9 Essentials Of a Good Landing Page for E-Commerce Ads
- by Andi Whiskey
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First, why do you need a landing page?
Studies have shown that the average website converts between 1% and 3% of its traffic. That's a lot of potential sales lost.
A landing page is essentially a page that provides your customer with all of the information they need to buy, in order to get them to buy. It's direct, pointed, and is meant to get the job done. Studies show the average landing page has a 5-15% conversion rate.
That's a big difference, and that's part of the reason it's important to have one.
Your Landing Page Needs to be the Guide for Ecom Buyers to Know How & Why To Buy
E-commerce Customers Want You To Tell Them Why They Should Buy
There are some key things you need to convert customers.
One of them sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of e-commerce sites miss this component.
Tell customers why they should buy.
Give them the benefits. Give them the reasons your product is better than your competitors'.
Tailor your message to your audiences with landing pages.
You send traffic from a lot of different sources. Landing pages make it so that you can craft your message to be tailored for each audience.
This increases relevancy, and can lower your bounce rate. Lower bounce rates mean better ad costs, because the platforms know your audience is interested in your offer.
A good landing page will answer the following questions for a customer:
"Why should I trust this brand?"
"What's in this for me?"
"What's the benefit for me?
Notice something?
Your marketing is all about your customer, not you. Explain your brand experience with your customer, but don't talk all about yourself. ...That's just rude.
Here are some essentials for creating your landing page:
- Clear Headlines That Get to the Point & Talk About Your Customer
- A Unique Selling Proposition - Say It Loud
- Hierarchy of Information
- How Does It Benefit Them?
- Show Them Visual Context: Product In Use
- Trust Badges
- Social Proof
- A Call to Action
- A Way to Follow Up
1. Clear Headlines That Get to the Point & Talk About Your Customer
Don't make ambiguous brand statements. This is not the time. Leave that for the About page. Make your statements clear and about the customer.
Here is an example of a headline an alcohol-free beer client selling their alcohol-free beers online:
Why it needs optimizing:
- It's about the brand, itself, not the customer.
- It's not specific to the product.
- It's not giving the buyer a "why to buy" feeling. Buyers who read this will likely check out... which means bounce, leave, not convert.
Here is an example of an optimized headline for this alcohol-free beer client:
Why we chose this new optimized headline:
- It's offering the solution to the customer's potential problem: not able to find a flavorful alcohol-free beer.
- It's mentioning benefits the beer provides.
- It's implying a reason to buy this brand over others.
Clarity is key.
2. A Unique Selling Proposition - Say It Loud
Shopify defines a Unique Selling Proposition as, "A unique selling proposition, more commonly referred to as a USP, is the one thing that makes your business better than the competition. It’s a specific benefit that makes your business stand out when compared to other businesses in your market."
You want to make this loud and obvious on your landing page. Give them a reason to choose you over your competitors.
3. Hierarchy of Information
Providing the following in this order works in tandem with what the buyer's brain is looking for:
- A main headline that announces a problem they might have, or the solution to their problem that they're offering.
- A supporting headline, continuing to solve the customer's problem or help them relate to your product.
- Benefits
- Visuals showing your product in use
- Social proof and trust badges
- Statements that reinforce the proposition
- Call to action
Another way to look at it:
Why?
What?
Who?
How?
Portions of this can be rearranged, but make sure there is a flow to the information provided that guides your customer through the buying process that makes sense to your product and customer base.
4. How Does It Benefit Them?
List out the benefits this product will provide them. What's in it for them?
You can make this clear and to the point. A good bullet point list will get the job done.
Most will list this out in two ways: features and benefits.
Features explains what your product does. Benefits explain the solution to the problem your product solves.
5. Show Them Visual Context: Product In Use
You want to make it as easy as possible for the customer to picture themselves using your product.
You can do this with photos or videos.
We suggest at least using one lifestyle photo or video, beyond the standard "on white" knockout photography. Show them your product in use.
6. Trust Badges
They're about to provide you with information about themselves. It's private information. What are you going to do with it?
Have something to instill trust for your customers.
"A trust badge is a badge or seal that you place on your website that is meant to instill trust in your potential customers. Trust badges are traditionally visible during the checkout process, but a new trend of placing them directly on the home page is gaining traction." - Yieldify
Some basic trust badges show how you protect their data. Here are some examples:
Some other ideas include trust badges that show how you take care of your customers in the fulfillment process. Some examples would be "Money Back Guarantees" or "Easy Returns."
7. Social Proof
Reviews, UGC, your Instagram hashtag feed.
Your customer wants to see these on your landing page, showing proof that people enjoy using your product. You can use one, two or all of those. If you have some great content from your customers, show it off.
We like to use Loox.io to collect reviews from customers. They can help you provide an incentive to your customers to provide you with photos or videos of your product: boom. Reviews and UGC collected all at once.
8. A Call to Action
Tell them what to do. Make it clear.
Buy Now.
Order Now.
Subscribe Now.
Don't make it flowery. Don't bury it. Make sure it's a button so it's seen, and known to be clickable, and the customer knows what action to take.
9. A Way to Follow Up
Don't forget to connect an email service provider to your landing page. Email marketing is often mistakenly overlooked. There is a lot of revenue left on the table if you're not using email marketing.
Make sure you have some way to catch them and put them in a sales funnel. They may not be ready to buy right now, but make sure that you have a newsletter signup ready to capture them, or have an Abandoned Cart automation in place.
You can also setup order follow ups, so customers trust that they're going to get what they paid for.
We recommend using Klaviyo. It integrates with Shopify and most e-commerce platforms.
Optimizing Your Site & Sales Funnel with a Solid Landing Page Will Increase Conversions
We know this can sound like a lot to do, especially if you're a small staff. But tweaking and optimizing is crucial to continue to make more revenue off your efforts.
If you don't have time to optimize and implement, yourself, our team is happy to help. We can come in as consultants, or do it all for you.
Schedule a call with us, and we can talk about how to increase your revenue.
