Hey startup founders, this is how you write a landing page
So you’ve launched a startup. You’ve got a brilliant idea, you’ve turned that idea into a killer product, and you’re about to set the world on fire.
That’s wonderful. But first, you’ll need a landing page.
For early-stage startups, a landing page performs two important roles: (1) it makes people aware of your product, and (2) it convinces a percentage of those people to give you their money.
Sounds simple enough, no? And yet most landing pages fail at one or both of these tasks.
Part of the problem is a lack of writing skills. Most startup founders are developers or software engineers — extremely clever people, but not born communicators. And few early-stage companies can afford to hire a professional copywriter. For lack of coin, many founders resort to writing their own website copy, and the results are often mediocre.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The truth is, you don’t need to be a creative wordsmith to write an effective landing page for your startup. You just need to understand how people process information. If you’re smart enough to design and build a great piece of software, you’re smart enough to learn the basics of marketing communication.
THE HARSH REALITIES
Few copywriters care to admit it, but writing is the easy part of our job. Any literate person with a modicum of talent can fill a page with pretty words.
The hard part of our job is getting inside the minds of the people who read those words — understanding who they are, what they want, and how to give it to them. Once you’ve nailed that bit, the words are easy.
To write a good landing page, you must understand your audience. And to understand your audience, you must first grapple with some harsh realities.
Harsh reality #1: No-one cares about your product.
Sorry, but it’s true. I know you love your product. I know you’ve poured everything into it. Heart, soul, blood, sweat, tears, etc.
The fact is, no-one really cares.
As a customer, what I care about are my own problems. I care about the obstacles that slow me down, or hold me back, or waste my money. I’m not interested in buying your product; I’m interested in buying a solution to my problems. And when I land on your website, I want to know two things:
(1) Which of my problems can you solve?
(2) How will you do it?
Your whole landing page should be geared to answering these two questions. Don’t tell me about your features. Don’t tell me about your team, or your history, or your values. I couldn’t care less. Just tell me how you’re going to make my life better. And make it quick, because…
Harsh reality #2: No-one wants to read your landing page.
Even if it’s a really good one.
You see, I didn’t come to your website to kill time. That’s what YouTube is for. I came to your website — reluctantly — because I have a problem. I’ve given you a few seconds of my precious time in the hope of finding a solution.
If that solution is not apparent to me at first glance, why would I stick around? I didn’t want to be here in the first place.
In his excellent book Practical Typography, the designer Matthew Butterick pretty well sums it up:
“I believe that most readers are looking for reasons to stop reading. Not because they’re malicious or aloof. They’re just being rational. If readers have other demands on their time, why should they pay any more attention than they absolutely must? Readers are always looking for the exit.”
Your landing page has two possible exits: (a) close the tab, or (b) buy the product. If you waste my time, or fail to capture my attention, I’m taking Exit A and never coming back.
THE ANATOMY OF A LANDING PAGE
Writing a landing page is probably 30% art and 70% science. To be sure, the creative quality of your writing matters. But it’s less important than the structure of your message.
Pick a few successful internet companies — Dropbox, MailChimp, and Squarespace, for example. Take a look at their websites.
Notice the common theme? The designs vary, but the basic structure of the landing page is always the same. These companies spend a lot of money testing and refining their marketing. The fact that they’ve all settled on the same formula suggests that the formula works.
There’s really not much to it. The best landing pages consist of just three elements: the headline, the call-to-action, and the benefits. Understand what each of these elements is for, and you’ve got the whole game figured out.
1. The headline
When I land on your page, the headline is the first thing I read. Its job is to capture my attention and convince me to keep reading.
The headline is usually followed by a sub-headline of two or three sentences. Its job is to articulate the solution to my problem.
For example:
The headline is by far the most important element on your landing page. But don’t take it from me. Take it from David Ogilvy, the legendary ad man, who once said:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
It stands to reason, then, that you should invest 80% of your time and effort in writing the headline. If you’ve set aside five hours to write your landing page, spend four of those hours researching and crafting different versions of your headline. Once you’ve got a few promising ideas, run A/B tests to see which one converts best.
2. The call-to-action
Every landing page exists to elicit some kind of action from its visitors. If you run a tech startup, you probably want people to buy your product or sign up for a free trial.
But your call-to-action could be something else. Join the mailing list. Book a phone call. Download a whitepaper. What you ask is less important than how you ask, and unskilled marketers tend make a couple of mistakes on this score.
The first mistake is putting your call-to-action at the end of your page, like the conclusion to an essay. By doing this, you assume that everyone who lands on your page will read the whole thing, patiently scrolling until they find the magic button. But we’ve already seen that this isn’t true.
Around 80% of your site visitors won’t make it past the headline. And of the 20% who do, you’ll lose most of them as they meander aimlessly down the page. By burying your call-to-action at the very end, you ensure that almost no-one will find it, which renders your landing page useless.
Your first call-to-action should be displayed prominently above the fold (the part of your website that’s visible without scrolling down). The lower sections of your page should display the same call-to-action another two or three times.
The second mistake is using vague language in your button text — phrases like Let’s go, Learn more, or Start now.
These phrases don’t tell me anything. Remember, I’m looking for the exit. I’m impatient, I’m self-interested, and I’m not in the mood to take a chance on some random button. If I click that button, I want to know exactly what will happen.
Your button text should be clear, precise and persuasive.
Start your free trial is better than Start now.
Download our whitepaper is better than Learn more.
Enjoy great savings is better than Buy our magazine.
3. The benefits
In a perfect world, your headline and call-to-action are so persuasive that they convince me to sign up on the spot, no questions asked.
In reality, I probably need a little more convincing. I’m beginning to suspect that your product is worth my money, but I’m not willing to click the button just yet. So I start scrolling down your page.
It’s time to talk benefits. I want to see a compelling argument for using your product, broken down into simple, easily digestible chunks.
Each benefit should be presented as a separate paragraph (two or three sentences) with its own headline. This makes it easier to scan your page, which is how most people read on the web. Limit yourself to three or four benefits, and present them in descending order of importance.
Notice, too, that we call them benefits instead of features. This is an important difference. Features relate to your product — and you might recall that no-one cares about your product. Benefits relate to me and my problems, which are the only things I’m interested in.
Whenever you’re tempted to tell me about a feature, convert it into a benefit. One-click invoice generation is a feature. Wasting less time on bookkeeping is a benefit. Email automation is a feature. Reaching more prospects is a benefit. Automatic cloud sync is a feature. Never losing an important document again is a benefit.
If you can’t match a product feature to its corresponding benefit, that feature should not exist.
SOME NOTES ON STYLE
The best landing pages use plain, conversational language. They’re not pretentious. They don’t over-complicate things. They just have a friendly chat with the reader.
Always write your landing page in the first- and second-person. We build tools for you sounds a lot more human than the third-person Our company builds tools for other companies.
But be careful: don’t let “we” dominate the conversation. Focus all your attention on “you”. This is what helps you. This is how you benefit. This is how your situation improves.
This will take some practice. If you’re like most founders, you’ve probably been neck-deep in your product, seven days a week, for the past several months or years. It’s not easy to pull yourself back from the coalface and look at what you’ve created from an outsider’s perspective. But if that creation is ever going to succeed, it’s a skill you need to master.
Tim Gregg is the founder and CEO of Recreate
