The Best 6 Landing Pages — French Tech Edition 2020
Landing pages are storefronts for companies on the world wide web, it can inspire us to connect with a story and engage more with their services.
At Mozza, we like to recognize good work when it’s due — and since most of our crew is based in Paris, we wanted to celebrate the best Landing Page made by the french tech ecosystem.
We asked 13 product designers from top-tier French companies like Spendesk, Qonto or Lydia, and compiled their feedback to rank the 6 most acclaimed french landing pages in 2020.
The selection criteria are on:
- User Interface Look & Feel
- Creativity and Uniqueness
- Wording and Value Proposition
- Conversion Rate Optimization
Based on our jury’s feedback and the Mozzayolos, we highlighted the common traits among and takeaways that anyone can use to craft a great landing page.
So without further ado, here are the Top 6 of the Best Landing Pages in the french startup ecosystem:
- Ulysse: Flights Comparator
- Folk: Contact Management
- Maze: User Testing Platform
- Comet: Freelancer Marketplace
- Swile (ex-Lunchr): Lunch Payment Card
- Zenly: Location-based Social Network (bonus last minute)
A successful recipe comes with great ingredients
Landing pages have a similar structure and there’s plenty of recipes to bake a great one. Every ingredient would be the basic element that plays a certain role. The most common patterns are the following:
It takes about 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion that would drive them to whether to engage more or just bounce — So you better start on the right foot.
“We understand immediately how Ulysse will help us from first sight. The testimonials support this value and the widget allows you to use the product quickly, there is only one task to do: search for your tickets. The social proof with the airline logo reinforces the credibility and pushes us to discover the product”
Michael Ponrajah, Product Designer at Qonto
The most important element page is what comes before anybody has to scroll — it’s like the first impression on a first date. This section provides an initial introduction to what the website is about and what action to perform.
The landing page of Folk gets right to the point with its value proposition and taps on the goal that their audience hopes to achieve: “Get the most out of your network”.
While Maze builds trust with the audience by showing the caliber of “World’s best companies” they have onboard (Uber, IBM, Microsoft…), along with several quotes from their target audience who love the tool. This social proof lets visitors see that exceptional companies already use this tool in their user testing needs, so they’re all the more likely to sign up and give it a try.
“What I particularly like about Maze’s landing page is that we are directly encouraged to put a link to our Invision prototype to test the product directly. No registration, no complicated form”
Bertrand Bruandet, Lead product designer at Spendesk
Any great landing page would certainly contain a short headline highlighting the company value proposition, a Call to Action (CTA) and a visual clue to conceptualize the wording.
Zenly is breaking the rules and bringing an innovative animation controlled by your scroller to showcase how you can use the app to connect with your best friends.
3D illustrations are taking over flat
Since 2016, flat illustrations have been dominating the ecosystem (and still do). They are aimed to humanize SaaS products or consumer apps — by making users quickly relate and understand complex concepts.
In the meantime, the big giants are trying to digitize our bodies and faces with AR and VR. The introduction of Apple’s Memoji, Samsung AR emojis or Oculus’ 3D characters accustom ourselves to this super-powered version of ourselves for a few years.
Many companies, started using this trend into their branding and illustration style (like Ulysse, Zenly, Maze and Swile).
“I particularly appreciate the style of the 3D illustrations on Ulysse, at the opening of the page you first notice the illustration which brings a warm side. The tone is in line with the graphic style which makes the whole thing coherent.”
Romain Pereira, Brand Designer at Lydia
The collective human attention span is at its lowest score due to the abundance of information. We became impatient to get the information in a grasp. Illustrations were the big trend for the past year, as most websites started copying each other to add emotions and humanize the experience.
Micro animations: from a delight to a must-have
When it concerns Tech and startups, we started noticing more effort into using animations to visualize the feature of the app/service. It triggers the “a-ha!” moment.
All of the selected landing pages have animations included on their page. Swile even goes further to add subtle animations to explain some of their features, and Folk uses micro-animations on their illustration to humanize the experience.
“The way illustrations are arranged on Folk smartly invites the visitor to scroll and continue on his way. The micro animations that are distilled throughout the page subtly embellish the illustrations in question.”
Maxime Quillévéré, Product Designer at Shine & Founder at Charitips
People are more tolerant when animations are much lighter than videos: they won’t mind an animation explaining some features silently, compared to an auto-play video with an unexpected sound.
“Comet has a brand universe light years away from the other players, served by a graphic execution from another world”
Julien Perrière, Head of Design at Ornikar
Final thoughts
By analyzing these landing pages, we wanted to focus on objectivity instead of opinion. It’s always useful to hunt down inspiring patterns used by others to craft better experiences online.
But you shouldn’t forget these 3 major points:
- Every landing page has a goal: Generating lead, creating an account, downloading an app… No matter how beautiful a landing page is, if the design decisions are not aligned with the goals — the landing page job would be inefficient.
- Building landing pages shouldn’t be about copying or cloning others, but instead, it should be adapted to a targeted audience.
- We are all stories in the end, and a landing page is a story a company wants to share with the public. It should be a story they can relate to and then show them the product directly. The idea is to build a connection and show to your target audience why you can positively impact them.
Before we go, I’d like to deeply thank our great jury:
- Michael Ponrajah (Qonto)
- Apolline Sentucq (Brigad)
- Romain Pereira (Lydia)
- Sandoche ADITTANE (Kanbanote)
- Ben Issenmann (Supercreative)
- Clémence Letellier (DA Freelancer)
- Christophe BOUCHE (Swile & Reveal Studio)
- Micka Touillaud (Sevenhugs)
- Ulysse Sabbag (Mozza)
- Julien Perrière (Ornikar)
- Maxime Quillévéré (Shine & Charitips)
- Bertrand Bruandet (Spendesk)
- Thomas Vimare (Kard)
At Mozza, in addition to providing product UX audit, we are building on a new pole dedicated to Landing Pages with some of the best designers and illustrators out there. If you are interested in knowing more, shoot us an email at hello@mozza.io
Thank you 🙏
Simo Elalj
Head of Landing Pages & Branding at Mozza
