How to structure your landing pages to increase conversion
If you are looking to sell a specific product, then a landing page can be a great way to provide all the information a potential customer could need, all in one place. Landing pages are used to connect customers to your site from an external link, whether it be a social ad, promotion or newsletter.
Rather than customers landing on a certain page of your website, they wil instead land on a specifically designed page with the intention of converting a sale for that particular product. This is especially important if you are offering a discount or promotion, as it will keep them on this page, rather than jumping to other pages on your website and missing out on the promotion. While your website will have to appeal to all potential customers you are targeting, a landing page can pinpoint a certain audience, and cater the contents to help convert this lead into a paying customer.
Why to use landing pages
Higher Conversion Rates
Using landing pages can increase your conversion rates for specific products by providing more detail about the product as well as making it easier for customers to see what offers they can access and how they can apply this to their order. If you send an ad to a product page, they will be getting just the basic information that your product page allows. If instead they are sent to a landing page based entirely around that one product, with more information, creative content and clear calls to action, it can convince them that this is the right product for them.
A/B Testing
With landing pages only being accessible via certain links and not in the navigation, you can experiment with different designs and content to see which perform better. When deciding to start promoting a product, create two pages with different layouts and content (still keeping the important sections) and spend some time running ads to both these pages. After running these ads for long enough to gather data, you can see which page performs the best in terms of audience retention and conversion, and use this knowledge when creating future landing pages.
Speed up the purchase process
With this being only one page, you can create a structure that leads the customer to scroll down the page, providing them with the best information and key selling points, before landing on the product section itself. By placing calls to action throughout the page, you give them a chance at any stage to jump to the product section and decide to purchase the product.
How to create landing pages
There are various ways to create a landing page, but the first thing you will need to decide is whether you are going to create it using the same platform that your current website is on, such as Wordpress, or if you are going to use a third party platform that is specifically designed for creating landing pages.
If you choose to create the page on the same platform as your website, be sure to check that the page is not accessible through any of your navigation, as you only want people to access this page through external links. Using this platform to create landing pages will keep it all in one place and easy to keep track of, however you will be limited by what design options that platform offers.
If you choose to use a third party platform, there are a few to choose from, with Leadpages, Replo and Unbounce all offering this service amongst many others. These services are specifically designed to create landing pages, so will make the process easier for people who may not have experience with creating web pages, and while using these services may incur an extra cost, it can help save you time in the long run. By using one of these tools, you aren not having to have to custom develop the page, and can allow a marketing team the ability to get things running themselves, and work quickly on being able to test new pages quickly.
Landing Page Structure
Navigation
Starting with the navigation, be sure to include your logo, so that the customer can clearly see whose site they are on and get them familiar with your brand. A call to action should also be included in the heading bar, this could be something like ‘buy now’ but the most effective method is to promote a special offer such as ‘save 40% now’.
Just below your navigation, you can use an announcement bar to further highlight any offers that are applied to the landing page. This makes it more obvious to the customer that there is an offer available to them as soon as they land on the page.
Hero
The hero is the first thing your potential customers will see when they land on your site, so you need to make it as eye-catching and intriguing as possible.
In the hero, use a big bold headline that highlights your brand or the particular product you are trying to sell. Make it captivating, and something that will intrigue the customer to convince them to stay on your landing page. Use a sub heading that either expands on your headline or promotes an offer that the customer can access.
It is important to include a button that directs the customer to the shop section of your landing page. This will provide them with an early chance to purchase your product, before they read the content on the rest of the page.
You can also provide some social proof in your hero, to help show that other people love your product. This could be your review rating and the number of reviews, or the publications your products have been featured in.
Choose a strong image that either shows your product or showcases a lifestyle image of it in use. This will work with your headline to grab the attention of potential customers and encourage them to either scroll through the rest of the page, or click one of the call to actions through to the product page.
Why
This is the section where you will tell potential customers why they should buy your product or choose your brand, and how it will benefit them. Keep the text short, as you want to give your customers enough information to get them to continue scrolling but not too much information to put them off. Avoid filler, only highlight the important information and values that matter the most.
Try and keep it to around 3 points, as it creates a balanced look and allows you to easily provide the right information. You can use 4 points, but it will make the content look more cramped. Use icons or images to go along with your points, making it more attention grabbing and formatted.
Featured In
Show the reach of your company or products by showing the logos of companies that have either used your products, or publications have mentioned/featured your brand/products. For this it is best to use a mixture of industry leading publications, as well as recoginasble mainstream publications, so that the customer can see that your product appeals to a range of users. You are using the credibility and trustworthiness of these publications, to increase the customers image of your brand.
If used in an article, this can also be paired with a quote from the article to show how the publication portrayed your product or brand. This helps provide credibility to your brand, making the customer feel more comfortable about purchasing from you. Don’t use too many logos, and choose the most impressive ones so that it is impactful but not crowded.
Shop
This section works as a simplified version of the product page you would have in your store. It will provide the chance for customers to purchase directly from this page, without having to be redirected to another page.
To start, use a heading for the product to make it clear what that particular product is, and follow it up with a subheading that will provide more information,whether it's a tagline or a key selling point. Below the headings, include a review rating for the product (if you have enough and they are favourable) to provide social proof and backing that customers like your product.
