Landing page is the most important componenet of any interactive advertising campaign you run. If advertising is all about spreading the word, landing page is about converting those people who are interested in your message. So ignoring your landing page means loosing those customers, which no business can afford to happen.

So,what all things you need to take care when you design your landing page? Here are some points I dare to put together when somebody asked me to. And if you read through, you will realize that most of it is just commonsense. But hey, commonsense is something not so common these days.

Content Considerations:

• The headline and the copy should correspond to the ad that triggered the page. You will never know the people who have clicked on your ad has got the complete message you are trying to convey. If they don’t get it there, they should get it here.
• Keep the paragraphs no longer than three lines. Use bullet points whenever possible. The web users are quite reluctant to read.
• Key facts should be transparent. Avoid flowery prose.
• Reinforce credibility by providing testimonials, press, partners, visible customer support options etc.

Design Considerations:

• Call to action should be prominent and clear. And it should be within the first fold.
• Use lighter colors for text background. Make it easy to read.
• If you have a product image, try to use it in the left hand side. Users tend to see the images in a document first.
• Avoid any unneeded elements from the page. Distractions kill conversions.
• Make use of the eye-tracking map to place important elements.You can get a good idea about user eye-tracking and heat maps from Nielson Norman’s research page here.
• Make the links and click through very obvious. The user should know why they are clicking on a particular link. DO NOT trick them to click on a link.

Some other considerations:

• If you are requesting an action, have a proper thank you page which has some more action items. The thank you page visitors have already taken some action. You can expect more conversions from this page than the other pages.
• DO NOT use flash, video or other ‘plug in required’ components.
• If there is a “forward to friend” option (which is highly recommended), the mail should open with a proper subject line.

Let’s make it a bit more interesting. If you would like to discuss about a landing page you want to discuss about, do post it here. We will do the analysis. Let’s see if we can figure out a way to make most of the conversions.