This awkward encounter is similar to what people might experience when they arrive at your landing page. Within only a few seconds, they’ll decide whether or not you’ve created a effective landing page that is interesting, relevant, and enticing enough to divulge their  precious personal information.

Although there is no exact recipe for whipping up the perfect landing page, there are definitely a few design techniques you can test that will help produce aesthetically pleasing, high converting pages. Let’s dive right in!

1. Whitespace Directional Cues

It would be a lot easier to find Waldo if he wasn’t always hidden in a crowd, wouldn’t it? That’s because crowded spaces create distractions, which makes it a struggle to focus on one particular element. If your landing page visitors have to search high and low to find your call-to-action, they’ll leave without thinking twice. To highlight areas of importance, utilize the page’s whitespace, which is an area that is intentionally left blank and doesn’t necessarily need to be “white.”

Allowing your form or call-to-action (CTA) some breathing room will help it stand out from the rest of the page and get noticed. However, keep in mind that although whitespace is critical to the organization and flow of a landing page, it can just as easily be overdone, creating a sense of disconnect and lowering the chance of conversion.

In the example below, Wishpond does a great job of giving this form plenty of space, but not too much, and using complementary colors (blue backdrop and orange form button) to draw your eyes into the form.

2. Explicit Directional Cues

To make things incredibly simple for your landing page visitors, I recommend testing explicit cues. As far as directional cues go, arrows are about as subtle as a flying brick! Think about it though…you only have a few seconds to capture your visitors’ attention, so why not make things really obvious for them? Arrows say “Please just do this. You don’t need to worry about the other stuff”.

In this example below, AT&T does an incredible job keeping whitespace around their form while still incorporating explicit directional cues that point to the form. You’ll also notice there isn’t just one arrow–there are four! The light green “U” shaped element points to the form from the left side in addition to the swirly blue arrow. From the bottom, the green “Order by Phone” cloud comes to a point on top. On the right side, several blue arrows point back to the form. Even with all this action, the page doesn’t feel crowded nor do the explicit cues feel overdone.

If the fancy arrows in the AT&T example are too much for you, check out this example from Kingsley Judd. The white arrow at the top left corner of the form is simple, yet effective.

3. Line-of-Sight Cues

Less subtle than arrows, but arguably just as effective, is the use of line of sight. Have you ever seen a group of people point up and stare at something? If so, you probably didn’t just stand there and watch them look at something else. You looked in the same direction and tried to figure out what was so great, right? That’s because we tend to follow the gaze of others out of curiosity.

If you’re building a landing page, experiment with images of human faces and use line of sight towards the form to increase conversions. Here’s a great example from GoToMeeting.

I hope these landing page tips inspire you to get out there and start increasing your conversions. But remember to test for success! You’ll never know which combination of these work best for your audience unless you try them out.

Do you have any other design tips that produce better conversion rates? Share them in the comments below and explain how you tested it!