine carried out during website design. The mistake many websites make is that they think the result obtained during this test covers their tracks for life. Landing page design testing should be carried out from time to time. This will help you to decipher if and when it is time to remodel your landing page, based on changing times.
Findings reveal that only 11 percent of landing pages were redesigned last year. Marketers can only get better results from landing pages if they carry out routine testing on the contents and designs.
The highlights of the landing page report have a lot to tell to those intending to create a website. One of the take-home lessons is that there is lot of room for new tests, as well as content variation and integration into bold designs.
Clarity of message is very important too. If you have appealing messages, there is a strong chance you will leave a lasting impression on the visitor, and will make them want to come back. Otherwise, you end up losing your audience and lowering your overall viewership numbers. This is very important because a user can easily get lost in the sea of Google search. You can download the full report of landing page trends at Crayon’s blog.
Have you come across great landing page designs? What were your favourites - and which ones were complete disasters? Let us know in the comments below!
