Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/04/privacy-ux-aware-design-framework/

Privacy UX: Privacy-Aware Design Framework

Privacy UX: Privacy-Aware Design Framework

Vitaly Friedman

2019-04-25T13:30:16+02:00
2019-04-26T17:34:54+00:00

Part 1: Privacy Concerns And Privacy In Web Forms
Part 2: Better Cookie Consent Experiences
Part 3: Better Notifications UX And Permission Requests
Part 4: Privacy-Aware Design Framework

We’ve already explored approaches for better cookie consent prompts, permission requests, and notifications UX, but how do they fit into an overall design strategy as we make design decisions in our design tools?

In her article “What does GDPR mean for UX?”, Claire Barrett, a UX and UI designer at Mubaloo in Bristol, UK, has shared a very practical, actionable set of UX guidelines that the design agency has been following in respect to GDPR. While these guidelines specifically target GDPR, they are applicable to a much wider scope of user-friendly and privacy-aware interactions, and could therefore be applicable to any kind of project:

Users must actively opt in to having their data collected and used.
Users must give consent to every type of data-processing activity.
Users should have the right to easily withdraw their consent at any time.
Users should be able to check every organization and all third parties that will handle the data.
Consent isn’t the same as agreeing to the terms and conditions, so they shouldn’t be bundled together; they are separate, and should have separate forms.
While asking for consent at the right times is good, it’s even better to clearly explain why consent will benefit their experience.

One of the interesting things that Claire recommends in her article is to focus on “just-in-time” data collection (mentioned in part 3 of this series); that is, explain why data is required, and how it will and will not be used — but only when the app or website actually needs it. Obviously, this could be done by including an “info” icon next to the more personal bits of information collected, and showing the tooltip with the benefits and rationale behind data collection on request.

‘Just-in-time’ explanations with the info tooltip in forms. (Image source: Claire Barrett) (Large preview)

Many mobile applications require access to location, photos, and even the camera during installation, which isn’t something most customers would be happy to consent to. A more effective way of getting permission is to explain the need for data at the point of collection by using “just-in-time” prompts, so users can give consent only when they understand the purpose of it, very much like we’ve seen with permissions earlier in this series.

‘Just-in-time’ prompts, asking for access to location only when it’s actually required. (Image source: Claire Barrett) (Large preview)

The explanations should also inform customers how to withdraw consent where applicable, and provide a link to the privacy policy. These have been a matter of ongoing complaints for years, as lengthy privacy policies written in perfectly obscure legalese are almost impossible to comprehend without a dedicated review session. (In fact, a 2008 study showed it would take the average person roughly 244 hours per year to read all of the privacy policies for the sites they use, which translates to about 40 minutes per day.)

Rather than presenting the privacy policy as a wall of convoluted text, it could be chunked and grouped into clearly labelled sections and expandable text, optimized for scanning, locating, and understanding.

Separated policy actions, presented as accordions. Optimized for easy scanning and comprehension. (Image source: Claire Barrett) (Large preview)

Once consent is granted, customers should have full control over their data; that is, the ability to browse, change, and delete any of the data our applications hold. That means data settings in our mobile applications need to provide granular options to revoke consent, and opt out from marketing preferences, as well as the option to download and delete any data without wandering around the convoluted maze of help sections and ambiguous setting panels.

Customers should have full control over their data, so our ‘data settings’ menu should provide granular options to revoke consent, opt out from preferences, and download/or delete all data. (Image source: Claire Barrett) (Large preview)

The main issue with privacy-aware design decisions is that it’s difficult to assess the impact of data collection and all the interface challenges it poses on design and development. Being humble and subtle isn’t just a matter of respect, but also about reducing technical debt and avoiding legal battles down the road. For that, the following general guidelines could help as well.

Save As Little Data As Possible

If you choose to store credit card data, you have to be upfront about the security measures you take to store them confidentially. The less data you require and store, the less of an impact a potential breach would have.

Treat Personal Data Well

Not all data is created equal. When users provide personal information, distinguish between different strata of data, as private information is probably more sensitive than public information. Treat personal data well, and never publish it by default. For example, as a user completes their profile, provide an option to review all the input before publishing it. Be humble, and always ask for permission first; proactively protect users and don’t store sensitive data. That might help prevent uncomfortable situations down the line.

This goes not only for the procedure of storing and publishing user data on your servers, but also when it comes to password recovery or using customer data for any kind of affiliate partnerships. In fact, handing over a customer’s email to somebody else without explicit consent is a breach of trust and privacy, and often results in emails marked as spam because customers are suddenly confronted with an unfamiliar brand they don’t trust. In fact, the latter is almost like a defence mechanism against rapacious websites that continuously harvest emails in exchange for a free goodie, access to videos, and freemium offerings.

Explain Early What Kind Of User Data Third Parties Will Receive

When providing an option for social sign-in, be specific about what will happen to the user’s data and what permissions third parties will have. Usually a subtle note appears when social sign-in is prompted, but it’s a good idea to be explicit straightaway about how data will be treated, and specifically what will not happen to a user’s data.

