23 Sep 08 11 Adwords Landing Page Design Tips
Inspiration point: Designing Adwords Landing Pages
David Lindop of Setfire Media offers 7 practical landing page tips. His tips are a mixture of ad copy and design. I’m not a copywriter so this post will focus primarily on the design aspect.
1. Add by subtraction: simplicity sells - Take a look at your landing page on an element by element basis and ask yourself “Which elements do not promote my call-to-action?” Then promptly remove those elements all together. Distractions are ROI killers. You don’t really need a side navigation that could very easily derail your potential customers.
2. Contrast Hierarchy - This is a design principle I’ve discovered over the past several years that I strongly believe in. Basically, take all the elements on the page and place them in an order of precidence. The most important element (call-to-action) should have the highest contrast while the less important elements should have the lowest contrast. I’m not suggesting that boilerplate content should be barely visible or that there should be noticable steps between the levels of precidence. I simply believe that your most important elements should have the highest contrast.
3. Warm/Cold Colors - I find this to be an very effective technique when it comes to drawing attention to your call-to-actions. It’s simple, if your design uses cool colors (blues/greens) then you should use warm colors in your money elements (reds/oranges). Likewise, if you have a warm design your important buttons should use cool colors.
4. Multiple call-to-actions - I wouldn’t go overboard cluttering the page with buttons and forms. Still, if you have a long sales pitch it is probably a good idea to embed appropriate call-to-actions at breaking points.
5. Testimonials - I mentioned earlier that it is a good idea to drop your sidenav. Testimonials work as excellent navigation alternatives. They keep users focused, they can add nice contrast in the design and most importantly they add credibility.
6. Keep it manageable - This principle applies to quite a few potential elements. In #5 I suggested replacing your nav with testimonials. One reason for this is you don’t usually want your text to span the entire width of the page. It’s true that a high volume of text can be read faster with wider columns but you run the risk of making the content appear daunting. Blocks of content should not be too wide or tall.
You also want to make sure your forms are manageable. Nobody wants to fill out 25 fields of personal data just to read your white paper.
Just keep things simple and continually ask yourself “Is this too much?” or “Could I get the same idea across in fewer words or by using simpler diagram?”
7. Use bullet points - Ok, so this idea could have been packaged into #6 but I think it is important enough to warrent its own bullet point. If you bulletize your content it makes it so much easier for users to scan through to pick up the info they want/need and ignore the rest. Be honest, have you read all of my bullets up until now?
8. Split test macro - I know you want to launch your landing page and immediately start testing every small detail but this can be a big mistake. Always A/B test large elements first before you start worrying about sub-elements. I highly suggest you start your testing with entirely different landing page versions.
9. Multivariate test micro - Once you have tested the large elements to get a general idea of what works and what doesn’t only then is it time to get your hands dirty. Feel free to test any micro element even if you don’t think an alternative will yield better results. You might be surprised at what you find.
10. Budget your testing - If you have a small advertising budget and you drive a low volume of traffic, it absolutely doesn’t make sense to run complicated MV tests. Just as a general rule of thumb, I would like to get a minimum of 10 conversions for every square in your MVT matrix. So if you have 2 headers and 2 call-to-actions that makes for 4 possible combinations and you want at least 40 conversions before moving to your next test iteration. The type of conversions you have impacts this. If you are selling high end products and driving a .05% conversion rate then you might want to be a little more liberal than a simple subscription conversion that is hitting at about 10%.
11. Test in iterations - You’re not going to hit the bulls eye on your first series of tests. Learn from your data and systematically make improvements until it becomes no longer cost effective to do so.
Reader's Comments
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This is the perfect compliment to my original article; I’m really impressed with this level of detail and understanding that can only come from experience in the field!
Great work
David
Thanks for the support. I haven’t even started promoting my site yet…(or designing) It looks like you are keeping a close eye on your logs
Anyway, I look forward to using your material as future inspiration points. Your ideas are very practical and your writing style is fluid.