5 ms·

How to Make Your Landing Pages Look Like a Design Team Was Behind It

sinuhe69 5y ago
There are tons of free templates everywhere. Just takes one fitted your taste and adapt it to your landing page and you’re done.
- awillen 5y ago
  It's amazing how attractive of an ecommerce website you can create with free Shopify templates and good-quality photos. You can make something that's incredibly slick and looks very professional for a template that's <$200 along with good-quality photos. If you're building a software product, just use Wordpress and a nice template for the marketing pages. It's basically never worth your time to build them yourself.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
What is a "CTA"? Landing on this article left me confused. Is that good design?
- ilovefood 5y ago
  CTA is "Call to Action", basically something to incentivise or get the user to do something on the website (usually register, click something, buy something...). Hope that helps!
- krotos 5y ago
  Call to action
- hboon 5y ago
  Call to action. The thing you are convincing the user to do next. Click a button to sign up for a trial, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  “Call-to-action button”, the big button/link thing (which I never click on) that usually has “Learn more” beside it (which I do click on). If not knowing what a CTA is is what confused you, then no, it’s not bad design, just bad targeting—you’re not in the target audience for this article right now. Not that you couldn’t be or that you wouldn’t benefit from knowing what it says, but it does require a certain (if minimal) amount of web marketing context to understand. (That said, I didn’t find the article particularly insightful, but that’s because I don’t much care for or about the goals it concerns—a different way of being out of the target audience.)
melomal 5y ago
Just use Webflow. It does everything for you, has templates can scale to your needs and also export the code needed to transfer the site somewhere else.
dvh 5y ago
Just use ultra thin gray font on gray background and huge padding everywhere.
- Lammy 5y ago
  And graphs that animate counting up from 0% as soon as they scroll into the viewport.
  - hexa22 5y ago
    Those are tacky and done by non designers. The thin font thing is real though.
zenincognito 5y ago
There is a pretty good free course you can take over at https://zenacademy.com.au/course/landing-pages-that-convert/ https://zenacademy.com.au/course/landing-pages-that-convert/ It shows you how to put together a minimalist landing page including deriving your features and benefits. Has some templates and checklist.
mkaic 5y ago
The post makes some good points, although I unironically liked the hand-drawn stick figure doodle better than the generic corporate art at the top of the page -- maybe I just don't have a designer's eye :P I'll definitely take some mental notes for when I set up my new landing page in a month or too!
- lucideer 5y ago
  This. The doodle has character. The corporate illustration looks like it's either a component of an extremely generic free landing page template, or the product of a very jaded, overworked designer churning out rehashed versions of the same pastel vectors they took from an image stock site 5 times a day. The rest of the bullets in the article are overused rules blindly followed over the years to ensure no website is differentiable from the last. Above-the-fold is such a well-known myth it's been used for decades now by middle-managers with 5-minutes-reading-wikipedia design experience to bully designers and developers alike into cramming as much content into an artificial letterbox as possible. Just pay a designer. (If you genuinely can't, then use a template; it won't give you anything worse than following this article would)
  - lbriner 5y ago
    Exactly. Use your skills to maximise your revenue so you pay others to use their skills. It is not clear whether we are talking purely about design or also the implementation, which can be another world of pain. I am a very experienced (mainly backend) developer but even some simple front-end tasks like understanding why something isn't aligning as expected take me a long time. Just pay someone to deliver you the HTML or buy off-the-shelf. Nowadays, you can get something decent from somewhere like Envata for $20!
- jfengel 5y ago
  A few weeks ago, somebody on HN referenced a name for that generically-friendly, ubiquitous style of web art. It's driving me nuts that I can't recall it. I vaguely recall that it was of a form like [Adjective] [City], where [City] was something kind of unexpected (having to do with some art movement in the past).
pedalpete 5y ago
If you're not a designer, use a template on a provider like squarespace. Follow their design guides, copy from sites you like. Don't get too fancy, stick to the basics.
d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
I like SwipePages — a simple way to create good looking SAAS landing pages. Happy user.
account42 5y ago
> 16px. The minimum size of text you should have on any site is 16px. Anything lower than that and you’ll make things hard to read on the web. Hard disagree, especially for "any site". Hacker News for example uses 12px text and is perfectly readable - if it isn't for you then you shuold be using some form of display scaling instead of wasting everyone else's screen space.
- dagw 5y ago
  The most important things isn't so much the text size you choose, but that your site doesn't break or try to fight me when I try to manually increase the zoom level or change the text size.
- juloo 5y ago
  Hacker News is not readable for me. Text is too small, the button for folding the comment tree is impossible to hit on mobile. I'm reading this website with 150% zoom and the browser window that is 50% the width of my screen. Nevermind 16 or 12, fixed size is to be avoided, from 2010: https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size
  - account42 5y ago
    > Hacker News is not readable for me. Text is too small, the button for folding the comment tree is impossible to hit on mobile. I'm reading this website with 150% zoom and the browser window that is 50% the width of my screen. What is your monitor size, resolution and view distance and do you use any display scaling? > Nevermind 16 or 12, fixed size is to be avoided, from 2010: https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size I agree that using user preferences is a good idea - however then the body text should be always 100% of the user set font size, never > 100%. The second best option is to have all sites use a consistent fixed size, and that will necessarily have to be the same as the default browser font size and the common font size of older websites - it can't change just because the average pixel has gotten smaller. Then you can get your desired font size setting a default zoom option.
    - 5y ago

