Have you ever thought about how you can turn visitors to your site into genuine leads?
These leads could be generated through a sign up form, requesting a call back or even a user downloading content. Typically these all take place via a landing page.
Landing pages are considered to be one of the least effective ways of converting leads, however they statistically lead to a much higher conversion rate and therefore lowering your sites bounce rate.
In this post we will be taking a look into what the common practices of a landing page are and how UX Design is vital to helping you convert more effectively:
- Utilising Relevant Imagery
- Creating A Catchy Headline
- CTA’s
- Making It Mobile Friendly
- Supporting Evidence
- Asking For Too Much Information
- Clear Design
Utilising Relevant Imagery
Humans respond instinctively to what they can see and we can almost guarantee the first thing the user will interact with when landing on the page will be the hero image.
Potential leads will certainly be ‘Gone in 60 seconds’ (or less!) if you are using imagery that is not relevant to your brand or product. In truth, imagery is integral in keeping the users attention on your landing page.
We all have more trust and belief in something that we can see is real.
Utilising real people with real life products is a very effective way of helping the user to visualise what their life could be like with your product or service. Users also connect with positivity, so seeing an image which creates a positive vibe is also a powerful method of building the users belief that your offering is perfect for them.
Designers can often spend a large amount of time doctoring imagery to create the right feel and although it is not necessarily an interactive feature, your user will subconsciously interact with the image more than you think.
Imagine your product is these goggles. We don’t know about you but this kid makes us want them too.
Creating A Catchy Headline
Battling it out for top spot with the hero image will be an attention grabbing headline.
By highlighting the product/service you are offering or how it will benefit the user will ultimately lead to much better conversion rates.
Ensure that your headline is clear and offers complete transparency, so that users know what they are signing up for. Using very simple methods like bullet pointing your benefits can help a user to quickly make a decision, maintaining their attention on your page and finally getting that all important sign-up!
Creating a headline that is too generic can often lead the user to feeling confused and ultimately leaving your site and pushing up your bounce rate.
It is at this stage of the design process that teams of designers will often draft in marketing specialists to help with creating an effective and powerful narrative to support their creative output.
CTA’s
Despite the two previously mentioned features, arguably the most important component of the landing page is the Call to Action button. This is the primary button that you want your user to be interacting with. (once they’ve given you all the necessary details, of course!).
It is important that designers consider every aspect of the CTA, including its colour, size, language used on the CTA (and in the surrounding area) as well as the placement of the button on the page and its relationship with any image or colour used in the background behind the button.
By following the design fundamentals outlined above, we can be sure that the CTA is fully optimised which will ultimately lead to better conversion rates.
It is possible for designers and developers to test the CTA before pushing it live by making users take part in a very common testing method called, A/B testing.
A/B testing allows a designer to create multiple, different landing page solutions and test them against each other to see which one the user interacts with more and performs better. This allows the designer to continually refine the page design until they arrive at the desired results.
Making It Mobile Friendly
As we outlined in a previous blog, we are now spending more time on our mobile phones than ever before. So why wouldn’t you want to make your landing page suitable for mobile devices?
It is inevitable that a proportion of your target market group are probably going to land on your page whilst scrolling through Instagram or even commuting on the train (when we all eventually return back to the office!).
Part of our UX design process here at Lightbox is to start with the smallest entity (mobile or tablet) and design towards bigger screen resolutions. This ensures that our landing page designs are optimised for mobile which means we are catering for all users.
Supporting Evidence
Users love to hear about other people’s experience of a product or service. It can often be the deciding factor in making a decision, whether that be signing up or making a purchase.
By providing evidence and proof of how well your product or service has performed can go a long way, instilling reliability behind your brand and also building up the users confidence in you.
This can be achieved by creating testimonial blocks within the page design or by adding reputable sources like Trustpilot or Google Reviews. These are all very powerful ways of showcasing how great you and your product really are.
Asking For Too Much Information
It has been proven that by simply asking your user for too much information in the sign-up process can lead them to bounce from your site.
You will often find that most landing pages will require a name, email address and even a contact number. If a user does not understand why you are also asking for a job title and their company (unless it is relevant to your brand or product!), they will become disillusioned and end up leaving your site.
By requesting more information, this also increases the time needed for a user to sign up. Making life easier for the user is what all designers should be striving to achieve!
Clear Design
It wouldn’t be a design blog without reference to how something looks. Our last point relates to making sure that your landing page has a very clean design aesthetic. There is nothing worse than navigating to a landing page and not being able to find the relevant information because it is lost amongst unnecessary graphics or bad colour choices.
By using as much white space as you can around your content allows the user to focus on what is important.
As the famous German architect, Ludwig Mies van der rohe once said; “Less is more”.
Conclusion
Hopefully we have given you enough information and insight to understand why UX is so vital to successfully designing your next landing page.
UX Designers that follow the practices above can help to create more value for the products and services that are on offer, helping to improve conversion rates, lower that bounce rate and perform better than the competition.
If you are looking to implement the areas discussed in this blog onto your landing pages, you can get in touch with us here and speak with one of our UX Designers today.