It’s common to see user interactions coming to a halt once customers are forced into connecting their brand new accounts with already existing ones, or when they are encouraged to use their social profiles to make progress with the app. That’s never a straightforward step to take, and requires some explanation and assurance that revoking access is easy.

Prepare Customer Data For Export

It’s not trivial to get a complete picture of the collected data, especially if third parties are involved. Make sure that whenever personal data is collected, it’s structured in a way that’s optimized for export and deletion later on. Bonus points if it’s also digestible for the end user, so they can find the bits and pieces they need once they are interested in something very specific. That also means tracking what types of data are collected and where data flows, as we can use this structure later to provide granular control over data settings and privacy preferences in our UI.

You might have heard of a few friendly companies that make importing personal data remarkably seamless, yet exporting user data is painfully difficult, or close to impossible. Unsurprisingly, this practice isn’t perceived well by customers; and especially at times when they are thinking about deleting their account, such a pervasive lock-in will lead to customer support complaints, call centre calls, and angry outbursts in social channels. That’s not a delightful feature that will keep them loyal long-term.

While some companies can take public blaming because of their sheer size, for many small and mid-sized companies, reputation is the most precious asset they have, and so it’s wise not to gamble with it. You could even think of partnering with similar services and make user data seamlessly portable and transferrable to each of them, while expecting the same feature to be supported by partners as well.

Making It Difficult To Close Or Delete An Account Fails In The Long Term

Corporate behemoths have excelled in making it remarkably difficult for customers to close or delete their accounts. And this technique works when when moving away is painfully difficult — that’s the case for Amazon and Facebook.

However, if you are working on a relatively small website which strives for its loyal customers, you might not be able to pull it off successfully, at least not long-term. The overall impact is even more harmful if you make it difficult to cancel a recurring payment, as is often the case with subscriptions. (In fact, that’s why subscriptions are also difficult to sell — it’s not just the commitment to monthly payments, but rather the difficulty of cancelling the subscription at a later time without extra charge due to early cancellation.)

In fact, just as designers are getting better at hiding notorious profile settings for deleting an account, so too are customers at finding ways to navigate through the maze, often supported by the infinite wisdom of easily discoverable tutorials in blogs. If it’s not the case, customers resort to the tools they know work best: turning their back on the service that shows no respect towards their intentions — usually by marking emails as spam, blocking notifications, and using the service less. It doesn’t happen overnight; but slowly and gradually, and as interviews showed, these customers are guaranteed to not recommend the service to their friends or colleagues.

Surprisingly, it’s the other way around when it’s remarkably easy to close the account. Just like with notifications, there might be good reasons why the user has chosen to move on, and very often it has nothing to do with the quality of service at all. Trying to convince the customer to stay, with a detailed overview of all the wonderful benefits that you provide, might be hitting the wrong targets: in corporate settings especially, the decision will have been made already, so the person closing the account literally can’t do much about changing the direction.

With Smashing Membership, we try to explain what happens to the data in a clear way, and give an option to leaving Members to export their data without any hidden tricks. (Large preview)

For Smashing Membership, we’ve tried to keep the voice respectful and humble, while also showing a bit of our personality during offboarding. We explain what happens to the data and when it will be irrevocably deleted (seven days), provide an option to restore the plan, allow customers to export their orders and guarantee no sharing of data with third parties. It was surprising to see that a good number of people who canceled their Membership subscription, ended up recommending it to their friends and colleagues, because they felt there was some value in it for them even though they didn’t use it for themselves.

Postpone Importing Contacts Until The User Feels Comfortable With The Service

Of course, many of our applications aren’t particularly useful without integrating the user’s social circle, so it seems plausible to ask customers to invite their friends to not feel lonely or abandoned early on. However, before doing so, think of ways of encouraging customers to use the service for a while and postpone importing contacts until the point when users are more inclined to do so. By default, many customers would block an early request as they haven’t yet developed trust for the app.

Save User Data For A Limited Amount Of Time After Account Closure

Mistakes happen, and it holds true for accidental mis-taps as much as deleting all personal data after a remarkably bad day. So while we need to provide an option to download and delete data, also provide an option to restore an account within a short amount of time. That means that data will be saved after the account is deleted, but will be irrevocably removed after that grace period has passed. Usually, 7–14 days is more than enough.

However, you could also provide an option for users to request the immediate deletion of data via email request, or even with a click on a button. Should users be informed about the ultimate deletion of their files? Maybe. The final decision will probably depend on how sensitive the data is: the more sensitive it is, the more likely users will want to know the data is gone for good. The exception is anonymized data: most of the time, customers won’t care about it at all.

Provide User-Friendly Summaries Of Privacy Policy Changes

Nothing is set in stone, and so your privacy policy and default privacy settings might need to adjust because of new personalization features or a change of the tracking script. Whenever this happens, rather than highlighting the importance of privacy in lengthy passages of text, provide clear, user-friendly summaries of changes. You could structure the summary by highlighting how things used to be and how they are different now. Don’t forget to translate legalese into something more human-readable, explaining what the change actually means for the user.

