The human brain is a fickle thing. While it’s an incredible organ capable of soaring to amazing heights, it’s also severely limited in certain areas – particularly when it comes to focus and attention. If you want to successfully convert landing page visitors into paying customers, you must find a way to cut through the distractions and seize their focus.
6 Ways to Eliminate Landing Page Distractions
Attention has been described as the currency of business – it’s the one thing companies need in order to be successful.
“To communicate, influence or sell anything to a customer you first need their attention. Without their attention, your business or ideas are guaranteed to fail no matter how good they are,” entrepreneur Ian Kerins says. “Put another way, attention is the gateway to their wallet.”
If attention is the gateway to a customer’s wallet – or the key to driving conversions – then eliminating landing page distractions is paramount to your success. Here are some simple ways you can do just that:
– 1. Keep it Simple
Simplicity is the moral of the story. A landing page isn’t the place to show off all of your latest design and development techniques. It should be crisp, clean, and minimalistic. Whitespace, clear headings, and one- or two-field opt-in forms are the way to go.
– 2. Implement the Rule of One
Are you familiar with the Rule of One? It’s a web design principle that says every page should have a single, distinct purpose, focal point, and call-to-action. This ensures your audience is able to cut through the noise and fixate on what matters most.
“Now of course the rule of one isn’t universal,” marketing consultant Peter Boyle writes. “When it comes to things like social proof, three testimonials are obviously going to be better than one. Your job is to make sure that they stay within a single point of focus.”
The Rule of One should be applied across the board – not just with landing pages. You can use it to improve your emails, social media posts, infographic designs, etc. It’s a powerful principle with lots of application.
– 3. Go Visual
According to one leader in the Long Island web design space, modern landing page design is all about the visual. If you want to generate meaningful traction with your audience, you have to appeal to their desire for simple, visual content.
The key is to use high quality visual content. Generic stock photos won’t do. You need custom images, videos, and graphics that are reflective of your branding.
– 4. Eliminate Movement and Sound
As the push for visual content has grown over the years, many marketers have gotten the clever idea to use complex visuals, video, and intricate graphics. And though there’s nothing wrong with using engaging visual content, don’t go too crazy.
Excessive movement, motion, flashing advertisements, in-your-face graphics, and auto-play videos are rarely a good idea. They only serve to distract and frustrate visitors. Keep movement to a minimum and instead focus on crisp visuals that grab attention on their own.
– 5. Ask for Less
Stop asking your landing page visitors to buy the moon! Instead, give them one simple call-to-action. By asking for less, you reduce hesitancy and eliminate the friction consumers feel when they’re unsure of what to do. Give them a straightforward offer and then try to upsell or cross-sell at a later date and time.
– 6. Kill the Navigation Menu
A navigation menu is useful for visitors who find themselves on your homepage, but it’s nothing more than a distraction for landing page visitors. Go ahead and remove your menu, or at least migrate it to the footer. This lowers the likelihood that a visitor will click away to another page. It also cleans up the look of your page.
Set Your Landing Page Up for Success
Attention is a zero-sum game. Either you have the attention of your visitors, or you don’t. People may try to convince you they’re excellent multitaskers, but this is rarely – if ever – the case. The only way to consistently drive conversions that generate revenue is to eliminate distractions and funnel attention to a meaningful and enticing call-to-action.
Are you willing to tweak your approach to landing page design and optimization?