As the famous saying goes: “Less is more.” The cluttered look is out. Simplicity is in, providing elegance and producing a type of zen experience for the user, along with a chance for businesses to spotlight key points and elements. But how much is too much for today’s landing page? Let’s take a look at how businesses can marry clean and simple design with an effective landing page that still delivers.
Keep it Simple
As tempting as it is to post every piece of minutia about your product or service, this plan tends to backfire. People normally shut down after experiencing information overload, which is why the new Zen trend of simplicity is so popular. You need to engage your customer within seconds of landing on the page, and a ton of text packed between a mash of graphics won’t do it. Instead, you need to put a micro-focus on your produce or service’s strongest points. And you can do this in a few simple steps:
1) Know your visitors
This may be online sales conversion 101, but not all businesses follow this basic rule. It all comes down to analyzing metrics, properly using and integrating social media (see past posts for more tips!), and then optimizing your landing page-not to mention your
entire site-to speak to your visitors, anticipate their needs and engage them.
2) Balance your elements
Don’t fear white space. Instead, use it to help you distribute and balance your text and images more effectively. Even-spacing between your elements will present a page that’s calming to your visitor’s eye. A calm atmosphere leads to a trusting atmosphere, which will hold your visitors’ attention-and then they’ll actually start to focus on your main elements.
3) Capitalize on all your elements
Don’t rely on thick blocks of text to drive home all your selling points. Use a few bullets to make strong points that count. Infographics are a popular element that marriages images and text, which saves space and keeps things clean. A picture can also speak a thousand words, and videos always create powerful, engaging content.
4) Deliver a relevant and consistent message
Of course, you need to present persuasive, relevant and engaging content on your landing page and provide a clear call to action. Just like a salesman, your landing page has to be convincing. Use all your elements to drive home your message. You can lead in a customer with a few powerful illustrations/graphics and fully engage him with an information-packed video and a few lines of effective text. Be relevant and consistent, and your customers will get the message without having to wade through a lot of unneeded clutter to find it.
Creating a minimalist landing page really isn’t a challenge. Keep it simple. Incorporate all the mentioned elements-but use them sparingly and make each one count-and you’ll have all the pieces you need to create a great landing page that sells.
I’m a big fan of minimalistic design. With the right amount of space, good layout and direct approach for the message you want to convey, you’ll earn more leads in no time.
More designers need to read this article. 🙂 I’m a huge fan of minimalist design as well. I get a headache from all the overly designed stuff out there. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. If we remember to incorporate certain considerations like the ones you discussed, less is truly more.
Hi Jared,
Simple and elegant web designs are the way to go. I recently switched to a simplistic wordpress template on one of my website and the bounce rate dropped by 15%. I will now star focusing more on visitors journey rather than advertising my company information to him.
So much to say in so little space! This is an area I need to work on for my redesign. I am not afraid of white space from a design perspective, but sometimes fall into the trap of thinking everything that can be said about my artwork must be.