Frankly, most users didn’t seem to care much about privacy policy changes. After the never-ending stream of policy update notifications in 2018, the default reaction is usually immediate consent. Once they’ve noticed anything related to privacy policy in the subject line or the email body, they immediately accept changes before even scrolling to the bottom of the email. However, the more personal the data stored is, the more time was spent reviewing the changes, which often were remarkably confusing and unclear.

Microcopy has always been at the very heart of Medium.com. A well-designed and well-structured privacy policy with clear summaries of privacy policy changes. (Image source: Email Design BeeFree) (Large preview)

MailChimp, with a concise summary of changes of its privacy policy. (Large preview)

Note: The folks at Really Good Emails have collected some great examples of email design related to GDPR if you’re looking for more inspiration on how to share privacy policy changes with your users and subscribers.

Set Up A Communication Strategy In Case Of A Breach

Nobody wants havoc after user data is compromised. In such situations, it’s critical to have a clear and strong communication strategy. Have an explanation prepared in case some user data is compromised. Mandy Brown published a fantastic article, “Fire Drills: Communications Strategy in a Crisis”, on A List Apart, explaining how to set one up, and a few things to consider when doing it.

Privacy By Design

It might sound like visiting websites is a quite ordinary activity, and users should feel comfortable and familiar with features such as social sign-in, importing contacts, and cookie prompts. As we’ve seen in this series, there are many non-trivial privacy considerations, and more often than not, customers have concerns, doubts, and worries about sharing their personal data.

Of course, the scope of this series could stretch out much further, and we haven’t even looked into password recovery, in-app privacy settings design, floating chat windows and pop-ups, performance and accessibility considerations, or designing privacy experiences for the most vulnerable users — children, older people, and those with disadvantages. The critical point when making design decisions around privacy is always the same, though: we need to find a balance between strict business requirements and respectful design that helps users control their data and keep track of it, instead of harvesting all the information we can and locking customers into our service.

A good roadmap for finding that balance is adopting a privacy-first best-practice framework, known as Privacy by Design (PbD). Emerging in Canada back in the 1990s, it’s about anticipating, managing, and preventing privacy issues before a single line of code is written. With the EU’s data protection policy in place, privacy by design and data protection have become a default across all uses and applications. And that means many of its principles can be applied to ensure both GDPR-compliance and better privacy UX of your website or application.

In essence, the framework expects privacy to be a default setting, and a proactive (not reactive) measure that would be embedded into a design in its initial stage and throughout the life cycle of the product. It encourages offering users granular privacy options, respectful privacy defaults, detailed privacy information notices, user-friendly options, and clear notification of changes. As such, it works well with the guidelines we’ve outlined in this series.

I highly recommend reading one of Heather Burns’ articles, “How To Protect Your Users With The Privacy By Design Framework,” in which she provides a detailed guide to implementing the Privacy by Design framework in digital services.

Where to start, then? Big changes start with small steps. Include privacy in the initial research and ideation during the design stage, and decide on defaults, privacy settings, and sensitive touchpoints, from filling in a web form to onboarding and offboarding. Minimize the amount of collected data if possible, and track what data third parties might be collecting. If you can anonymize personal data, that’s a bonus, too.

Every time a user submits their personal information, keep track of how the questions are framed and how data is collected. Display notifications and permission requests just in time, when you are almost certain that the customer would accept. And in the end, inform users in digestible summaries about privacy policy changes, and make it easy to export and delete data, or close an account.

And most importantly: next time you are thinking of adding just a checkbox, or providing binary options, think about the beautifully fuzzy and non-binary world we live in. There are often more than two available options, so always provide a way out, no matter how obvious a choice might appear. Your customers will appreciate it.

(yk, il)

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/03-_BPL_sY4/10-best-static-site-generators

Most sites you visit on the web are probably generated dynamically. That is, rather than having all their content encoded into the HTML stored on the server, they retrieve content from a database and construct pages to serve to you on the fly. 

Many also provide user interactivity through logins, forms and so on. Think of Facebook for an example of both of these things. To build this type of functionality yourself, you might look to a CMS such as WordPress.

21 best WordPress themes

For some use cases, however, this is overkill. Simple pages, such as a personal profile, information about a business or even a blog, really don’t need this sort of overhead or complexity. You could of course just build static HTML yourself in a text editor. And indeed many years ago this was how all sites were built, but this rapidly becomes cumbersome to maintain when you want to scale up or make changes. Static site generators offer a solution to this, by enabling you to build static HTML pages using templates.

Essentially, static site generators are command-line tools that shift the creation of the final HTML page forward from the point the user requests it to the point you write the content. When you make an update, you build the new page, which can then be served as-is to every user who requests it.

This offers several advantages. Performance will be greatly improved compared to a dynamic site, since serving static HTML and CSS has a very low footprint. Your server-side setup will be much simpler, which also means fewer security worries. Conversely, however, you’ll lose the opportunity to deliver real-time content or receive user input.

