Campaign landing pages

Purpose of campaign pages

Campaign pages are a focused and fast-paced narrative medium. They are a simple, open and visual format that engages the audience and steps them through key messages to a clearly defined action or actions.

This means they have a different purpose to standard task-based web pages.

Standard web pages vs campaign pages

Standard web pages inform users about our programs, policies and services, to help them act quickly. It is generally ‘evergreen’. It has ongoing relevance for users, even if it requires updating from time to time.

Campaign pages are time-limited and relevant to something happening right now. A campaign page is action focused. It aims to raise awareness, educate and inspire users to take action in line with campaign objectives.

A campaign landing page should not replace program or policy content, or be used for content that helps the user complete a task (e.g. find and access funding).

Campaign pages sit in parallel to standard task-based content. It can be a way to create new channels into task-based content discoverable on our website.

When to use a campaign page

A campaign page is designed to be the first destination on our website, from broader communication activities (social media posts, advertising, handouts).

When we talk about campaigns, we mean any activity that:

• aims to raise awareness and motivate action
• focuses on a defined topic (e.g. biosecurity for travellers)
• is happening now or is about to happen
• is related to a department priority, is a large-scale activity, or both.

Your activity doesn’t have to be an official Australian Government Campaign to use this feature.

Consider the scope, timeline and objectives for your activity. This will help guide whether a campaign page is the right tool to use.

If it isn’t a defined topic and timeframe, it’s probably not suitable for a campaign page. If your objective is to raise awareness for a specific resource on our website, you may want to just promote that page instead.

Planning your approach

Campaign landing pages are self-contained content. They are a single page format that funnels the user sequentially through your key messages.

When you start to plan your page, you’ll need to consider:

• Purpose – what is the objective or outcome you want
• Message – what you need to tell people to deliver the outcome
• Actions – strong and simple calls-to-action that connect to your message and drive the audience to the next step (on or off the page)
• Visuals – images, videos and simple data sets that can support or strengthen your message.

Ask the Web UX team for a campaign page briefing template. You can use this to capture the ideas and key messages you want to convey in your page. The UX team will then use this to help you design a campaign page that best uses the available components to engage the user and deliver your messaging.

See more on campaign page components.

Campaign content principles

Our campaign pages have a particular style and structure. They use clean layouts and simple content with an emphasis on strong visuals. This helps to elevate key messages and calls-to-action and create a pleasant, engaging experience for our audience.

Structure

A campaign landing page is structured to deliver targeted, engaging messaging. It is a large format layout, on a single page structure.

Campaign pages are designed with minimal distractions to draw the reader in and retain their attention. The full-width layout balances visuals and text, with large amounts of white space. An in-page navigation at the top of the screen summarises the key segments or themes in the page.

The content should step the user through your narrative towards further action. You need to hook the audience early. Structure the page to introduce the most important message at the top of the page. Group related content and sequence the information to take the reader on a journey.

External links can motivate the user to exit the journey and they may not return. Only include links where they strongly support the message or call-to-action you want to convey.

There is no set length for a campaign page but keep it short and focused. This will help keep the user engaged in your narrative.

Style

The writing style for campaign landing pages is active voice and conversational tone. This will help engage and retain reader attention.

Language can be creative but must still meet reading grade requirements (grade 5-9). This metric helps us ensure we’re using active and engaging sentence structure, which is crucial to good storytelling.

Campaign pages are a narrative format, but they aren’t as immersive as digital stories. You can use sentences of varying lengths and a sequential narrative style, but keep it focused strongly on your key messages and actions. These should be simple, clear and to the point.

Campaigns often have particular taglines or keywords associated with them. Be careful how you use these in the campaign landing page. Headings, links and menu labels should still follow web writing best practice — be clear, meaningful and active. Avoid jargon or words that don’t clearly convey what the user can expect to find when they read that section or follow that link.

On page components

Campaign pages are built from a set of defined components. These can be put together on the page in a customised order, to engage an audience and best suit your narrative.

Each component can be used as many times as needed. Common campaign landing page components include images, videos, text and calls to action.

Header area

The header is a standard feature of all campaign landing pages.

It includes two main regions:

• Title region – logo, hero image, title and tagline
• Menu region – in-page links to key sections of the page and social share links

The logo can either be Australian Government or department logo.

The hero image should be a single image that attracts attention and connects strongly to the narrative of your campaign page. Choose an image with the most visual interest in the centre to right part of the frame.

Images and videos

Campaign landing pages use more imagery than standard web pages. Images and videos must add to the campaign’s messaging and should be unique to the campaign. Group images and videos with text that reinforces the same idea.

Campaign landing pages must meet accessibility requirements. Consider if any non-decorative images need alternative text. It is mandatory for all videos to contain a transcript. The transcript will be displayed in an accordion (dropdown) under the video.

Text

Campaign landing pages uses less text than standard web pages. Aim to keep sentences short and use clear, active language. Separate topics by headings. Use bullet points to create unordered lists.

There are 3 layouts for text in a campaign page:

• Text and image side by side (image either left or right of text)
• Text indented to ¾ width
• Text full width.

Layouts can be alternated with suitable images, to keep the reader interested.

Infographics

Infographics can highlight statistics or key information. You can include up to 4 infographics in a row.

Limit the number of infographics you include in a story area (1-2 rows). This will improve the impact of the data you do include. Only present 1 fact or figure per infographic. Use metric units of measurement and keep measurements consistent. Choose the unit of measurement that is most logical for the context.

Quotes

Campaign pages can include a styled quote block. Use this to highlight testimonials or other quotes that help drive home your message. They can also act as a nice visual airgap. Quotes can be styled to sit alongside an image or on their own in a full width text region.

Calls-to-action

A call-to-action is a prompt that motivates the user to take a specific action. Calls-to-action appear as links or buttons and include verbs such as ‘subscribe’, ‘apply’ and ‘find’.

These links will send your reader away from the campaign page. Only include them when you have delivered your message and it’s time for them to continue to the next destination.

It is better to target fewer actions than to scatter many calls-to-action across the page. A user who clicks on a call-to-action may not explore other calls-to-action. Consider the order they will be viewed when structuring content. Include calls-to-action at the end of content that relates to that action.

Resources and campaign credits

Links to secondary resources, credits or logos of campaign partners can be included at the end of the campaign page.