Please don’t let your readers get lost.

A click is a terrible thing to waste.

So I went in search of best practices for making landing pages land leads. I found a ton of good tips. But, whoa, I also went in search of good examples to actually show and found next to none.

Most companies make their landings too demanding.
I find (and found) too much of everything on most landing pages. Busy designs. Lots of links. Unclear directions. Long forms demanding my time. All of these are mistakes which increase the chance your visitors lose interest and your company loses sales opportunities.

Close with a KISS.
Your prospect has landed where you want them to. Amidst all the noise, you communicated effectively. Now you close. I don’t necessarily mean “collect money,” but I do mean “collect something,” usually contact information. Make it easy. Make it fast. Keep it simple, stupid. Here’s your KISS list for creating effective landing pages:

• Keep it singular: Don’t offer this, that and everything. Offer exactly what you promised in the first place. The gurus often call this “matching.”
• Keep it simple: Don’t over-decorate your page. It should abide by your brand standards, but include zero distractions.
• Keep it short: I don’t like to preach every piece of communications under the sun should be short. The copy should say what it needs to say to confirm your reader’s in the right place and headed in the right direction. But for sure, your form should be short. Insist your prospect has to tab and type their way through an online inquisition and you can kiss ’em bye-bye.
• Keep it selling: Hammer on your benefit statement. Follow-up with an auto-responder, email, fulfillment piece or all of the above, carefully crafted to convey a simple, specific, straightforwardbenefit.

Implementing unique landing pages for various marketing campaigns is what 1,000 marketers indicated was the most effective practice in website design (according to MarketingSherpa). Keep everything about it simple and score more conversions.