What makes a great landing page?
Anna Talerico on Monday, June 29, 2009 at 03:46PM The big question we get a lot is, “What makes a great landing page?”. Actually the big question often comes in the form of a lot of little questions, like:
- What color should my button be?
- Should the form be on the right or the left?
- One column or two column form?
- How much copy?
- Do bullets work best?
- How long should the headline be?
- What layout always wins?
When marketers ask us these types of questions, we feel their pain. We all want a simple formula for magically high conversion rates. I know I would certainly like a formula like that! But there is no one thing that always works in ever case.
In fact, there is only one answer to any landing page question: Test It.
If you are running landing pages let Test It be your mantra.
We all know what makes a landing page great—it’s high conversion. So, while I can give you a running list of best practices and a barrage of ‘shoulds’, none of them really matter if they aren’t tested & proven in context. What works well for one campaign might not work well for another. What works well for email might not work as well for PPC. You get the drift….There are no hard and fast rules for landing pages. No one single thing that will always work.
There are benchmarks, there are guidelines, there are best practices. But there are no rules.
Don’t be afraid to color outside of the lines with your landing pages. Don’t hesitate to experiment. At the end of the day all that matters is what converts, and you will only know what is converting if you are testing.
So, the next time you find yourself wondering…black or blue? long or short? keyword insertion or static? form on the left or the right? Don’t wonder, just test it. Your users will tell you what works.
Landing Pages, PPC, conversions, keywords in Testing 
Reader Comments (4)
You couldn't be more correct. This concept is the life-blood of PPC. You pick your keywords and test them. You write two or three ad versions and test them against one another. You send traffic to different landing pages and test which is better. Until we have perfect demographic and psychographic information for our customers, this is how you determine the best messaging.
Robert, you are so right! Landing page testing needs to be as de facto as PPC ad testing!
* What color should my button be?
* Should the form be on the right or the left?
* One column or two column form?
* How much copy?
* Do bullets work best?
* How long should the headline be?
* What layout always wins?
These questions often appear.
This is a very nice guideline anyways..
What layout always win? This is one of the dominating questions running unto my mind.
I cant get off with the layout Designs. I am very concern to it.
There isn't one layout formula that works in every case. It's important to try different things. Generally clean, simple pages perform well.