High Performing Landing Pages

Landing pages are like fertilizer for an inbound marketer to generate genuine leads. According to a recent survey, only about 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. So, why do marketers fall prey when it comes to designing a lead generating landing page?

Marketers need to make their landing pages stand out in order to engage more audience with their brand. 

The importance of a landing page

Before you kick start with your landing page design, it is ideal to first understand the need of a high performing landing page. A good landing page helps:

• Easily capture & convert leads
• Showcase a specific offer to a prospect
• Link similar offers and other services or products
• Collect data and information about your prospects
• Providing fuel to other marketing channels

Convert best practices

Once you understand the importance of a converting landing page, it is also crucial to know what the best practices of a good landing page are.

• Call to action
• Offer relevancy
• No pop-ups
• Visual elements
• Effective copy
• Responsive design
• Trust orientation

Handy things to consider for a high performing landing page

Before involving into the best designing page it is crucial to understand what makes a landing page good. Here are some of the handy check points to help

• Load speed time
• Cross-browser compatibility
• W3C Validated
• Above the fold vs. Below the fold content
• Don’t crowd forms. Use Whitespace
 

Branding And Packaging Are Key To Sucess Of Small Businesses: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the importance of packaging, branding and advertising for small enterprises so that they can upscale their business ventures.

"Brand building, advertising and financial support when given to small entrepreneurs will strengthen the foundation of Indian economy," he said while launching the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana here.

Giving an example, Modi said that a mango grower can value added his product at local level by making pickle and can also do wonders by packaging it well.

"If he sells mango, he gets a little money. If he makes pickles, he makes more money. And if that pickle is packed in a nice bottle, he gets much more. If he puts the bottle in the hands of a girl for advertisement, he will get still more money," he said.

Citing his experience as Gujarat Chief Minister, Modi said that he had helped the Muslim kite makers by encouraging small innovations. The small initiatives had helped in raising the business of kite making from Rs 35 crore to Rs 500 crore.

What is in a name?

With the boom in the number of first time, start-up entrepreneurs in the current market situation, one of the most primary and crucial problems faced, comes with naming the enterprise.
Earlier, people only had to worry about the name of the company. The millennium however saw a big change that irrevocably modified the link between technology and the companies. Now, not only do you have to think of a innovative name for your company, you also have to make sure a domain name is available under the same name, because a business without a website can pretty much accept they are already endangered, if not extinct.  
Now, with the rise in digital advertising and social media marketing there are many more places the name needs to be compatible. However original you think you are being, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and even Gmail Ids for Google+ and other social media platforms will be difficult to get with 7.1 billion people and their brains also alive and being not very different from your own. If you are going to choose a name that is long, then the abbreviation needs to be decent and usable. (Ex: TGIF) Keep in mind that with the current situation of people’s minds and the world, attention can be very easily diverted. It doesn’t take a lot to distract a person so you need a name that is catchy, clear and confusion-less!
Here are a few points to remember when naming your start up:  
- The easier it is to spell and pronounce the better, keep it short and simple. (Ex: 7Eleven)  
- If you want something complex make sure it will ‘stick like glue’ in the minds of the people. Using fun words might help! (Ex: Echo Bay Technology Group – eBay )
- If you are using a word or phrase from another language, first, make sure you know all possible meanings for the word. You don’t want to get stuck on the wrong foot a year or two down the line after finding out the word means something unfavourable. (One success is - Ex: Chumbak)
- If you insist on using a name, your name or a loved one’s name, have other options in mind because unless your parents or their parents were extremely innovative there will probably be a company with the name already. (Ex: Nestlé – named after its founder, Henri Nestlé)
- Changing the spelling of a word that you would like to use as a name for your business might look really cool but remember when people talk about the company they are only going on phonetics and therefore might miss out on your awesomely altered spellings. (Ex: Wok-A-Toque)
- Maybe choose a name that actually has to do with what your business does, however, you must also remember to not cut off your growth options. (Ex: A landscaping business could be called Lawn ‘n’ Order)
The call of the hour is to be unique and different. We see everyday examples of how random words or rather what resemble sounds like Yahoo and Google made it big and now words like Hashtag, Google and Facebook are often used as verbs. Your company name is what can make your business or break it. So the most important point is to think long and hard and then, only then, make your decision.
After all, it’s all in the name. (Note: The same goes for children’s names! #Imlookingatyouamericancelebrities).

