Are there any performance or usage statistics for landing pages with no navigation?

Question

Im noticing a trend of landing pages,

where the landing page would not have the websites navigation on it, nor the footer, but would stand as its own micro website, with only the logo at the top left corner instead of the full websites navigation.

The idea, (i think) is clear. Instead of letting the user navigate away from your landing page (which might be PPC) you keep the user focused on the CTA.

I am a follower of several usability websites but haven't yet seen any test data on whether this is considered good or not, and when.

Is there any data or stance from reputable sources on this? Is a landing page without navi really performing better?

Answer 1

Yes, there is evidence that in some situations, long landing pages (essentially what you described) have a significantly higher conversion rate.

In short, removing other decision options gets a person to scroll down and actually see more of your site than they would have if they have to actively select each page that they want to see. This has consistently shown to increase conversions on many sites even though I don't believe that it is the best choice on all sites. I have not found any studies showing when it is not a good choice though, so that is purely subjective.

The first testing of this which I have seen data for was by Corey Rudl in 2002, (but I can't link it, as it was part of a paid course) and showed conversion rate improvements in the order of 100%.

In more recent terms some good articles to read are:

SEOmoz Case Study
How to make users scroll down your page
Behind the scenes: Highrise marketing site A/B testing part 1
Behind the scenes: A/B testing part 3: Finalé