Landing Pages are Packaging
ion on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 08:49AM Retail packaged goods convert a fleeting moment of attention into a hand reaching out to a shelf to pickup a product. Package designers promote key facts to prominence based on the target and the context in which the package will compete. Successful packaging is simple, clear and strong. It’s a distillation of the essence of the product inside.
Clicking on a paid-search ad is much like that fleeting moment of shelf attention. Landing pages must be simple, clear and strong distillations of their products in order to convert that moment into a reach out to the shelf. Then they can do a some heavier lifting (think back of the box) to reinforce the package and get a commitment out of the respondent.
Single-Pages are One Dimensional
Single-page landing experiences are like one-dimensional packages. What if a box had only a front? No sides, no back, just a front. Everything would have to go there. You’d have the headline, callouts, nifty imagery, ingredients, nutritional information, legalese, you name it — it would all be right there on the front.
That’s ridiculous, right? Why would you put everything on the front? People don’t want all that stuff (at once). You need to get their attention and then let them get only as much detail as they want. If you force it all down their throats on the front of the box, you’ll never compete against the simple, clear, strong box fronts that rule the aisle.
Conversion Paths as Boxes
Conversion paths are three-dimensional packages. They let us promote the best of the best up to the first page (the front of the box, if you will). And they also let us have sides and a back to give more detail. And they give us the critical benefit of being able to segment our respondents so that the sides and back of the box are more specific to their wants, needs or pains. They’re like packages that personalize themselves for the people that reach out.
3-D Landing Experiences
Landing experiences need to be 3-D. Anything else is equal to cramming everything on the front of the box.
Landing Pages, conversions, retail in Strategy 
Reader Comments (3)
So how would a company like Apple, who garners wide acclaim for their packaging, fit into this model considering how simple their packaging is?
The video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-586467418825830089&q=ipod+microsoft&pl=true provides a visual of some of Apple's packaging.
Robert,
That video just had me laughing out load in my office. Hilarious! Thank you.
Yes, under normal circumstances, you would think that Apple would keenly understand the idea of 3-D landing experiences (and the implied value of page-one simplicity). Ironically enough, I've interacted with many an Apple landing page and they've been universally underwhelming. Even more distressing is the fact that they deep link quite often -- eschewing a message-specific landing in favor of the ease of a fuzzy, topic-related page in their site.
If a brand of that stature is neglecting their critical first impressions, it's not surprising that much of the rest of the world is even worse off.
Thanks for reading (and please send more videos)!
Thank you very much for your informative post...........