I recently wrote a guest post for Unbounce, a company that provides a platform for beautifully streamlined DIY

landing pages. At first glance, the task seemed straightforward: (1) find 5 landing pages and (2) analyze them. Thinking that great landing pages were anywhere and everyone, I suspected the process to come together. Then, several hours later, I came to a profound realization — elegant landing pages are few and far between. What the heck?

Negativity aside, I was shocked by what I found from even prominent companies: incomplete calls to action, way too much text, and SEM landing pages that seemingly came from Microsoft Paint. I even found one with hot pink text on a black background. I remember making a website like that looked similar back in 1997. I was 11.

After a while, I expanded my research beyond Google search, eventually focusing the bulk of my time on LinkedIn, which — for the record– delivers amazingly relevant targeted ads.

For the most part, the B2B landing pages that I found looked way better than the consumer-focused ones. Realistically, this trend makes a lot of sense since — presumably– CEOs and executive teams can be tough to woo. But still, consumer-marketing is quite competitive since we have proportionately less money to spend than businesses. When I shop, I’m pretty tough to woo too.

After a few days of casual searching, I found 5 great landing pages from brands big and small, and I seriously wanted to high five someone. Sadly; however, it was a Saturday, and I was home alone for the afternoon. Just me and my computer. And 5 beautiful landing pages. As it turns out, I think credit card landing pages are pretty cool — I saw one with QR codes and embedded video. The self-test usability experts at UserTesting had a great design too — all the information I needed in one easily-accessible place.

So, this is the story of my first guest post for Unbounce, “5 Rockstar Landing Pages that Deserve a High Five.” Thanks to Unbounce Co-Founder Oli Garder for the amazing, amazing supplemental imagery (which cracks me up) and commentary.  And thank you, LinkedIn for saving my project.

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