A 7 Step Guide Toward Quality Landing Pages – Part 2

On Wednesday we gave you steps 1 and 3 in creating a kick butt landing page; and today we’re going to provide you with a couple more tips that will help you make that ever so important first impression really count.

Without further adieu then, here are steps 5 and 7:

5. Checkout Simplicity - Imagine entering a grocery store to buy milk, and upon grabbing a gallon or two, you realize that in order to make the purchase you have to crawl through a complex series of mazes back to the checkout counter.

Realistically such a scenario is quite unlikely, but in the online world too many merchants are guilty of putting their virtual customers through similar mazes. Online shopping became popular because it provided people with the ability to make quick, painfree purchases. Therefore, simplicity and ease in the checkout process is an essential quality to ensure the customer’s likelihood of completing the purchase .

Simple checkouts are such a key in the online shopping world in fact that internet retailer leader Amazon tried to patent their “1-Click” purchase system.

And while you don’t necessarily need to have a patent-pending checkout system, it should be immediately clear upon entering your site how one can make a purchase; and from there require as few steps from the initial visit, to the final confirmation page as possible.

7. Condense all important details - The art of selling newspapers has been perfected over the last several turns of the centuries, and one principle that has remained since then is the idea of consolidating the latest, most intriguing headline and image to the center and top half of the page (or the fold) in order to grab the attention of a potential purchaser.

Using this idea then, merchants should supply users with the most pertinent information regarding their product toward the top where a viewers eyes will most likely to be focused. The most important things that a customer will look for initially will be: the product title, its price, an image, and a method to make the purchase.

To illustrate putting these ideas put to good use, below is an example of how one of our merchants, a top 300 internet retailer Stacks and Stacks, has their landing page set up, with the numbers correlating to what’s been discussed so far (click to enlarge):

In essence then, we like to stress the importance of simplicity and user-friendliness when it comes to landing pages. You certainly don’t want to scare off or overwhelm potential buyers with too much, but rather walk the fine line between excess and being informative.

See you on the engines.

-Tien