Purpose
A landing page is a single web page that appears after clicking on a link or search result. It presents your offerings including your value proposition and provides some sort of call to action (social, time or financial investment) to allow users to express their interest. You can test how well your business idea and sales story will play on the market before officially launching them.
We list key elements of a basic landing page on the right. Get together in your team and prepare the content based on your research design. Don't forget to setup an ad campaign or other promotional campaigns to get traffic on your landing page and install tracking mechanisms to monitor user behavior if needed.
How to build landing pages
If you are technically savvy (HTML, CSS) or get support from prototyping engineers, ready made templates are a great way not to start from scratch. Existing services like ThemeForest offer many templates for landing pages that can be installed on your own webspace using your own domain or subdomain. They offer templates in different categories e.g. retail, technology, mobile and various designs, customizable to your needs. Choose a template that includes the best preview options for your product / service and everything you need to set up your call-to-action button or contact form. We recommend to choose a responsive template to save your time.
If you are not familiar with HTML and CSS, visual web-page builders like Wix or Launchrock allow you to setup your own landing page very quickly based on templates. They even allow you to integrate tracking mechanisms, contact forms or more sophisticated functions automatically but be aware that from our experience, these tools can kill your time when you want to change more than just text, pics and colors.
We prefer to use ready made templates that provide full flexibility and can be installed on your own webspace like described above. In order to be quick, it’s best to outsource the development of the landing page to developers that are familiar with the nature of Business Design projects. That allows you to focus on the content and the corresponding experimental setup.
Investments
Similar to customer investments when choosing the right experiment, there are "investments" when you are looking at user behavior on a landing page. Investments of users on a landing page show how committed they are. Make always sure you think of them when building landing pages (depending on you experiment).
Possible "investments" are:
| Data Point | Level of investment |
|---|---|
| User clicks "order now" button | ++++++++++ |
| User enters personal data | ++++++++++ |
| User enters his email (E.g. Newsletter) | ++++++++ |
| User contacts us via contact form or chat | ++++++ |
| User uses configurator | ++++++ |
User downloads info material | ++++ |
| User scrolls the page (scroll depth) | ++++ |
| User clicks "show more" button | +++ |
| User views teaser video | +++ |
Need support?
Yes, we build landing pages for your experiments.
Contact us: support@orangehills.com.
Usage Scenarios
- Explore antilogs from your Hypotheses & Experiments template
- Validate hypotheses from your Hypotheses & Experiments template
Instructions for Coaches
- For high resolution stock photos, you can use free websites like Pexels and Unsplash or alternatives like iStock and Shutterstock for payed content.
- Discuss in your team which colors best fit to your offering. Color palettes and gradients can be found on plenty websites, such as Adobe Color and UI Gradients. For color shading use Hex Color Tool.
- Think about it if it is better to present your offering on-brand or off-brand and prepare your landing page accordingly.
- Landing pages are a great way to conduct A/B tests in case you want to test two versions of your offering with different features, pricing, etc. (see Example: Fake Door Experiments with Landing Pages).
- Our prototyping engineers build landing pages in hours – not days! Please contact us if you need support.
Landing Page
| Example | Description | Best practices |
|---|---|---|
| CoverThe cover area is the most important part of our landing page. It's the first thing users will see when they visit your site. Within a couple of seconds a user will decide to stay and learn more about what you’re offering — or not. See "Brand & messages" and "Primary Target Group" in our Business Model | + If you do online ad campaigns to drive traffic to your landing page, make sure the headline corresponds to the text from your ads. + Make sure to make the font of the headline larger than any other font. + Don't use too much text in your headline + Use a benefit-oriented headline + Put a call to action in the cover area + Use an image (or a video) which engages your primary target group emotionally and fits your brand and product/service |
| BenefitsIn this area we describe how the product or service will help our primary target group to get their job(s) done. Customers aren't just interested in what the product or service is but also what they gain from it. See "Pains & Gains", "Job(s) to get done" and "Core Value" in our Business Model | + Make sure you talk about benefits, not features + Focus on a maximum of four key benefits + Add visual elements (e.g. icons) which amplify the benefit + Don't use too much text |
| Solution or processHere we describe how our solution works and what the users need to do to experience the benefits of our product or service. See "Offering" in our Business Model | + Describe what happens in simple steps (1., 2., 3,...) + Visualize steps with icons or screenshots of your product + If your product is more complex, simplify the representation for the landing page |
| Call to actionThis is the area where we show our users what we want them to do (signup-form for our product, download, configurators, register for newsletter etc.). Your call-to-action buttons should point to this area. See "Offering" in our Business Model | + Tell your users exactly what to do + Highlight what your users get + If you can, show your product in action (it helps users imagine themselves as your customer) |
| PricingHere we talk about our pricing options and plans. See "Profit formula" in our Business Model | + Simplicity wins + Highlight the benefits + Use urgency messages + Highlight call to action + Help to compare + Highlight the best option |
| TestimonialsWith testimonials we can show some social proof in our product or service. Recommendations from trusted users play a big role in purchase decisions. All parts of our Business Model | + Include personal details (full names, job titles, place of residence etc.) + Use pictures of your users (it helps to build trust) + Use testimonials from people who are most relevant to your primary target group + Be very specific about features, benefits etc. |
| FAQFAQs help to anticipate potential customer questions and clarify critical points of your product or service. | + Use an accordion to save space + Address the fears, uncertainties and doubts (friction points) |
