1. Competitive Analysis & CJM

Let’s say, you have some sort of AI startup and want to craft a beautiful landing page that would tell the world about your product right away.

The problem is that you don’t know where to start.

The first thing that every business guy and a professional designer do is, of course, look at your competitors and understand the basic psychology of a user.

Make a list of the top projects in your segment that you are inspired by the most.

In other words, take a look at pretty similar products and what they’re doing.

You shouldn’t reinvent the wheel in most cases.

Create a simple board and list all the things you love the most about their websites and the things that you don’t. That would give you a basic idea of how your website should look.

The next step would be creating a CJM (Customer Journey Map). A map that would show how your user should interact with the website, from the initial thought to the key action.

That’s the essence of everything, and without understanding the customer’s roadmap you won’t be able to put the right information on your page.

I could write several articles exploring all the details of these 2 crucial concepts, but it would be much easier and better to share an example file with you.

That’s basically an example of what I made recently for one of my projects, so you can use it absolutely for free for your landing.

Now, let’s summarize:

2. Design Concept

Design itself is probably one of the easiest things for a designer.

Yeah, sounds nuts. But it’s totally true.

While designing, you think more about all the things lying underneath the design (As we’ve seen in the previous section)

Creating a pretty UI is just a matter of practice. You can learn how to create a truly good-looking design in a matter of months.

Fortunately, there are many sources of inspiration and knowledge. You can watch an infinite amount of YouTube videos, copy as much work on Behance as you can see and finally get good at that.

I’m talking from my own perspective. I was actually making pretty decent designs in the beginning, and that was after just watching a couple of free videos.

The thing is that these designs were mostly useless. They didn’t get any leads, they didn’t solve any problems, and they didn’t improve any conversions.

They just existed.

And 90% of all the web designs that you see — just exist. Because they’re focusing on the looks, instead of the logic.

That’s what differentiates the Junior from the Senior. The business with zero sales and the business with a big amount of them.

3. Building a UI Kit

Some designers say that building a UI kit should come before the design concept, and some of them say absolutely the opposite.

In my opinion, it all comes down to the level of complexity.

A landing page is typically focused on a single objective, like promoting a product, collecting email sign-ups, or driving sales.

But, it’s still crucial to build some simple logical structure.

Identifying the color palette, which buttons and pairs of fonts to use, and the system of margins in the block, are parts of the right UI kit.

The kit would help you add all of your ideas to the design, without overdoing it. Without breaking everything that you’ve done before.

You’ll also be able to design much faster and integrate some new features without any problems in the future.

See it as a large board of different elements which you can use whenever you want, than designing something new from scratch.

4. Simplifying Navigation

Nobody wants to come to your page and spend minutes searching for something.

Everything should be as obvious as possible.

That’s the most important parameter for high-conversion websites. The easier it is for a user to click, scroll, or do anything else, the higher the chances of selling something to him.

Anyway, here’s a short list that you should use whenever you’re gonna design any website (bookmark it)

• Keep It Familiar: Stick to layouts people know. Logo on the top left, main menu at the top.

• Less Menu, More Focus: Limit your menu to 5–7 items. Keep it simple.

• Clickable Clues: Make it super clear what can be clicked.

• Mobile-Friendly Is Must-Have: Your site should look good on phones too (and on tablets)

• Consistency Is Key: Same look and feel on every page and in every block.

• Straight Talking Labels: Use simple, direct words for your menu items.

• Big Buttons, Bold Colors: Make important stuff stand out.

Remember, the smoother your site’s navigation, the happier your visitors.

And happy visitors often turn into happy customers.

Keep it simple, make it easy, and watch your site soar.

You’ve read this part, and it means that your landing is ready and can already be published. However, the next steps are still crucial to not just creating a website but also getting more sales from it.

So, the most interesting thing just begins.

5. Leverage the ‘Fear of Missing Out’ (FOMO)

Humans have a natural fear of missing out on something great.

It’s just common for us, whether it’s a good deal, a final sale, or anything else.

So, we can use it for our benefit while building a conversion-leading landing.

Get into this by showing limited quantities, countdown timers for deals, or how many people are viewing an item.

This simple tactic creates a sense of urgency and can nudge those on-the-fence visitors to take action.

I’ve used it several times to sell my templates.

Whenever I publish a new template or some holidays come, I always create some FOMO deals. Usually, that’s a huge discount for the next 2 days or for the first 20 customers.

And it works perfectly; it helps me to increase the number of sales significantly in a matter of hours and gather more feedback.

When people believe they might miss out on a great deal or a limited product, they’re more inclined to act quickly.

6. A/B Testings & Feedback Loop

That’s the last step, and probably the most crucial one.

Without gathering feedback from your customers, you won’t be able to create a great product. As well, you won’t be able to build a great landing page.

Lower your ego and understand that you can’t look at your website from literally every perspective.

You obviously have to test it out, see what others think, and make it more user-focused.

Remember that you’re not creating a landing for yourself, you’re creating it for your clients. Even if you don’t like it.

It’s also crucial to run some A/B testing.

Let’s say you place some kind of image on your landing with a call to action. It gets clicked and interacted with 8% of the time. But, you can replace the image with a better one and immediately see a larger engagement, such as 16%.

And yeah, just by replacing some little part of your website, you can significantly change the number of sales you’ll get at the end.

That’s why the work on the website is usually time-consuming. You just have to test lots of things, replace them with an infinite number of other variations, and then wait.

However, it’s not as hard as it seems. There are a bunch of tools, such as Optimizely, VWO, and Google Optimize.

You can easily integrate them and track all of the activities on your page.