Static site generators have exploded in popularity in recent years, so navigating the wide range of choice can be difficult. Here, we’ve taken a look at some of the best options you should be considering.

01. Jekyll

A first alpha for Jekyll 4.0 has just been released

First released in 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, the co-founder of GitHub, Jekyll arguably popularised the concept of static sites and remains probably the most widely used static site generator. With Jekyll, you’ll typically work with content in Markdown, a lightweight markup language designed for text formatting.

The Liquid templating engine is used to place this Markdown content into a HTML template, and to combine templates representing various parts of a page (say, header, footer and content) in a modular and re-usable manner.

Support for Sass is built in for those with a preference for CSS preprocessing, and it’ll play fine with libraries like Bootstrap. Also included with Jekyll is an HTTP server which can be used to easily deploy and test your static pages locally.

Jekyll remains one of the most widely used static site generators

One of Jekyll’s key selling points is its wide range of ‘importers’, which enable an existing site to be migrated to Jekyll with relative ease. If you have a WordPress site, for example, you can switch to using Jekyll using one of the importers. It’s also trivial to convert existing static HTML sites to Jekyll, which can be great if you’ve been coding static HTML yourself or see a template you like the look of.

Notably, Jekyll is used to power GitHub pages, a static site hosting service which is provided with GitHub. If you have a GitHub repository, you’re able to create a GitHub pages site for free using Jekyll. This can be a convenient way to give a polished landing page to your GitHub project.

The big downside of Jekyll – and this applies to most generators – is that it can seem complex at first and is a new technology to master. You might not be up and running as quickly as with a CMS. However, it’s very well documented and the learning curve is quickly overcome.

02. Hexo

Be sure to write your content in Markdown for Hexo

Hexo is powered by Node.js and aimed at blogging. While the JavaScript implementation shouldn’t in theory make too much difference to how you work with it, since you’ll be using with markup and templating languages, it can make installation and configuration more familiar for JavaScript developers. If you’re already using npm and git then it’s extremely simple to get up and running.

Like many other general purpose generators, you’ll probably want to write your content in Markdown. The default templating engine is Swig, which is once again well suited for JavaScript developers. However, Hexo is extensible to allow other templating engines to be used if you want.

The Hexo website includes a range of pre-built themes for you to try out, and one especially popular feature of the tool is its support for single-command deployment.

03. Gatsby

Gatsby can be picked up quickly by developers

Like Hexo, Gatsby is powered by Node.js and so will be more familiar territory for experienced JavaScript developers. However, several things set it apart from other similar tools.

Gatsby uses React, which means that everything is built with components, and allows it to benefit from React’s approach to DOM rendering. This means it can be picked up quickly by developers who have worked with React, but for those unfamiliar with it, learning React will be necessary.

It also utilises GraphQL at build time to retrieve data and content from data sources, which provides a modern, consistent interface to ensure that each page receives the exact data needed when it is built.

Finally, Gatsby will build pages as progressive single page apps, meaning that the entire site is downloaded and subsequent navigation is immediate.

04. Hugo

Whip up your site in milliseconds with Hugo

Widely regarded as the ‘other’ leading static site generator, it’s only natural to compare Hugo with Jekyll. Hugo is the newer of the two, and one of its key focus areas is speed, which for some has been a complaint with Jekyll. Nobody likes waiting for a site to build, and Hugo can put together a simple site from your markup and templates in milliseconds, or even blaze through thousands of pages in seconds. 

With Hugo it’s also typical to write content with Markdown, and the templating engine is based on Go templates since Hugo itself is implemented in the Go programming language. Like Jekyll, it ships with a lightweight HTTP server to quickly serve your pages locally. The two tools’ build workflows are overall fairly similar.

27 steps to the perfect website layout

For many, the key benefit of Hugo is its quicker, simpler path to getting started, with very little need for configuration and no dependencies other than the core binary. Its documentation and tutorials are very good, and it has an ethos of maintaining simplicity which makes for a very approachable learning curve.

One disadvantage Hugo has relative to Jekyll is that it lacks the extensive plugin ecosystem available for the latter. Given its wide range of built-in functionality, however, this is unlikely to be a problem for most users. It also may be marginally lighter on support on sites such as StackOverflow since it hasn’t been around as long; however, it continues to grow in popularity and many believe it may become the leading static site generator in the near future.

05. NUXT

Nuxt brings a component-based approach to development

Vue.js has gained immense popularity as a front end framework in recent years, due to its combination of a gentle learning curve, high performance and powerful feature set.

Nuxt.js is actually a framework for creating server-rendered Vue applications – that is, dynamic pages which are rendered by the server before being passed in their completed form to the client to display. However, it can also be use to build static sites, with a command line parameter that will build static HTML pages for all routes through a Vue project.

Since Nuxt is a Vue framework, familiarity with Vue will be necessary to use it, but developers who have worked with Vue before will feel right at home. And, like Vue, it also brings a component-based approach to development of your sites.

