The book I read to research this post was Landing Page Optimization For Dummies by Martin & Michael Harwood which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com
A landing page is normally the home page on a website and is the page someone arrives on when they visit your site. Landing page optimization is the science of keeping someone on your site and if you have e-commerce getting them to place an order. When someone arrives on a website they will normally decide in just 4 seconds if your site is worth visiting. One thing you should also consider is 15% of users in America although that data is from a bit of a while back still use dial up networking so your site needs to load up fairly easily or they will move on. If someone is right handed they will normally look at the top left corner of a page then their eyes will move horizontally then vertically & it’s the opposite corner if they are left handed. This area is known to web designers as the golden triangle and you probably want something that grabs their interest in this region. A banner advertising someone else is not a good idea. I must admit I try and avoid photos, flash movies etc on my sites to speed up the download time. If you do decide you want photos try http://www.istockphoto.com & http://www.bigstockphoto.com which both offer royaly free images for you to use. Of course you may have to mention where you got the photo on your site. There is also color co-ordination and the most common practice is to use primary and secondary colours and a color that is a combination of two colors but only certain colors will do. There is an online color tester tool at http://www.colorblender.com. There is also an online palette of suitable colors at http://www.kolor.com. You might also be interested to know there is a website at http://www.archive.org where you can enter a URL and a date and they will show you an earlier version of that site from that date. It’s interesting to see how fashions for sites have changed. If you are selling stuff you need to state prominently your sales policies along with any guarantees. Don’t forget most people use a screen resolution of 1024×768 or 1200×1600 which means important has to show within the viewable area often called a fold by web designers. You also need easily accessible order information and probably a paypal merchant account to process payments. Paypal is the most common although there are others. I really enjoyed reading this book which I’m sure you can see is loaded with information.
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