The 7 Sins Of Landing Page Design

I was watching Tim Ash’s webinar this week entitled “7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design”. It is simultaneously one of the most terrifying and one of the most illuminating lectures I have attended. It’s terrifying because he does a great job of identifying the many traps that people fall into when building out a landing page. But it’s also Illuminating because, unlike other optimization scaremongers, Ash offers tips for redemption for each of the deadly sins he identifies.

I will add the video to the end of this post but with respect to Tim, here are my high level take aways.

Sin 1: Unclear Call To Action

Redemption: Make your Call To Action clear. Ash makes it seem so obvious. You have to know what you want your site visitor to do and then remove the clutter that stops them from doing it.

Sin 2: Too Many Choices

Redemption: Focus, focus, focus. Ash suggests using visual shortcuts to reduce the need for confusing choice-filled text.

Sin 3: Asking For Too Much Information

Redemption: This is all about people dropping out when it’s time for them to fill in a form. Ash asks the key question, “Is this information absolutely necessary to complete the current transaction?” If the answer is “No”, you need to set the question aside at least until later.

Sin 4: Too Much Text

Redemption: Keep it short and sweet. Front load your text with all the good stuff and never use a full sentence when a set of bullets will suffice. The best advice here is to be a ruthless editor of your own work. This is one of the hardest disciplines to master, but well worth learning.

Sin 5: Not Keeping Your Promises

Redemption: Tell the truth, or at least synch up your ad copy with your landing page so that there are no unhappy surprises for your visitors.

Sin 6: Visual Distractions

Redemption: Make your images relevant, not gratuitous and make sure that they don’t obstruct the Call To Action.

Sin 7: Lack of Credibility & Trust

Redemption: Ash recommends that you remove anxiety by featuring well known trust symbols prominently and by drawing attention to clients with better-known brands to borrow their credibility.

There’s so much to take in here that I will be going over this video a few more times. Here is the original video for those of you who want to get the full impact of Tim Ash’s wise counsel.