06. MkDocs

MkDocs specialises in project documentation sites

MkDocs is more specialised than the tools we’ve looked at up until now. It sets out with one very simple objective in mind: to provide a fast and easy-to-use way to generate HTML sites for project documentation. And it absolutely succeeds at doing this. It’s built in Python, so you’ll need Python and pip (Python package manager) installed to get it.

After that, getting started is easy. Documentation is written in Markdown, and the tool is configured using a single YAML file. The command-line build process is as simple as it could be.

The MkDocs GitHub page includes a number of themes which are specially designed for documentation, or you can build HTML for your own theme. MkDocs is one of the easiest static site generators to get started with, and if documentation is your use case, there really isn’t much cause to look at other tools.

07. Pelican

Pelican allows you to import your site from a variety of blogging platforms

Pelican supports content written in multiple languages, including the ubiquitous Markdown. It uses the Jinja templating engine, which is both easy to use and extremely powerful, meaning that while Pelican is primarily optimised for building blogs, it is also well suited to building a wide range of different types of other sites. It’s also fast, and can comfortably handle sites with thousands of pages without making you wait for them to build.

Like many of the leading static site generators, Pelican allows you to import your site from a variety of blogging platforms. This makes it trivial to convert an existing site built with WordPress or many other popular content management systems. If you’re familiar with Python, and especially if you’ve used Jinja templates before, Pelican is a very safe choice.

Conversely, however, it may be a little harder to get to grips with for developers who are more familiar with JavaScript or Ruby.

08. Metalsmith

Metalsmith is more customisable than other tools on this list

Metalsmith takes a different approach to many other static site generation tools, in that it doesn’t try to do very much at all. Essentially, static site generators take a set of source files, manipulate them, and then generate a set of output files which is the static site itself.

Metalsmith provides a framework for doing this, but leaves all of the actual manipulations to plugins. These manipulations are things which typically come out of the box with other static site generators, such as utilising templates, substituting variables, or interpreting languages like Markdown.

When run through Metalsmith, all source files are converted to JavaScript objects, which means that manipulations by plugins are essentially modifications to properties of these JavaScript objects. There is, for example, a markdown() plugin which transpires Markdown to HTML.

The result of this approach is that Metalsmith is immensely customisable, but requires a little more consideration during setup than some of the more monolithic tools. Don’t like Jekyll’s use of the Liquid templating engine? Here you can pick your own. On the Metalsmith page, you’ll find a lengthy list of plugins to provide a wide range of functionalities, ranging from compiling Sass to CSS through to computing a word count.

If you have a preference for unopinionated frameworks, Metalsmith is about as unopinionated as you can get.

09. Middleman

Middleman is flexible enough to build a variety of sites

 

Middleman was released around the same time as Jekyll, and will be most familiar to developers who have worked with Ruby on Rails. Its default template engine is ERB (Embedded RuBy) and it also includes built-in support for Haml, Sass, SCSS and Coff eeScript, and can be extended further to support more.

Some leading static site generators are heavily geared towards blogs, but Middleman sets its ambitions wider and aims to provide the flexibility to develop any type of site. It’s highly unopinionated and extensible. This means, if all you are doing is a blog, the setup is a little more complex since you’ll have to configure it.

10. Spike

Spike is designed to create very simple frameworks

Spike is built by the same team as Roots, which saw great popularity while it was actively maintained. It provides a familiar ecosystem for JavaScript developers, utilising webpack, Postcss, Reshape and Babel. Much like Metalsmith, Spike is designed to provide a very simple framework and allow plugins to handle your transformations.

Web design event Generate New York returns on 24-25 April 2019, offering a packed schedule of industry-leading speakers, a full day of workshops and valuable networking opportunities – don’t miss it. Get your Generate ticket now.

This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Subscribe to Web Designer here.

Related articles:

The 7 web design lessons you need to knowThe future of web designHow to survive as a web designer beyond 2020

Original Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/04/design-landing-page-mobile-conversion/

Design A Lead Gen Landing Page For Mobile That Converts

Design A Lead Gen Landing Page For Mobile That Converts

Suzanne Scacca

2019-04-22T12:00:16+02:00
2019-04-24T13:41:22+00:00

There is a huge difference between a website (which can generate leads) and a lead capture page (which is only supposed to generate leads).

Websites tell visitors:

This is all of the stuff we can do for you. Have a look around and let us know when you’re ready to spend some money!

Lead capture pages, instead, tell visitors:

We have this one super valuable thing we want to give you for free. Share your name, email address and maybe a couple of other details and we’ll hand it straight over!

There’s also a significant difference in how the two are designed.

Unbounce has a nice side-by-side comparison that shows this difference in design between the two:

Unbounce contrasts the design of a web page with a lead capture page. (Source: Unbounce) (Large preview)

The only problem with this is that it depicts the design from a traditional desktop perspective. Just as you would consider the differences in conversion between a desktop and mobile website, you have to do the same for their landing pages.

