StanShinn.com » Landing Pages

5 Factors for High Performing Landing Pages

Stan Shinn — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:12:40 +0000

Marketing Experiments Journal has made a number of A/B tests on landing pages. They found that landing page performance can be improved by the following principles.

First off, what is a landing page? By this, we’re not talking about a ‘homepage’ or main product page on your web site which people may randomly navigate to. Landing pages is a special term that refers to the pages people land on after clicking ads or search result link.

Designing a winning landing page should take the following points into consideration:

One Objective

Focus on one objective for each page and drive everything on the page to that single objective — usually an button with a clear call to action such as an “Apply Now” button.

Vertical Flow with a Single Column

Use a vertical flow through the center of the page, usually with a single column:

Sales pages should use a vertical flow through the center of the page. For commercial offer pages, vertical single-column body copy through the center of the page consistently performs better than other layouts and should always be tested. Left or right columns should be used to support movement toward the objective such as testimonials (to reduce anxiety at clicking the Order button). Source

Eliminate Distractions

You should eliminate elements that may distract eye path from the flow toward the objective. This means you should remove page elements such as photos and graphic images that do not drive the user towards the page’s call to action.

Use Eye-Catching Visuals

Use visual elements to draw attention toward the call to action. Visual elements can include size, motion, color, position, and shape.

Remove Off-Page Links

Avoid use of off-page links. Why?

Once visitors have left the page, their forward momentum is interrupted and must be re-established even if they do return.

How do you get around this?

Use passive pop-ups or launch new browser windows when needed to provide details or supplemental decision information. Source

Read more about landing page design techniques at Landing Page Confusion-How Does Having More Than One Objective to a Page Affect its Performance?

A/B and Multivariate Testing

Stan Shinn — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:17:43 +0000

I ran across this nice summary explaining the differences between A/B and Multivariate Testing:

A/B testing is trying 2 (or more) versions of a page component like a headline, image, button, etc. and seeing which one leads to the best increase in desired visitor behavior.

Multivariate testing is trying 2 (or more) versions of multiple page components at the same time - e.g. 2 headlines 3 images 5 buttons, etc. It’s like running multiple A/B tests simultaneously.

A/B testing is a good way to have a simple “bake off” to decide which version is more effective towards a visitor goal like a purchase/conversion, lead submittal, registration, etc. It’s also a good way to get started with testing before advancing to more complicated methods (and it’s far better than not doing any testing at all!)

Multivariate testing tells you not only which versions of each component are “best”, but reveals which components are more or less influencial towards one or more visitor goal. It tells you, for example, that a range of versions of the homepage image accounts for /- 30% in click-through to the next page, whereas the range of versions of headline accounts for only /- 4% in click-throughs (Why do you care? Next test you run you shouldn’t bother with the headline… just focus on the image since it is more influential!)

You can roll your own A/B testing using homegrown software, and there are also several free/low cost PHP/ASP scripts that can do the job and get you up & running.

Tools and services that allow you to do A/B and Multivariate testing include:

Read more about this topic at this forum discussion.

Landing Page Design Tradeoffs

Stan Shinn — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:39:58 +0000

This great article on user interface design highlights many of the design considerations one must consider when building an optimized web site. These principles are particularly applicable to landing page design, where the page layout is critical to driving conversion rates. Here is a table summary Digital Web Magazine’s writeup of design tradeoffs one must consider.

Design	Benefit	Cost
Shallow information architecture	Fewer clicks to find info	More clutter
Deep information architecture	Clean, reduced clutter	More clicks to find info
Small font	More information per screen	More difficult to read for some users
Large font	Easier to read	Less information per screen
Drop-down box	Selection amongst many choices using limited space	Hidden choices
Radio buttons	See all selections at all times	Additional space required, clutter
Icons	Quick recognition once learned, aesthetically pleasing	Must be learned
Text links	Always understood	Must be read, do not stand out as actionable items as much from other text
Abbreviations	Save space	Must learn or recognize
Full text	Easily understood	Requires additional space
Keyboard shortcuts	High speed of data entry	Must be learned
Point and click	Intuitive	Additional time required for interaction due to increase motor skills required

Read article at Digital Web Magazine

Creating Landing Pages with Wordpress

Stan Shinn — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 17:32:21 +0000

A how-to on using WordPress to create microsites:

Landing sites are well known from the eCommerce world - ever experience you searched google for »cheap colgate toothpaste« and found an online reseller, and the site you landed on from google was exactly about colgate toothpaste? What if we grabbed the google search string from the visitor, and made the front page listing a mix of related posts to what he searched for and the newest posts?