Landing pages are one of the most important parts of any marketing funnel due to the fact that all warm leads who have consumed your marketing materials (who you don’t know yet) provide you with their contact details. This is the official point of convergence where you get the know-how of your prospects, and your sales process begins. Thus, landing pages need to follow a comprehensive set of best practices and also be in line with both the traffic source and marketing intent. To help our readers design high converting landing pages, I have curated a list of 7 rising trends in landing page design. Also, remember that you would need to maintain the design consistency in your Mailchimp/Adobe templates to ensure that your new email subscribers don’t find your brand unrecognizable. Let’s get started:
#1 Don’t Shy Away From Comparisons
One of the key drivers of any buyer’s journey is to compare two or more identical products just before making the purchase. This doesn’t need to be an apple to apple comparison- instead, it needs to give the visitor a perspective regarding why their needs will be fulfilled better by your solution. As visible in the below example from Asana, you can notice that the comparison isn’t displayed right away. Instead, they took the opportunity to market their own product in most of the screen real estate, and the visitors would need to click on the CTA button to go through the comparison:
#2 Write Copyright Worthy Copy
No matter which industry you are into, having an impeccable copy on your landing pages is non-negotiable. The landing page must reflect your brand, the values you hold, your reason to be in the business, and most importantly, it must tell the visitor how you value your customers. In the below example from Cadbury, you can see a fine blend of all these aspects, and they even went the extra mile. They asked the visitors to fill in the blank part of their product copy, giving them a very powerful reason to engage- unleashing their creativity and owning a Cadbury made by themselves! See if this piece of fine copy inspires your next mind-boggling landing page:
#3 Harness Power Of Videos
At times, words can’t do enough justice to what you may have to say, and even using pictures (which equal 1000 words each) may not suffice. That’s exactly where videos kick in to make your landing pages relevant and engagement worthy, and this tactic also increases your web page dwell time to a large extent. Given the fact that videos reduce the content consumption difficulty to a great extent, you must use them in case you need to simplify your content or if you have something stellar to show.
#4 Try Minimalist, Brand Centric, Conversion-Focused Designs
Clutter is arguably one of the most disastrous enemies of landing page design, so you must minimize the use of elements as much as possible. On top of that, you might also want to limit the use of colors or even stick to only your brand colors to ensure that you get considerable brand recognition. Also, it is beneficial to keep the landing page design simple in terms of answering the visitor’s questions. As shown in the below example from Coinbase, the use of minimalist, brand-first, and conversational landing page designs help give you a professional yet fun appeal:
#5 Utilize Social Proof
As time passes, social proof is becoming even more necessary given the fact that fragmented information on the web is only booming. Having trust markers such as logos of famous brands on your landing page increase the odds of conversion as your brand is able to benefit from your audience’s trust in the respective famous brands, as seen in the below example from Slack:
#6 Put Your Best Deals On Offer
Landing pages are where people land after agreeing to whatever you have to say- now it’s time to give them an offer that they simply cannot say no to. NordVPN did the same by extending an amazing offer (60% off) which can play the ice breaker for a majority of its target audience. Thus, you, too, need to ensure that your landing page offers to put your brand in the desirable + affordable spot for most of your prospects.
#7 Say No To Navigation Links
Removing navigation links can improve your conversion rate by a significant margin. Yes, you heard it right: Navigation links can be distracting, and you might want to do away with them. However, this worked well for HubSpot, but it may not necessarily be the case for you, so make sure you do your fair share of A/B Split tests before you permanently remove the navigation links on the header and footer of your landing pages.
Wrap Up
Just like designing great Adobe templates, designing awesome landing pages is all about having a clear vision. All of the design inspirations we just went through had a very specific target, and none of them went over the board. If you, too, are looking forward to creating beautiful landing pages, make sure to include any one of these trends, and even if you plan to combine them, maintain clarity on the purpose of publishing your landing page and whether what your visitors can expect from it.
Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.