What Makes a Great Landing Page?

Explore the design process behind some great landing page examples with Bristol-based UI and UX designer, Simon McCade.

Business-Critical

It’s more business-critical than ever to have a landing page that captures the attention of your visitors before they head for the dreaded ‘Back’ button. Thankfully, though, the design process of a great landing page can be much more informed and calculated than ever before — the trick is in figuring out what core elements are required to achieve that all-important cut-through.

Nobody likes to hang around. If you don’t give your site visitors what they want or, indeed, explain what you think they should want within a matter of seconds, they’ll be off to find a better alternative. Translation: you lose sales.

If it’s an all-too-familiar pain-point for you that people are doing more bouncing than converting, here’s where you discover what your landing page(s) could be missing and, of course, what you can do to put that right.

Here are the principles that should be at the core of any landing page, whether it’s for a plucky B2C startup going through a launch or an established B2B giant going through a revamp:

A Straightforward Value Proposition

Put simply, if a user has to work hard to understand what it is you’re offering them, they’re not going to work hard to give you their time or money. The benefits of the features must be immediately clear and this can be really bolstered by great design.

If a user has to work hard to understand what it is you’re offering them, they’re not going to work hard to give you their time or money

Take Headspace, for example. The popular app’s landing page is not only visually striking, but it also makes it clear as day what it’s all about. It eases the visitor into the experience with tunnel vision — the header and subheader supplemented by two clear calls-to-action get the value proposition across in only 15 words. The impression of calmness and efficiency that this communicates is one of the reasons why it’s been downloaded over a million times.