In today’s competitive digital landscape, it’s not enough to just drive tons of traffic to your e-commerce website; you have to know how to write a good landing page copy that sells. The ability to quickly convert visitors into paying customers is what every business online aspires for. But which attributes describe a good landing page experience?
Your website may offer the best product or service found on the Internet, but if your landing page content is off even slightly, visitors will take notice of this and leave. It’s already bad enough that the average person’s attention span is 8 seconds! You don’t want to drive away potential customers to the competition and hurt your brand.
Keeping a person’s attention in a growing online consumer-driven world is a tough job for anybody in acquisition marketing. To get an attractive ROI and enable your sales team to see more conversions, it is advised that whoever writes copy for your website always prioritizes optimizations for an effective landing page.
Key Tips to Consider When Writing Landing Page
In essence, landing pages should be giving Internet users a place to ‘land’ – offering valuable information and relevant insight for people to engage with and convert in ways they had not previously thought of. These are not all hard-and-fast rules, but here are some helpful tips to create appealing landing page content that can enable the desired conversions for your website.
Be Concise with Your Headline and Subheading
When visitors first land on your page, the headline should be the first thing that captures their attention. Depending on what your headline says, it can influence whether your readers stay and engage or navigate away to something more enticing. That’s why it’s critical that you have a clear and concise title.
In a good headline, the wording of your offer should be easy to understand for all viewers. Be transparent and tell visitors what kind of product or service they’re signing up for. The more RELEVANT information you can provide in the headline, the quicker your prospects can get on board and convert.
Ultimately, the main idea of a headline is to get to the point FAST. Here are some examples:
- “Sign up for your free account”
- “[solution] just got easier. And it’s getting results.”
- “Get Started with [product name]”
Do not cram all of your information into the headline. Reserve the rest of the value proposition for the subheading under your main headline. This allows you to provide more vital information about the benefits of your offer.
Here are a few examples of headlines with actionable subheaders:
- “[solution] That Work: Why are you still wasting time on [action]?”
- “The 10 Steps to [action]: Get Ready to Ensure Your [desired outcome]”
- “Launch an Online Business: Ready to take charge of your career by starting a business of your own?”
Focus on Your Target Audience
Do not deviate content from who you’re addressing it to or else you may end up confusing your product or service’s purpose. Ensure what you put into your copy is in line with your target audience’s demographics and characteristics. Research what their habits are, what they want and need, and how they speak.
By being aware of all these important factors from the outset, your copy will stand a better chance of being much more focused, clear, and direct. Plus, when you have one target audience in mind, rather than a largely undefined group, you can gather more accurate insights, such as how well your landing page is performing for a specific campaign.
For example, it’s useful to have a tracking tool that can add scripts onto your landing pages to send and receive data from Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.
Related topic: 7 Thank You Page Best Practices to Increase ROI
Address Your Reader in the Second Person
How do you get someone to pay attention to you in real life? You speak to them directly! It’s the same when you want to write a compelling landing page copy.
To engage your audience straight away, you want to break away from the traditional writing habit of writing in the first or third person. You should be using the second person instead, which means writing in the language to speak directly to the reader. This type of writing usually includes:
- Words and phrases such as “you,” “your,” and “yours.”
- Direct sentences or call-to-action that tell the reader to do something, such as “Sign up here,” “Take the first step,” “Try this now,” etc.
Include Stats and Facts to Support Your Value Proposition
To differentiate product offerings in a sea of other related items online, some companies would use hard data to drive a harder bargain for their prospects. If you have access to such information, try and include RELEVANT facts, figures, and statistics in your landing pages.
When you can demonstrate the value of your product or service more effectively, these details will help compel your readers to take action with more confidence.
Format Your Landing Page Copy in Easy-to-Skim Bites
While you should ensure your headline and subheader gives a good idea of the value of your offer, those alone may not be enough to convince some readers to fill in their contact information on a form at the end of the page. Consider including a few short sentences or bullet points that clearly state what else the offer includes.
In a brief and clear list, you could outline and answer any questions visitors might have about the offer. What does the visitor stand to gain from the offer? How does your offer teach them various ways to use your product? Are there cost savings? Be sure to break up large blocks of text and use bullet points to draw eyes to key takeaways.
Sometimes, a good landing page copy is dependent on the way words are displayed on the page. Just as important as the phrasing, your copy needs to be formatted in a way that makes it easy for readers to scan and find the information they need in a few seconds. Great landing page copy is usually formatted using a combination of:
- Headings and subheadings
- Bulleted lists
- Short paragraphs and sentences
- Font formatting such as bolding and underlining
- Standalone quotes from your clients or company representatives (optional)
Use the Words/Language Your Target Audience Is Familiar With
Where it’s appropriate, write in the style that enables you to connect more closely with your readers. Speak to them in the language that they know. Try as much as possible to avoid jargon, industry slang, or any other type of terminology your target audience may not understand or use.
Display Customer Testimonials for Social Proof
Adding customer testimonials in your copy helps your product offering look more accessible and valid. As a form of social proof, they can simplify your readers’ purchasing decision by making it easier for them to imagine how your products will make their job/task/life easier.
Think about it: if you were a customer, wouldn’t you want to know that a service had been satisfactory for other people before you choose to buy or sign up? Real and credible testimonials prove that a service has worked for these people and that it can work for you too. As such, they have the potential to dramatically increase the effectiveness and persuasiveness of your landing pages across the Internet.
The Not-So-Secret Trick of Good Landing Pages
Most businesses would like to think that coming up with landing page content is simple. After all, you can insert pictures and videos to convey product or service information, and any landing page would seem attractive and capable enough to pull prospects in easily. This is a common strategy to deploy in the current media-rich landscape, but it does not guarantee a winning formula.
Truthfully, the real (and lasting) trick to curating great landing page content is to always maintain a single, clear message to sell something of ‘specific value’ to someone who ‘needs’ it. Whether it’s one offer, one promise, or one big idea, your content should have action-oriented copy that capitalizes on your readers’ sensibilities, encouraging them to take the action or next step you want.
Now that you know which attributes describe a good landing page experience, you’re probably wondering what else could you do to improve your website. If you want to create unique-looking landing pages to advertise your products or services, why not sign up for elfoAIM? Save time and effort on building landing pages from scratch with a drag-and-drop toolkit and a library of attractive landing page templates to choose from.
