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Your landing page is probably one of the most important elements of your site, and yet often the most overlooked. A well designed landing page will be the decider on whether a customer engages with your site of bounces off within seconds, so it’s important to get it right! Remember, this is your online shop window, it’s the first thing your customer will see and it needs to give a professional representation of your product/service. First impressions count.
It’s all very well to have a page that looks ‘pretty’, but if it’s not driving customer engagement then it’s as good as buying a cheap tie that looks great until it falls apart the next day. Your customers might be impressed for a few minutes, but if you don’t give them a reason to stay then they won’t; you need to give them direction in order to drive conversion, which is why ‘conversion centered design’ crucial.
Firstly, you need to establish a clear USP (unique selling point) for your product or service, which I’m sure you’ve already done. Once you have this, you can use the landing page to focus everything towards a singular call to action (CTA), e.g. getting the customer to sign up to your newsletter or to make a purchase. You then need to design your page so that it directs the customer straight to this CTA, whether it’s through color contrast, graphics or more explicit directions.
When it comes to content, it’s time to throw away the essay style copy and narrow it down to simple and easy to ready bullet points – with clear, concise and punchy headlines to draw the reader in. Simplicity is what you’re aiming for, but with substance.
Once you have the landing page nailed down, don’t forget to test, test, test. Run A/B tests and change images, graphics and call-to-actions to see what resonates best with your users.
So there you go; a lesson in how to have both style and substance for your online store. Let us know how you get on!