Your Baby Is Ugly - Landing Page Mini-Critiques (SES Chicago)

It turns out that I met 2 Rock Stars at SES-Chicago.  Yesterday, I reported on my takeaways from David Szetela's excellent PPC Clinic.  Today, some excellent information from Tim Ash, president of SiteTuners.com.  Tim has worked with some very large companies on landing page optimization.

Tim is the author of the book Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions (John Wiley Press, 2008).  It is an Amazon computer & Internet best-seller.  Tim is also an in-demand public speaker and contributing columnist to publications including SearchEngineWatch and Website Magazine.

I've had his book on my Amazon shopping list for some time now, so I ordered copies for my developers and me.  I recommend that you do the same.  I promise you'll get a better ROI if you read his book!

I think you'll get improved ROI by some of these take-aways:

Tim says that most websites benefit from a simple layout consisting of a header on top (dark colors) with left-hand navigation (NAV) and white content area background.  The page background (the area behind the page) should be white.  See examples of great page layout at landingpageoptimizationbook.com or his Site Tuners website.

He recommends a maximum of 6-9 categories (NAV links) plus sub-NAV per page.

NAV should be expressed in a good, simple hierarchical manner on the left side of the page.  Breadcrumbs should be used on the site.  He says interior pages should always have a Home button as part of the NAV.  (That will put to rest an argument I often get from our developers who say "Everyone knows that you click the logo to get back to the Home page."  Not everyone knows!)

Buttons should only be used for actions.  Links should only be used to access other information.  My guess is that he doesn't like java script NAV - I imagine he addresses that in the book.  All of the site that he showed as good examples had basic links in the NAV.

Conserve vertical space.  Big headers are becoming thinner, which forces content on the page up, above the fold.  Headers should always be placed above horizontal site NAV.

He's not in favor of "commercials" on a website Home page; those being the Flash animations that sometimes preceed loading of the Home page.  I'm not either, search engines have a difficult time indexing the content and many visitors don't like to wait for it to load and play.

He recommends that banner ads, if used, be placed below the header somewhere.  He does not like banners above the header.  (There are a number of standard banner sizes that can be placed below a header)  He says banners located below headers get read more than banners at the top of the page.

Landing pages should have a single purpose - 1 callout per page. (A landing page is generally considered to be destination page from a paid ad, but it's good practice to consider every page of your site as a landing page)

I was a little surprised that he said that people read web pages more or less from the upper left corner to the center of the page to the lower right corner.  I think I've seen heat maps (graphic representations of tests of visitor's eye movements on a web page) from the likes of Jacob Nielsen, no less, who describe it more as a "fuzzy F", or left to right across the top of the page and them down the left side of the page.

Preferred resolution: 1024x768 pixels (We know that from server logs)

If you use video, use small video thumbnails that pop to another page (using Ajax).  Never have video auto-play.  He's against those videos where someone walks onto the page and just starts speaking.

Good stuff!  Buy his book and profit from it.  I am really looking forward to reading it and using more of his techniques on client sites.

And plan on attending the next Search Engine Strategies conference near you!

-- Kurt Scholle, the Website-ROI-Guy

Comments

[Jessyca Frederick]

The Fuzzy F for eye-tracking tests generally applies to search results pages (especially in list form) and you probably read it in a Google Eye-Tracking Study. I think page design and keyword placement generally determine eye-tracking patterns.