Happy Monday (yeah I’m one day early this week), from Marseille!!
Have been in France for the last couple of days to watch the final football matches at the Olympics and it never ceases to amaze me how a few days off and getting some perspective brings inspiration and helps us see things more clearly and focus on what matters. Being surrounded by the amazing sports atmosphere of course helps a lot as well in that sense!?
Even though I’m a seasoned traveler with 30+ countries and (God!) 10+ years exploring different countries all over the world, you always end up downloading a new app, looking for a new service online or being targeted by well designed social media campaigns that impact you exactly as you need to buy something on these occasions. Be it booking transportation, hotels, tours, activities, restaurants or finding anything you’d like to buy or experiences you’d like to participate in, there’s always a new website you’re redirected to when in a new country or city.?
On that topic, I decided to talk today about what a landing page should be like - even though of course it depends on the final purpose if for customer acquisition/conversion or education or branding there’s always a few common steps and things to be aware of I believe should be common sense but always end up annoying me for the multiple times I see this not working well when I try all these different services for the first time or even once after a very long time.?
- If you’re designing a website, the first thing you need to know is what do you want the user accessing this to do? What is going to be your main CTA (Call to Action)? This should be visible and easily accessible from any parts of your website (especially on mobile!) as people make decisions in different stages. I get faced with so many websites where cookie policy banners take up the whole page, or other banners that were supposed to get you some information which isn’t usually useful show up covering everything else or that simply you need to scroll through the whole page or even navigate to many different tabs and menus until you get to the final button that will lead to what you need to do. Be aware, a lot of customers will need education on many different levels, but many others will want to do things as soon as possible and most importantly if your workflow is easy enough everyone will figure it out on the way. So please always keep your correct CTAs visible and accessible at all points.?
- Do speed and design need to always conflict? In my opinion, unless you have very good frontend developers who will go above and beyond to make even landing pages with a lot of animations and even API integrations as fast as a normal wordpress content only website they might. But in that case, always choose speed or have an MVP version of your website which always will load at least its main functionalities in slow connections.?
- Third-party integrations are always a point of friction especially if they are embedded on your landing page. If you require people to sign-in or retrieve information, make it easier for them either connecting with Google/Apple/Meta accounts or making it easier for them to receive authentication codes to login. Of course security is super important but if your website is so restrictive that people can’t end up logging in to proceed that’s very likely a problem you’ll need to sort at some point.?
- My last comment is for all small business owners over there! So many local offline services are so much better than online alternatives and I am sure - having an “offline” entrepreneur in the family - cost is always the first thing that comes to mind when you consider going online. However, two things I think you are probably failing to consider. Nowadays you can find a lot of inexpensive website creation tools where you can have a simple user conversion workflow to book a service and buy a ticket without having to have a dedicated tech team in-house. And most importantly you are probably not considering the revenue increase you’d get from people who just prefer to book online even because that’s easier for younger generations or because they don't speak the local language (having an English translated website is a must) and booking online is just their only viable alternatives. They end up missing out on so many local and better value overall experiences and most local entrepreneurs also lose out on getting way more volume traction than they are just because they don’t have a simple booking workflow online. Please consider doing this next if you have a small business.?
Hope everyone is finding some time to watch some of the amazing sports being played and also some days off this summer! I will follow-up on a post with the struggles of actually making a purchase online - if you ever get past the landing page - on the next post.?
Cheers and as always let me know about any feedback, comments, or anything else!!
