Landing Pages

[kingcaw]

Okay, this is perhaps not going to be the best start to my time here on WickedFire, however I thought i'd get the question out of the way now...

While i'm only just starting to open my eyes to the inner workings of Affiliate Marketing, i've certainly seem my fair share of landing pages and the like... and frankly the majority of them are a fucking mess in terms of design style

I dabble quite a lot in web design so those sort of pages hurt my eyes... my question is whether they look that way because the typical marketeer is either too busy/unconcerned/inexperienced with "beautification", or whether their "style" is intentional, tactical or whatever.

Obviously there are some exceptions to the rule, and the WF member who runs the landing page creation service (name escapes me) has some nifty looking designs; but i'm sure you know the type of page to which i'm referring.

Any discussion on this would be great, or you could just tell me to mind my own business and fuck off to another forum

 

[Laura]

The good people do what works, and often ugly works the best.

If you want to do well in this business, you have to realize that what *you* like has almost nothing to do with what actually converts and makes the most money.

Do a search on her for "landing page" - there is a TON of stuff for you to read through on this very topic.

 

[halfpc]

Okay, this is perhaps not going to be the best start to my time here on WickedFire, however I thought i'd get the question out of the way now...

While i'm only just starting to open my eyes to the inner workings of Affiliate Marketing, i've certainly seem my fair share of landing pages and the like... and frankly the majority of them are a fucking mess in terms of design style

I dabble quite a lot in web design so those sort of pages hurt my eyes... my question is whether they look that way because the typical marketeer is either too busy/unconcerned/inexperienced with "beautification", or whether their "style" is intentional, tactical or whatever.

Obviously there are some exceptions to the rule, and the WF member who runs the landing page creation service (name escapes me) has some nifty looking designs; but i'm sure you know the type of page to which i'm referring.

Any discussion on this would be great, or you could just tell me to mind my own business and fuck off to another forum

my money bringing traffic spends about 5 seconds on my landing pages, of which 3 are required for it to fully load. Think about it.

 

[Ben]

Like I said before, it's not about good or bad design, it's about effective design. Split testing is key, switching the color of a sign up box can raise conversions by several percent.

If there are two landing pages with the same copy and all the elements in the same places, the better designed page will have more conversions. It adds the factors of "trust" and "cool".

 

[Possibility]

Try reading this article: The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites.

The second question is a rule that should apply to every website: functionality is more important than the design of your website. This does not mean, however, that a beautiful website cannot be easy to use. What this does mean is that you should never sacrifice the usability of your website for a fancy design effect or a more visually appealing website.

 

[kingcaw]

Oh yeah I absolutely agree - usability is key - when I refer to well designed sites I mean both visually and code-wise. It may just be that i've stumbled across the "low" end of things - i'm talking about these enormous walls of text with no apparent thought put into the layout of information etc; with graphics straight out of mspain

 

[MyOwnDemon]

You can make the most beautiful LPs in the world... but, they won't work in most cases. Beauty is only pixel deep, so you need to focus on what works as opposed to what looks good. Sometimes ugly simplicity with a strong call to action is the key. Take a look at Google...