Landing pages that make your sales fly
How you can utilize clear messaging, user experience design and human psychology to create more buzz when marketing your products.
You can probably tell by it’s name, the landing page is literally where you land after you click on a web link. It’s your digital shop front, and it’s damn important.
The landing page is your customers first impression, it promotes your sales pitch and stimulates user interest. This article will outline three strategies you can adopt to obtain an effective landing page which conveys ideas, converts into sales and grows your business.
Make your messaging clear, concise and easy to act upon.
Clarity is key to landing page success. Forget trying to cram in all you have to offer on one page. A clear and concise strap line and powerful call to action is far more effective.
A strong, to the point headline backed up by an informative sub-headline is essential. The page layout should also be simple, with well aligned text and images. A formidable logo or brand presence is also desirable as it reminds the user who you are and what you do.
An example of a clear and concise landing page is mailchimp.com
Their headline is strong and clear, addressing the purpose of using mailchimp at a core level which all businesses owners can relate too.
The explanatory sub-headline reveals more about the platform without overwhelming the user with unnecessary information and utilises social proof to establish trust.
Overall, the approachable, simplistic layout ensures a high level of user satisfaction.
When considering your landing page
- Ask yourself what message you are trying to put across and try to produce put it the most condensed simplest way.
- Consider who your audience is and what copy will resonate with them
- Get rid of unnecessary clutter which distracts from your main point
- Outline a clear user journey and call to action
Optimise your visuals
Following on from keeping things clear and concise, we can utilise your visuals to simplify powerful products.
When considering text, play it safe and stick to using black and white. If you’re using black font, use an off black not a true black. This is much easier on the eye. Just like this nice medium article you’re reading right now.
We can utilise visuals to make sense of complicated concepts.
Rather than overwhelming the potential customer with massive feature lists. Slack utilised simple illustrations like this one to connect their product to the workplace.
We do also need to think about the size and quality of images.
We need to strike the right balance of being big enough and off high enough quality to read on all devices whilst making sure your images load quickly. According to the Aberdeen Group, a one-second delay in page-load time results in 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions.
We can also use colour to make our user journey and call to actions clear. Some good examples are Stripe and Algolia:
On both these sights, the colours are bright and vibrant. The graphics are eye-catching but crucially not overwhelming. The images used are relevant to the text surrounding it, which supports the call to action in each case.
In both examples, a colourful background is used with white writing, providing plenty of contrast. Overall, a simple yet aesthetically pleasing landing page contributes to a better user experience.
Utilise social proof to build trust
A final factor to consider would be to include reviews and testimonials on the page, which are essential in acquiring user trust. When featured on your site’s landing page, they help to assure the user that you are a legitimate and stable source. It will make them more at ease and more willing to research further into your business.
Here, we can consider the site for the Intercom and Customer Support Book:
This is an example of how a testimonial is elegantly aligned with relevant information on the landing page. It doesn’t appear out of place, yet it stands out enough to make it more likely to be read. The addition of a photo to the statement also gives it a heightened sense of legitimacy.
Test, iterate, test, iterate, grow
Most of all, you need to be thinking about your landing pages all the time. They are your digital shop front.
We can use tests to define our next steps, and improve the ROI of our investment on paid advertising.
Ideas of tests to setup
- Utilise heat-maps and screen-recordings to see where customers are bouncing off the page
- Setup events in google analytics to track key call to actions then optimise the text, the button size, and the position of them
- Split test different messaging see which gets more conversions
- Find out info on your customer preferences so you can better shape your products
As your business and products evolve so does your landing page. This is why we should be constantly testing to see what’s working, what isn’t. There’s multiple ways you can run tests and you should always be testing something.
Leave any comments below if you enjoyed this article or if you have any questions about how to optimise your landing pages.