To showcase your product, use a clear image showing what the product is as a whole. You can then use a carousel or gallery to include further images to highlight features and show different angles of the product.
Provide a clear description of the product highlighting the main features and information the customer will need to decide whether to purchase the product or not. You can go into more detail on the actual product page, but keep it shorter here. If you want to include more detail, you can utilise accordion tabs that will hide the information unless clicked.
Have a clear add to cart or buy now button. If you are promoting an offer, this can be included as the text on the button, for example ‘add to cart and save £50’. You want to provide the perfect opportunity for your customer to add the product to their cart.
Show the RRP of the product, crossed out, and the reduced price that the customer will be paying. Try to show as clearly as possible that they are getting a good deal. This can be done by also showing the amount they are saving or the percentage discount they are receiving. The other option is to promote an exclusive bundle, and how much they are saving by buying everything at once. This will help not only move on some products that dont sell as well, but can also increase the AOV (average order value).
If you offer other ways to pay, like Klarna or Afterpay, you can add this information below the add to cart button, so that customers know that they can spread the cost. Finally, if the discount is applied via a code, make this clear to the customer by placing it above the buy button.
Reviews
Reviews from your previous customers are a crucial part of convincing customers to shop with you. It provides social proof that people value your products and want to let others know how they feel about your products.
If you have a review platform that you use, such as Trustpilot or Reviews.io, you can look to add a widget straight into your landing page that will sync all the information across for you as well as keeping it up to date. There are usually options allowing you to customise this, limiting the number of reviews and how they are styled. If you have a large number of reviews, show the number of reviews that have been left for your business as well as the average rating. This shows that a lot of people have not only purchased products from you, but have gone to the trouble of leaving a positive review.
If you are adding the reviews yourself, you want to keep the reviews short, a couple of sentences at most, and add the rating score, which will likely be a 5 star system. Be sure to include the customers name, even if just their first, to provide credibility by giving it a source.
Dont fill this section with too many reviews, 3 columns is usually enough before it starts looking crowded. If you want to add more reviews, this can be done using a carousel or a slider, but make sure it doesnt move too fast so that customers have time to read the reviews before they change. Finish by adding a call to action, to link customers to your product pages, and possibly have a button that will link to your review platform so that they can read more.
Value Proposition
This is a great section to highlight important features about your product or company. It could be a few benefits that your product provides, a step by step guide (if it is simple enough) or what your company does to help with the environment.
If you offer things like free shipping, using eco-friendly materials or focus on replanting trees to offset your carbon footprint, these can be highlighted as it shows that you are conscious about how your company impacts the environment, and will also make the customer feel like they are doing their part as well.
To make these sections stand out, and easier to read, use icons along with the text, creating a more professional design. If you use icons, try and make sure they are of a similar design and size to keep consistency and keep your site looking clean.
Comparison Chart
To show why customers should choose your brand or product over your competitors, you can use a comparison chart to show in what ways yours is superior. You can compare against one or two competitors, and using a tick system, show what features your product has and whether the competitors do aswell.
Make sure that the column that relates to your brand really stands out. Whether that is making it bigger, using different icons or colours and including your logo, and also make sure that it is the first of the brands to appear in the table. Dont use too many options in your checklist, and keep the answers simple, so that at a glance viewers can clearly see which will be best for them based on the available features. Finally include a call to action at the end, so that the customer is given the opportunity to jump to the product page, if the chart has helped them make their decision.
UGC
As well as using customers reviews and testimonials to provide social proof, you can also utilise user generated content (UGC) to show how customers value your product and show it in action. This can be done with images through the likes of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. But the most effective way would be through short videos, from either TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram.
The short form content will allow you to use a number of videos from different customers showing how they used the product, what their thoughts are and if they recommended it. This will be used with reviews to provide not only social proof, but can save you having to record video content yourselves, as you can either ask permission to use content that customers have created, or hire influencers to create the content for you.
Video
If you have a video of your product, it can be a great way to show your customers what the product is and how it works. Seeing the product being used practically can make you seem more trustworthy, and increase your conversion rate as the customer will have a better understanding of the product.
The video could be an unboxing of the product, a demonstration of how it works, or a history of your product, showing why you created it, how it was produced and the results customers can expect to achieve from using it.
If you want to know the importance of using videos for your landing pages, you can look at how companies use videos on Kickstarter to convince customers to purchase products before they even exist, by showing the creation process, the problem they are looking to solve and how it will be achieved.
Footer
The footer of your landing page will provide the links that can allow the viewer to find important information, link to external sites or pages and promote your social media accounts. You want to keep your footer simple and easy to read, so that viewers can easily find the links they are looking for or information on how to get in contact with you. Include your logo in the footer to once again put your branding in the mind of the customer and improve familiarity.
In the footer you want to include links to your main pages on your website, such as category pages or your most popular products. This will allow them to easily explore more of your products and help to increase your conversion rate. You will also need to include links to your policy pages, such as your privacy policy, shipping policy and terms and conditions. This will help the customer know their rights once they have purchased from your website, and how it will be shipped to them.
If you are active on social media, you can include the links, usually in the form of icons, to these sites to increase your following and provide social proof to your customers, to help them feel more confident about purchasing from your site. If you regularly send out newsletters or offers, you can include a simple sign up form to encourage customers to sign up to your mailing list, looking to create repeat customers who enjoy your products.
