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Why are so many landing pages ugly? Or at least bereft of many basic graphic design principles? These were the thoughts I had recently when I opened the first of two pages in a search for press release services.
I don’t want to hurt any feelings, but the eReleases.com landing page is UGLY. I’d love to see my eye tracking path for this one – it would probably look like a plate of spaghetti. My head spun with stimuli - headline with “MSWord” style highlighting – hey, there’s a NY Times and USA Today logo – Whoa! that chart looks pretty major – etc..
eReleases.com is lucky that I fancy myself a student of the Landing Page, if not I would have run away after a couple of glances. Poor page design causes confusion and the viewer is more likely to find fault with the page.
Most of you would have spotted the major issue with the eReleases.com page by now – where’s the CALL TO ACTION? That’s sort of strike three right there, but my post would be too short so let’s call it strike one and they have unlimited strikes – they need it.
Some other strikes against the page:
- The Chart – dominates the page and, without any real design, does so to the detriment of other elements
- Nothing to draw me below the fold – my screen resolution is 1024×768, the bottom of the page lies very neatly below the “exclusive partnership” paragraph under “What is National Distribution?” I could quite easily presume that’s all there is to the page.
- What kind of question is “What is National Distribution?” - it’s redundant, national distribution is national distribution.
- Headline – interesting, but dominated by the chart and logos to the right and, when I read it, I found the awkward highlighting somewhat destabilizing to my comprehension.
I could go on and try to emulate The Maven, but I’d probably fall quite short and I want to tell you about the second page I opened – PRWeb.com.
What a difference! I’m a big fan of whitespace and I was starved for it after eReleases.com . The design is superior to eReleases.com on almost every front:
- Well-balanced elements - center justified
- The image – nicely compliments the page. The model faces the copy and the mouth of the bullhorn aligns perfectly with the headline. Good, solid graphic design.
- Headline - easy to understand, outlines the value proposition, with just enough weight and space to standout without dominating any other elements.
- Testimonials - Clearly highlighted and numerous to instill trust
- The copy - bulleted for easy scanning
- Links - to a sample PRweb news release and a nifty video that quickly reinforce the value proposition.
- The Form - fairly short to minimize form fear
- Call to Action - above-the-fold – imagine that!
I thought it would be quite easy to determine the better page. But, as I mentioned, I fancy myself a bit of a LP student so I took another look at both pages. My second impression surprised me.. but I will have to leave that to tomorrow’s blog!
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