In the following post, I’m going to give you some points to think about as you design lead capture pages for mobile audiences. I’ve also analyzed a number of landing pages on mobile so you can see how the design criteria may change based on what you’re promoting and who you’re trying to promote it to.

The Difference Between A Website And Lead Capture Page

This is the SnackFever website:

The home page of the SnackFever website. (Source: SnackFever) (Large preview)

It takes a few scrolls to get through all of the content:

The SnackFever website highlights their products. (Source: SnackFever) (Large preview)

And some more scrolling…

More information from the SnackFever website. (Source: SnackFever) (Large preview)

This is a content-packed home page, even for mobile. A page like this must mean that they’re prepared to have visitors wade through all of the options and opportunities available on the website. As you know, this can be a gamble on mobile what with conversion rates historically lower on those devices.

Then, compare this to SnackFever’s free gift lead capture page:

The lead capture form on the SnackFever website. (Source: SnackFever) (Large preview)

Only one swipe of the screen is needed to see the full page:

The lead capture page on the SnackFever website. (Source: SnackFever) (Large preview)

Technically, this is a lead capture pop-up. However, on mobile, SnackFever has turned this into a full page design (which is a much better choice).

This is a pretty awesome example of why you should be designing different experiences for different devices.

You can see that this is much more succinct and easy to stay engaged with as it has a singular purpose. The goal here is to capture that lead ASAP. This is not designed to give them room to walk around the site and ponder other decisions.

This is exactly why you should be building lead capture pages away from the website. It doesn’t matter what kind of lead generation you’re using to lure visitors there:

eBooks, white papers and other custom reports
Courses or webinars
Checklists
Calculator or quiz results
Discounts or coupons
Demos or consultations
Free trials

By moving potential leads over to a distraction-free landing page full of highly targeted messaging and visuals, you can improve your chances of converting them into leads. It might not be a purchase, but you’ve helped them take that first step.

Design Tips For Lead Capture Pages On Mobile

Before you do anything else, I’d urge you to take a look at your website’s Google Analytics data. Specifically, go to Audience > Mobile > Overview and look for this:

Google Analytics Mobile Session Duration data. (Source: Google Analytics) (Large preview)

This is the average amount of time your mobile visitors spend on your website.

This data point will be helpful in determining, realistically, how long you have to capture and hold the attention of your mobile visitors.

An even better way of doing this is to go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Then, set the Secondary Dimension to Mobile (including Tablet) and click on the new dimension filter so that the “Yes” values go to the top:

Google Analytics mobile visitor page- and time-related data. (Source: Google Analytics) (Large preview)

This lets you see how individual pages perform in terms of time on page with mobile visitors.

Look closely at any pages that have a strong and singular CTA, like a dedicated service or product page. You can use those times as an average benchmark for how long mobile visitors will stay engaged with a page that’s similarly structured (like your lead capture page).

Now that you have an idea of what your mobile visitors’ threshold is, you’ll be better prepared to design a lead capture page for mobile. The only thing is, though, it’s not that cut-and-dried.

I wish it were as easy to say:

Write a headline under 10 words.
Write a memorable description under 100 words.
Add a form.
Design an eye-catching button.
You’re done.

Instead, you’ll have to think dynamically about how your lead capture page will best convert visitors to it.

Here are the various things to consider as you design each part of your mobile landing page:

#1: Navigation

The navigation menu is a critical part of any website. It allows visitors to move around the site with ease while also gaining a better understanding of all that’s available within the walls of it.

But lead capture pages don’t exist within a website’s navigation. Visitors, instead, encounter promotional links or buttons on web pages, in emails, on social media and via paid ads in search. Upon clicking, they’re taken to a landing page that’s reminiscent of the website, but has a unique style of its own.

Now, the question is:

Should your lead capture page include the main website’s navigation atop it?

If the goal of a lead capture page is to capture leads, then it should have just one clickable call-to-action, right? Wouldn’t logic dictate that a navigation menu with links to other pages would serve as too much of a distraction? And what about the brand logo? After all, any other links will send the signal:

“Hey, it’s okay if you want to abandon this page.”

Instead of saying:

“We weren’t kidding. Look at how amazing this offer is. Scroll down and claim yours now.”

I’d say that the navigation should only be included when the website is already successfully converting visitors into paying customers/subscribers/members/readers. If the lead gen is merely there as a bonus element, then it’s not a big deal if visitors want to backtrack to the site.

The logo should be fine to keep as it’s more of a branding element than a competing link in this context though. Take, for instance, this sweepstakes giveaway on the Martha Stewart website:

Martha Stewart promotional ad for sweepstakes giveaway. (Source: Martha Stewart) (Large preview)

This clickable promotional element takes visitors to the lead capture page where the navigation element has disappeared and only the logo remains:

Martha Stewart’s lead capture page for its sweepstakes giveaway. (Source: Martha Stewart) (Large preview)

In general, if you need this lead gen offer to truly be a vehicle to grow your email list, the navigation should not be there. Nor should other competing links that draw them away from conversion.