There are tons of free templates everywhere. Just takes one fitted your taste and adapt it to your landing page and you’re done.

awillen 5y ago
It's amazing how attractive of an ecommerce website you can create with free Shopify templates and good-quality photos. You can make something that's incredibly slick and looks very professional for a template that's <$200 along with good-quality photos. If you're building a software product, just use Wordpress and a nice template for the marketing pages. It's basically never worth your time to build them yourself.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

What is a "CTA"? Landing on this article left me confused. Is that good design?

ilovefood 5y ago
CTA is "Call to Action", basically something to incentivise or get the user to do something on the website (usually register, click something, buy something...). Hope that helps!
krotos 5y ago
Call to action
hboon 5y ago
Call to action. The thing you are convincing the user to do next. Click a button to sign up for a trial, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.
mananaysiempre 5y ago
“Call-to-action button”, the big button/link thing (which I never click on) that usually has “Learn more” beside it (which I do click on). If not knowing what a CTA is is what confused you, then no, it’s not bad design, just bad targeting—you’re not in the target audience for this article right now. Not that you couldn’t be or that you wouldn’t benefit from knowing what it says, but it does require a certain (if minimal) amount of web marketing context to understand. (That said, I didn’t find the article particularly insightful, but that’s because I don’t much care for or about the goals it concerns—a different way of being out of the target audience.)

melomal 5y ago

Just use Webflow. It does everything for you, has templates can scale to your needs and also export the code needed to transfer the site somewhere else.

dvh 5y ago

Just use ultra thin gray font on gray background and huge padding everywhere.

Lammy 5y ago
And graphs that animate counting up from 0% as soon as they scroll into the viewport.
- hexa22 5y ago
  Those are tacky and done by non designers. The thin font thing is real though.

zenincognito 5y ago

There is a pretty good free course you can take over at https://zenacademy.com.au/course/landing-pages-that-convert/ https://zenacademy.com.au/course/landing-pages-that-convert/ It shows you how to put together a minimalist landing page including deriving your features and benefits. Has some templates and checklist.

mkaic 5y ago

The post makes some good points, although I unironically liked the hand-drawn stick figure doodle better than the generic corporate art at the top of the page -- maybe I just don't have a designer's eye :P I'll definitely take some mental notes for when I set up my new landing page in a month or too!

lucideer 5y ago
This. The doodle has character. The corporate illustration looks like it's either a component of an extremely generic free landing page template, or the product of a very jaded, overworked designer churning out rehashed versions of the same pastel vectors they took from an image stock site 5 times a day. The rest of the bullets in the article are overused rules blindly followed over the years to ensure no website is differentiable from the last. Above-the-fold is such a well-known myth it's been used for decades now by middle-managers with 5-minutes-reading-wikipedia design experience to bully designers and developers alike into cramming as much content into an artificial letterbox as possible. Just pay a designer. (If you genuinely can't, then use a template; it won't give you anything worse than following this article would)
- lbriner 5y ago
  Exactly. Use your skills to maximise your revenue so you pay others to use their skills. It is not clear whether we are talking purely about design or also the implementation, which can be another world of pain. I am a very experienced (mainly backend) developer but even some simple front-end tasks like understanding why something isn't aligning as expected take me a long time. Just pay someone to deliver you the HTML or buy off-the-shelf. Nowadays, you can get something decent from somewhere like Envata for $20!
jfengel 5y ago
A few weeks ago, somebody on HN referenced a name for that generically-friendly, ubiquitous style of web art. It's driving me nuts that I can't recall it. I vaguely recall that it was of a form like [Adjective] [City], where [City] was something kind of unexpected (having to do with some art movement in the past).

pedalpete 5y ago

If you're not a designer, use a template on a provider like squarespace. Follow their design guides, copy from sites you like. Don't get too fancy, stick to the basics.

d4rkp4ttern 5y ago

I like SwipePages — a simple way to create good looking SAAS landing pages. Happy user.

account42 5y ago

> 16px. The minimum size of text you should have on any site is 16px. Anything lower than that and you’ll make things hard to read on the web. Hard disagree, especially for "any site". Hacker News for example uses 12px text and is perfectly readable - if it isn't for you then you shuold be using some form of display scaling instead of wasting everyone else's screen space.

dagw 5y ago
The most important things isn't so much the text size you choose, but that your site doesn't break or try to fight me when I try to manually increase the zoom level or change the text size.
juloo 5y ago
Hacker News is not readable for me. Text is too small, the button for folding the comment tree is impossible to hit on mobile. I'm reading this website with 150% zoom and the browser window that is 50% the width of my screen. Nevermind 16 or 12, fixed size is to be avoided, from 2010: https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size
- account42 5y ago
  > Hacker News is not readable for me. Text is too small, the button for folding the comment tree is impossible to hit on mobile. I'm reading this website with 150% zoom and the browser window that is 50% the width of my screen. What is your monitor size, resolution and view distance and do you use any display scaling? > Nevermind 16 or 12, fixed size is to be avoided, from 2010: https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size I agree that using user preferences is a good idea - however then the body text should be always 100% of the user set font size, never > 100%. The second best option is to have all sites use a consistent fixed size, and that will necessarily have to be the same as the default browser font size and the common font size of older websites - it can't change just because the average pixel has gotten smaller. Then you can get your desired font size setting a default zoom option.
  - 5y ago