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16 Comments

Less = more when designing landing pages

I often see landing pages with a ton of text (usually combined with incorrect line height) that no one ever reads.

Like I get it... I met a lot of business owners who told me they want to have that particular piece of text there. So people can learn more about their product if they want to.

And I used to think the same. But it's not how your visitors are going to think about it.

It's crucial to think about the context in which the visitor comes to your website.

They might be doing research for a tool or a service to solve their problem. In that case, they are likely to be browsing for some time. And they might be tired of seeing so many similar pages with a lot of text. Their brain is getting overwhelmed!

Or they might've found out about you pretty randomly from some comment on Reddit or an ad on YouTube. Thinking that you offer something they need and want to check it out. In this case, they were doing something else, and you kind of interrupted their flow. So again... Their brain will quickly scan through your website, scavenging for that particular bit of information. The bit that will make them rationalize their purchase - make them say "this makes sense for me".

Their friend might have also told them that your product is great. In that case, they are likely to spend more time and attention on your website as they were already briefed.

But in neither of those cases there’s a need to squeeze more information on the landing page than the bare minimum. The core of what's in it for them.

Check intercom.com. They work hard on their LP. Watch them for some time and you can see they make a new version almost every month. They probably do a lot of A/B testing. Now go and REALLY check it. What’s there in terms of text?

HEADLINE. A long one, because everyone is going to read that. Always. So put a lot of effort into your headline. And don't be afraid to get rid of your sub headline.

Then there’s ANOTHER HEADLINE, even longer (seemingly - it’s not that long, but it’s bold).

And that's pretty much it! Then there are blocks that work as a treemap of specific features.

Do you want to say more? Create more landing pages! Different landing pages. For different target audiences or for different parts of your product.

In any case, I recorded a design review of a few landing page designs on Dribbble. I talked about this issue and other important things. Give it a watch! :)

  1. 2

    I came here just to affirm that, yes, the statement in the title of this piece is 100% SPOT ON.

  2. 2

    Less is more probably applies to even more areas in building a startup. Engineering, Finance

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      True! Even MVPs haha I always struggle with that.

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    As someone who has been writing conversion-focused copy for over twenty years, including many landing pages, I can say that the copy should be as long as it needs to be, no more and no less.

    Too short and you leave out persuasive information, too long and you risk overwhelming the reader.

    Each case is different. Offers with more commitment usually require more copy. So do products and services with more complexity and unfamiliarity. Your target audience will factor into it, too. Some people prefer to read more than others.

    What's more important than an arbitrary thing like the length of the copy is the quality of the copy. People will stop reading when they are no longer engaged, whether it's short or long.

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    @JohanCutych Would love to know your thoughts on http://notiondb.io

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      Hey Aravs7, Your 3rd API URL example has a wrongly closed span tag.

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        Thanks for that ! corrected now.

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      Will do it the next episode! Stay tuned!

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    Thanks for the reminder. I've just finished the landing page for https://smol.pub - and I hope it's as minimal as possible while still being impactful.

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      I will be happy to check it and put it into the nex episod, stay tuned!

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        that's awesome! Thanks!

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    "Less is more" is such an underrated expression in design and copywriting.

    Love the series, Johan! Can't wait to check out the new episode.

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      Thanks Aleks! Yeah... it's actually quite hard to distill your message into fewer characters. But definitely worth it. Like I see people spending thousands of $ on designs and then just pushing a shit ton of shit copy into the beautiful design.

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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      This is definitely true. We were just talking about these idioms, or "how to do business" claims e.g. "ideas are worthless" and there is quite little truth to them and it's quite hard to actually integrate them. Yet there is something right about them.

      My point here is that it's good practice to try hard to get rid of the fluff, of the unnecessary info in the given context. The context is LP.

      So yeah if you go to the product detail, or feature page, then there might be more info, right?

      Context is important. Context of what you offer, who are your customers, where they come from, where they land. And in this context, it's good to deliver your message with as little fluff as possible.

      Like this:

      "Our stunning algorithm created by our team of world renowned data scientists, collects the most up to date data and creates a hashtag combination that is optimized for skyrocketing your account's growth."

      is worse than this:

      "Our algorithm collects the most up to date data and creates a hashtag combination that is optimized for your account's growth."

      Right?

      Take this, multiply it by 10x and you have a shitty landing page full of shitty info

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