Designing Landing Pages
A landing page is normally a standalone web page, created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after they click on a link in an email, or ads from Google, Bing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or similar places on the web.
Unlike web pages, which typically have many goals and encourage exploration, landing pages are designed with a single focus or goal, known as a call to action (or CTA, for short).
We’ll take look at the anatomy of a landing page, and we’ll look at the building blocks of a successful one.
The five must have landing page elements
What is it about your product or service that sets it apart from the competition? You need to communicate this in a succinct way on your landing page. Try to break down your offering to its most basic level, to describe the specific benefit your customers will get by choosing your product/service.
A classic example comes from Domino’s Pizza: “You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less — or it’s free.”
A well crafted USP sets clear expectations for your customers and allows them to understand why they should care.
The USP can be broken down into four page elements, which collectively tell the story of your offering throughout the landing page:
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- The main headline: the Domino’s example above is a perfect illustration of a page headline.
- The supporting headline: Sometimes you will need a secondary headline (typically smaller in size) that provides some clarification about the primary headline. Most commonly, this is used to allow the primary headline to be very short and punchy.
- The reinforcement statement
- The closing argument
The adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true in the short attention span world of the landing page. The hero shot is the visual representation of your offer and can help people to gain a better understanding of what it is or what it looks like. For maximum effect it should show context of use. This means showing rather than telling how it will be used by a customer.
The idea here is to get your customers to empathize and place themselves in a scenario where they are using it. There are many ways in which to achieve this, including:
- Photo(s): Consider an example of a collapsible step ladder. A standard white-background photo of the item would work for the hero shot, but to add extra effect you could provide supplementary photos of someone unfolding it, using it to reach somewhere high, and placing it neatly into a small cupboard afterward.
- Video: While the camera never lies, video is an even more compelling way to showcase your product. Think of the common Shamwow and Slapchop infocommercials. While cheesy, they impart a sense of need by illustrating direct benefits to everyday life.
- A bullet point list summary of benefits
- Benefit and features in detail
I’ll have what she’s having
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