The AntidoteDigital Marketing Resume and Portfolio of Alex Chernyak

First impressions can make or break new business opportunities. Those involved in e-commerce or for those who use the web to drive offline sales, well engineered landing pages are vital. For customers coming in contact with your business for the very first time, the design, layout, and navigation of your landing page can be the difference between a sale and a prompt exit. Contrast between a well built landing page and a poor one is comparable to real life salespeople . It’s a trust issue, and earning it is very important when transacting business online. A poorly designed landing page will not look like a safe place to enter your credit card number or provide other personal information, which results in lost leads and sales.

When thinking about user friendliness, consider this – if your website is a “supermarket” then the landing page should be a “convenience store”. Visitors should see everything right when they walk in. Odds are, they know exactly what they need and don’t want to spend extra time searching for it. Whatever action you want them to take on the, make it as easy as possible. Make it so easy it doesn’t require thought.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when building a landing page:

1. Screen resolution differs from desktop monitor to laptop. Try to keep your most important content, such as the call to action, higher up on the page so everything is visible without having to scroll.

2. If doing data capture, listing a phone number, or have social media connect buttons – don’t place them at the bottom of the page. Make all important, actionable, functions be the first thing a user sees.

3. Ad Copy Relevancy – if the ad copy mentions a discount, the landing page should as well. So simple, yet sometimes overlooked. This is why AdWords ads have a quality score. Apply the same strategy to your display banners, newsletters, e-blasts, and even offline ads.

4. Text – take what you have and cut it in half. Then take what’s left and cut it in half again. Keep in mind the “convenience store” analogy. Users aren’t coming in to sit down and read a novel.  Make the page self-evident.

5. Good Example – Netflix.

There are plenty of other factors to discuss when it comes to landing page design and usability. I’ll try to do a follow up post in the near future.