#2: Copy

All of the usual rules for typography in mobile web design apply here — that includes size, spacing, color and font face. All of the rules you’d adhere to in terms of formatting a page for mobile apply as well. For example:

Very succinct headlines;
Short and punchy paragraphs;
Bulleted or numbered lists to describe points quickly;
Header tags to break up large swaths of text;
Bolding, italics, hyperlinks and other stylized text to call attention to key areas.

What about the amount of copy on the page though? Typically, the answer for mobile is:

Write only as much copy as you need to.

That is indeed the case with mobile lead capture pages… but there’s a catch.

Some lead gens are easier to “sell”, which means you shouldn’t need much more than the following to get people to convert:

A short and descriptive headline;
A paragraph explaining why the lead gen is so valuable;
Three to five bullets breaking out the benefits;
A short form asking for the basics: name, email and maybe a phone number.
A brightly colored and personally worded call-to-action button.

There are other cases where the lead gen offer requires more convincing. Or when the brand behind it decides to use the page’s copy as a way to qualify leads. You’ll see this a lot if the lead gen is something that requires an investment of time on the part of the brand. For instance:

Product demos
Consultations or audits
Webinars (sometimes)

In these cases, it makes more sense to write a lengthy lead capture page. Even then, I go back and forth on this because I’m just not sure that’s the smartest move for mobile visitors. So, what I’m going to suggest is this:

If you’re building a lead capture page for a well-established brand that’s known for overly-long pages and whose leads are valued at over $1,000 each, a super lengthy lead capture page is fine.

If you’re building a lead capture page for a newish brand that simply wants to grow their email list fast, don’t make visitors wait to convert.

Get a look at this landing page from Nauto for a free eBook:

Nauto’s eBook lead capture page. (Source: Nauto) (Large preview)

It does a great job summarizing the lead gen offer above the fold. Scroll down one screenful and you’ll find this eye-catching form:

Nauto’s eBook lead capture form. (Source: Nauto) (Large preview)

It could’ve been as simple as that. However, Nauto continues on with more copy after the CTA:

Nauto includes additional copy after its lead capture form. (Source: Nauto) (Large preview)

What’s interesting here is that this part of the page essentially rewrites the intro at the top of the page. My guess is that they did this to strengthen the SEO of the page with a longer word count and a reiteration of the main keywords.

Either that or they found that visitors weren’t immediately filling out the form and needed a little more encouragement. That would explain why a couple more scrolls down take you through a closer look at the content of the eBook as well as another link to download it (which just returns you to the form):

Nauto includes another CTA for the lead capture form. (Source: Nauto) (Large preview)

Clearly, you can still write a whole bunch of copy after the lead gen form, so long as there’s a good reason for it.

#3: Lead Capture Form

Nick Babich has a great piece on how to design forms for mobile. Although the guide pertains more to e-commerce checkout forms, the same basic principles apply here, too.

There are a number of other factors you should consider when designing forms to capture leads on a dedicated landing page.

Where should you place the form?

I’ve mostly answered that question in the above point about copy. But, if we want to be more specific, the lead capture form should always appear within no more than three swipes on mobile.

Realistically, the initial glance at a lead capture page should be an engaging visual element and headline. The next swipe down (if needed) should be an explainer paragraph and short list of benefits. Then, you should take them right to the form.

This is an example from GoToMeeting’s eBook lead capture page:

GoToMeeting lead capture image and headline. (Source: GoToMeeting) (Large preview)

They’ve truncated all of those key intro elements into the top header design.

Can you write the labels differently?

No, labels should never be tampered with, especially on mobile. Keep them clear and to the point. Name. Email. Business. # of employees. Etc.

What you can and should do differently, though, is to create more engaging form titles and CTAs. Or you can encapsulate the form within brightly-colored borders.

The whole point of this page is to convert visitors on a single element. While you can’t play with the field labels, you can increase their engagement with the outlier text and design.

How many fields should you include?

The answer to this is always “only the ones that are necessary”. However, you don’t want to go too far towards the simple side if the purpose of the lead gen is to qualify leads.

If all you’re doing is growing an email list, sure, Name and Email will suffice. If your goal is to provide something of value to the people who really need it and, later, follow up and start them on the sales journey, the lead capture form needs to be longer.

Here’s another look at the GoToMeeting landing page:

GoToMeeting’s lengthy lead capture form. (Source: GoToMeeting) (Large preview)

You can tell right away they’re not trying to give this eBook out to any and everyone. This is for a specific kind of business and they’re likely going to filter the leads they receive from it based on job title and country, too.

Don’t feel as though this is only something you can use for B2B websites either. Get a look at this custom wedding checklist lead capture form from Zola:

The first page of Zola’s lead capture form. (Source: Zola) (Large preview)

The first page of the form asks for your name. The second page of the form asks for your spouse-to-be’s name:

The second page of Zola’s lead capture form. (Source: Zola) (Large preview)

The final question then asks for your scheduled or tentative wedding day:

The third page of Zola’s lead capture form. (Source: Zola) (Large preview)

On the final page, Zola let’s you know that you can receive your custom wedding checklist if you’re willing to create an account:

Zola requires an email address and password before sending the custom checklist. (Source: Zola) (Large preview)

It’s a simple enough series of questions, but also not the kind you would find on most lead capture forms. So, don’t be afraid to break outside the norm if it improves the value of the lead gen offer for the visitor and helps your client collect better data on their leads.