Online Advertising Is Rising

The current generation eats, sleeps and thinks online. Whether it is the weather, the latest sports score or a scandal the first place a person turns to these days is online. Keeping with this trend even journalists have decided to make the most of this by putting up their stories on online portals. At this time it is not surprising that the advertising strategy has taken on a more net savvy approach. Even though print advertising is still the base of the advertising strategy, online advertising is gaining more and more importance.

With smart phones, tablets and laptops that all connect to the internet wherever you may be this becomes the hub of activity. A trending topic on twitter, a page being shared on facebook, a pin being re-pinned on pinterest, this is where all the interest of the people lie.  

Even while people are watching their televisions almost everyone signs into facebook or twitter or an online site at least once during the advertisements on television. So when all eyes are online, it makes sense for the advertising agencies to also focus their advertising on the online mediums with more force.

Already in the year 2010 in the US, a study by Outsell has reported that Forbes reveals, U.S. advertisers are spending more this year on digital media than on print. This is largely thanks to a 9.6% boom in digital advertising in 2010.Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing.  

The trend has already taken over the Indian advertising market as well, with a lot of companies wanting their presence to be felt online and importance being given more and more to this area of advertising.

The Flat UI Trend

Even if we don’t, as users, notice it, there is a new trend that is taking the interface design world by storm. Gone are the days when designers for websites and apps had to make sure the buttons and tabs really looked like they could be touched or clicked on. The earlier need to bevel or use a drop shadow behind the button has all but vanished.

Now even children know that for example on a touch phone almost everything on the screen be it a website or an app can be touched to make a picture bigger, go to the original source of the link, go back to the home page etc.

Even though windows tried to make this popular with their ‘Zune’ all the way back in 2007, it didn’t go very well. However they improved this design and used it for their Windows Phone and Windows 8 User Interface.

On the other hand iOS had been using a method based more on textures, pictures and shadows. Trends like skeuomorphism(shelves and photo albums in Apple's iPhoto), the grid approach(Flipbord for iPhone) and even the notebook or pages effect(Evernote) were seen a lot in the apps developed around 2012 . The look that is seen in an app like instagram and pinterest also was a big trend where the tabs occurred along the bottom and the middle tab was significant.

These earlier trends gave way to the current Flat UI trend that has currently taken over the website and app design world. This is a completely minimalistic approach, using bold colours for tabs instead of pictures, using internationally acknowledged icons and glyphs that overall take up a much smaller space online as well. This gives the website or a app a clean and neat look that does away with all the clutter and makes it user friendly and sophisticated.

 

The Need For Typography

The two main things that any designer has to think about while designing are graphics and text or type. Typography is the art and technique of type design, arranging type, and modifying type glyphs. When used properly it is harmonious and blends together with the whole look that the designer is trying to achieve. Even when the changes to the type are small, they make a huge difference and the design may be incomplete without it.

There is no science to follow when it comes to typography. There are no rules and guidelines to follow. It depends on the medium and designer for example: on a billboard when the font is too small or when it is too fancy it turns the viewer away.

Knowing what type to use where is of utmost importance. A font used on a magazine spread may not necessarily work on a poster. Altering the type depending on the medium plays an integral role in the design process. With a poster the text for the headline has to be big and eye catching whereas with a magazine it is held only at an arm’s length and therefore everything from spacing to the typography may be different.  

The current trend in typography is where the text itself is designed into graphics. This leaves a lasting message in the minds of the people reading or viewing it.  

The type itself is becoming very important in the current trend of designing.  However when keeping with a brand or a single company sometimes the type itself holds a place as the brand image or a part of the logo in the minds of the consumers. Designers should also keep this in mind when choosing or designing type for these clients.

In this case consistency plays a part.  Neat and clean designing has taken over in the form of elegance and sophistication in design. With this, the type also being consistent and uniform sends the message and in some cases keeps with the brand image.

Typography can make or break a design. It is an art and skill that takes time to master, but it’s one of the most prominent tools that can be utilized in your designs.