Even if you have excellent product pages on your website, sometimes you need to create special landing pages, particularly for emailed offers to your existing customer base. These people don’t want to be sent to a standard page on your website, they know where you are already. So if you ever have to design a landing page for an advertising campaign, by email or otherwise, what are the factors to take into consideration? Planning the page carefully might make the difference between a 5% response and a 20% response, which is a lot of business. And don’t forget, as I mentioned yesterday, you can learn a lot by visualising an ideal landing page when creating your site’s standard product pages too.
Firstly, however long the page may be, make sure the whole offer is encapsulated in the first screen, without scrolling. In other words, make sure the offer, main image and call to action can all be seen at a glance, without scrolling. Only once the prospect is comfortable they’re in the right place can you undertake some more considered selling. For this, it’s also critical to ensure that the headline and design style take up where the advertisement or email left off.
Then get to work with your sales presentation. If it’s a technical sale, people are going to want plenty of information. Where many landing pages fall down is that they don’t give nearly enough detail, expecting someone who originally saw a two-line advertisement to start filling in their contact details 20 seconds later. That’s not going to happen unless you’re offering something like a catalogue.
The page needs to give them confidence in you. Testimonials or lists of existing customers work excellently alongside the technical detail. Great photography always pays for itself, especially if you can show the product in action. Prospects need to know that the product exists and is being used.
In the text, think benefits …and then more benefits. Start with a bullet-pointed list, and before expanding on the text, consider if you need to do so at all. Giving plenty of information doesn’t mean waffling.
Finally, the call to action needs to explain exactly what the prospect is going to get, and it must require the minimum of effort in return. I’ll talk about this aspect tomorrow.