While there are no ‘set’ guidelines for the perfect landing page, it is generally assumed that the page should be simple, free from navigation and easy to look at i.e. well designed. I understand that as a clothing retailer Missguided want you to browse their shop for further products, but what I found was that I couldn’t be bothered to go through all the pages of knitwear and while I chose a jumper, had it not have been right at the top of the page I would of likely clicked off knitwear, losing my 30% off and ultimately not bought anything.
Removing navigation means removing distractions (Sobal, 2014) and leaving just the offer the reader clicked through to. For example, a page of selected clothing with clear headers could be more successful and adding a link (similar to the ‘not your style?’ link in the email) to take the reader to the main site would allow the reader to browse the knitwear without distraction and then have the option to view the whole site, I feel would work just as well, if not better for Missguided.
via Missguided’s success with email marketing | Digital Marketing.
If a landing page is the destination of an advertising campaign I think that there are certainly ‘widely held principles’, if not ‘set guidelines’
As you say the page existing outside of the site navigation is certainly a good start – contibuting to the general principle of keeping the ratio of clickable elements > the action you wish the user to take as close to 1:1 as possible.
Other considerations ought include both message and design match, benefit statements, a clear call to action and so on.
This is a subject that I spend a lot of time reading on as well as testing (via analytics, heatmaps, task based testing etc) so if you would like to have a chat on the subject at some point please let me know 🙂
yes please Stuart, the posting you are commenting on was written by one of my students. Understanding industry best practice is of great interest to me, a chat would be useful!
asher