#4: Trust Marks

Trust marks are often used around mobile e-commerce checkout forms. That makes a lot of sense since the goal is to make mobile visitors comfortable enough to buy something from their smartphones.

But are trust marks necessary for lead capture pages?

I think this boils down to what kind of lead gen you’re giving away and what kind of communication you intend to have with the lead after they’ve filled out the form.

Take the SnackFever example above. It’s a fun little game they’ve put on their site that exchanges a discount for an email address. There’s no reason for SnackFever to put a Norton Security or SSL trust mark next to the form. It’s very low stakes.

But when the lead gen’s value is dependent on the knowledge and skills of the company behind it, it’s very important to include trust marks on the page.

In this case, you want to demonstrate that there are satisfied customers (not leads) who are willing to vouch for the capabilities and prowess of the company. If you can leverage well-known brand logos and flattering testimonials from individuals, your landing page will more effectively capture the right kinds of leads (i.e. the ones willing to enter the sales funnel after they get their lead gen).

It’s no surprise that someone like Neil Patel would leverage these kinds of trust marks — he has a lot of high-profile and satisfied customers. It would be silly not to include them on his lead capture page.

This is the top of his “Yes, I Want More Traffic” lead capture page:

Neil Patel’s lead capture page sets the stage. (Source: Neil Patel) (Large preview)

It goes on and on like this for about a dozen scrolls. (As I mentioned before, if you’re known for writing overly long content on your site, you can get away with this.)

Neil Patel provides valuable data to demonstrate the value of his offer. (Source: Neil Patel) (Large preview)

Eventually, he gets to a point where he lets others tell the visitor why they should pursue this offer. The first block of trust marks come in the form of short quotes and logos from well-known companies:

Neil Patel shows off his high-profile clients and quotes they’ve provided about him. (Source: Neil Patel) (Large preview)

The next section puts the spotlight on “smaller” clients that are willing to divulge what kinds of impressive results Neil has gotten for them:

Neil Patel includes data-driven testimonials from other clients. (Source: Neil Patel) (Large preview)

While I wouldn’t suggest the length or style of this page for your clients, I do think there’s a great lesson to be taken away here in terms of leveraging the words and reputations of a satisfied client base to build trust.

#5: Footer

While I have a hard time justifying the use of a navigation on a lead capture page, I actually do think a footer is a good idea. That said, I don’t think it should be the same as your website’s footer. Again, we want to avoid any design element stuffed full of links that can distract from the goal of the page.

Instead, you should use the footer to further establish trust with leads. Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and other data management policy pages belong here.

I’m including this final example from Drift because, well, it’s the most unique lead capture “page” I’ve encountered thus far — and because the footer is as simple as they come.

This page promotes Drift’s upcoming and previous webinars:

A link to an older webinar by Drift. (Source: Drift) (Large preview)

If you attempt to “Watch the Recording” of an old webinar, it’s fair to assume that Drift is going to want to capture your email address. However, Drift is in the business of developing conversational marketing tools for business. While they could’ve created a conversational landing page (sort of like what Zola did with its form above), it went a different route:

Drift’s chatbot asks visitors for their email address to get to the webinar. (Source: Drift) (Large preview)

Visitors interested in the webinar lead gen are taken to a DriftBot page. It’s very simple in design (as any chat interface should be) and includes the simplest of footers. While Drift’s link is there, the only other competition for attention is the “Privacy Policy” and it’s clear that Drift wants that to be an afterthought based on the font color choice.

One more thing I want to note about this example is that if you were to go through these same steps on the desktop website, DriftBot doesn’t ask you for an email address. It simply gives you a link:

Drift’s desktop chatbot doesn’t ask for an email address. (Source: Drift) (Large preview)

This is further proof that you should be designing different experiences based on the expected outcomes on each device. In this case, they probably have data that shows that desktop visitors watch the webinar right away while mobile visitors wait until they’re on a larger-screened device.

Wrapping Up

While adhering to basic mobile design principles is the best thing to do when designing something new for your clients, be mindful of the purpose of the new element or page too.

As you can see in many of the examples above, there’s a stark difference between the kinds of lead gen offers your clients may want to share with visitors.

The simpler exchanges (e.g. give me your email/get this checklist) don’t require much deviation from the designs of other mobile web pages. More high stakes exchanges (e.g. give me your information/get a custom quote, consult or demo) may require some non-mobile-friendly design techniques.

I would suggest you do your research, see how long you can realistically hold your visitors’ attention on mobile and design it. Then, start A/B testing your design to experiment with form construction, page length, and so on. You may be surprised at what your mobile visitors will go for if the lead gen offer is juicy enough.

(ra, yk, il)

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