165 design references

Audit the landing page as one journey

@uiux.subash on Instagram

The page after an ad has to repeat that ad's promise, then ask for less than the promise is worth. A welcome line and a long account form throw the click away.

What to look at

The card is one fake page named Coko, then a strip. It opens on THE COMPLETE SOLUTION and Welcome to Our Amazing Platform, next to a gray picture box and two buttons, Learn More and Get Started. A dashed box holds four feature names and four steps that share one placeholder line. Create Your Account then splits fields into two columns, from first name through a message, and ends on Get Started Now. Beside it, a quote says the platform transformed how we work and signs Brooklyn Simmons. The strip shows an ad, Launch your store in 7 days, a red X that says Message doesn't match, and a small page still headed Welcome to Our Amazing Platform.

Why it works

Nielsen Norman Group calls the clue on a link or an ad the information scent, and these findings are about websites, not Instagram: people judge the next page from the label, the picture, and what they already expect, a label such as Learn more gives almost no clue, a generic picture adds nothing, a first screen of a large image and little text often fails to confirm they are in the right place, and a title that does not match the page spends trust. On this card the ad promises a store in 7 days, and the page answers with Welcome to Our Amazing Platform, a gray picture, and Learn More. The form is a second cost from the same group's website research: extra fields raise the chance someone quits, fields should stack in one column except for a short pair such as city and state, asking for an account before the person has the thing they came for often feels beside the point, and in the study they cite, guideline-following forms were submitted with no errors on the first try 78 percent of the time, against 42 percent when they did not. The quote is social proof only in name, since that research says people look for what others actually did with a specific thing, and that a proof block has to be tested because not every testimonial changes the decision.

Try it

  1. Put the ad line and the page headline in one sentence. If the ad says a store in 7 days, the headline has to say that too.
  2. Keep one filled button that names the action. Remove Learn More, and remove the extra Sign Up from the nav on this page.
  3. Leave the first screen as that headline, the button, and one picture of the result. Move the feature grid and the four steps down, or cut them.
  4. Ask for an email before a company address, a job title, or a message. Stack whatever remains in one column.
  5. Replace a quote that only says the work was transformed with one sentence that names the result, and test it before you treat it as proof.

What it costs

A page packed with features, steps, a long form, and a quote is hard to scan, and Nielsen Norman Group notes that proof widgets can crowd the action and slow the page, while a thin show of approval can make the offer look unpopular. Cutting the form to one field fails when you truly need a company address, matching a bold ad such as a store in 7 days backfires when the page cannot deliver it, and the names and gray picture on this card are props in a lesson, not a live company.

Words worth knowing

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