books
Laws of UX for Landing pages
Recently I finished the book “Laws of UX” by Jon Yablonski. The book is excellent and a must read for anyone who works with digital products.
How to use psychology to design better landing pages? In no particular order, here are ten UX laws that could help to achieve that:
1. Jakob’s Law
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
By leveraging existing website mental models, we help users focus on messaging, offer rather than learning how the page works.
2. Doherty Threshold
Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.
Landing page speed is very important, and it should load fast. Users expect it. If it loads slower than 400ms, it should be addressed by design. Example solution: use loading animation.
Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the process itself actually takes much less time.
Quiz-type landing pages can benefit from the purposeful delay. After a quiz is complete, delaying results increase their value. While the user is waiting, the animation can educate about the final results.
3. Goal-Gradient Effect
The tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal.
If the landing page has a ridiculously long copy, adding a progress bar helps readers keep going.
4. Hick’s Law
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
Websites are complex because it has many choices that can be explored. Often it has more than one goal. Landing pages are still complex, but choices for users are reduced to its core goal.
5. Law of Similarity
The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.
It’s important to remember CTA’s should be a distinct element on the page. If it’s too similar to something else, users will ignore it.
6. Miller’s Law
The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.
When creating copy for a landing page, create in small chunks. It helps users to understand better, process, and remember page contents.
Ridiculous long sales landing pages fail because the chunks of content are too big.
7. Pareto Principle
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Identify 20% of the most important sections on a landing page. Don’t spend too much time and energy working on the rest 80% that are not as important.
If 80% of traffic is on mobile (which is true in most cases), spend more time polishing the mobile version than desktop.
First impression matters. Spend more time working on above the fold area.
8. Von Restorff Effect
The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.
Pricing tables are the perfect example. Multiple columns help users to compare offers faster and find what works best for them. Giving a distinctive look to one of those columns will help the user choose faster and remember later if necessary.
9. Peak-End Rule
People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
The truth is that people recall negative experiences more vividly than positive ones. When it comes to landing pages, negative experiences come from overpromising and underdelivering. It’s essential to consider what happens after the landing page.
It’s easy to through big claims, but it sucks if it can’t be delivered.
Another example of peak-end: “Thank you” page. It’s easy to delight users on this page because many use standard responses here. Positive emotions can be amplified by adding cool animation, writing badass copy.
Classic example Derek Sivers CD Baby confirmation email:
10. Serial Position Effect
Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series.
When it comes to features or benefits lists, it’s important to consider what goes first and last. Users will remember those the most.
Conclusion
It’s easy to build a landing page. I think even my mom could do it, and she has never created one before. There are plenty of tools, templates, and guides on how to do it.
Tricks and hacks from Google don’t work as expected. In reality, creating an excellent performing landing page is hard. It takes time, many iterations, and constant learning from experiments.
Learning how people behave can help achieve much better results in a much shorter period of time. And people don’t change as fast.
P.s. will add visuals soon
