"Landing Pages: Common Mistakes to Avoid"

Why Learn to Make Good Landing Pages?

I wanted to learn how to objectively evaluate landing pages, instead of thinking "I guess this seems good?", "Is it missing anything?", or "Do I need to make the design a bit fancier or is basic okay" etc.

But why get good at crafting landing pages? Here's why it's important: until we find the right product idea for our potential customers, we have to test out many different ideas, do experiments to learn what resonates and what doesn't. For each idea that we're testing, there are two possibilities — either the idea is good or it isn't. If the idea is good, then it's in our interest to communicate it in a way that the customer 'gets it'. It would be a shame if a good idea doesn't get traction because we didn't convey it clearly, because of poor landing page copy.

The other possibility is that the idea is not a good one. In this case, we'll realize this while making a landing page if we know the key ingredients of an effective landing page. For example, if we can't express what problem our product solves or illustrate how the product will benefit the customer in vivid detail, it could be because it's not a very good idea. It may be that our idea is not really a solution to a problem, to a real pain point that customers are willing to pay to solve.

Either way, being skilled at crafting effective landing page copy and design is valuable. This way we can separate the testing of our idea from testing our ability to communicate about the idea. We don't want to confound the two. If our landing page is well designed, then we can remove that variable. If a well crafted landing page doesn't get traction, it's more likely that the idea is not a good one (and not because we are poorly communicating it).

Okay with that, here's what makes an effective landing page.

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