What Makes a Great Landing Page?

In theory, landing pages are simple. You provide your perfect client enough information to encourage them to buy the product you are selling. You do this by convincing them that purchasing the merchandise is going to benefit them in some way.

The goal of a landing or product page is to improve user confidence by providing the information they need to make a purchasing decision and then making buying process as simple as possible.

Although this is by no means easy to complete, the only way to accomplish this feat is to start.

So where do you start when creating a great product page?

Generally, your landing page requires the following:

·       The Product or Merchandise

Obviously, this is your product’s chance to shine. However, precisely what you’re marketing might change how you choose to present it. Furthermore, it will determine what queries your clients have before they decide to buy the product.

·       Your Brand 

To be fair, your brand is significant universally, from social media to your post-sale communications, but it’s particularly vital on your merchandise pages. Products are revealed at a rapid-fire pace and forgotten just as quickly. The only way to make sure you aren’t among the forgotten is to ensure your landing page is memorable.

·       Quality Content

Your content is central to how you combine the information your clients need with your brand’s unique voice, tone, and persona.

·       User Experience/User Interaction

The UI/UX of your site is one area that can make or break your site before your client ever sees your product page.  Every element on your landing page must be dedicated to telling your brand story, informing your clients of the benefits of purchasing your merchandise. However, if your landing page does not load quickly and seamlessly, the chances that your client will ever see your product declines precipitously.

That said, here are 10 detailed tactics from our experts to help ensure you are on top of your product-page game.

1. Make Sure You Have a Clear Call-to-Action

The premise behind your product page is very simple: You want your customer to make a purchase. So how do you tell your customer how they can buy your product? With a clear, easy to understand call-to-action button. In fact, the call-to-action is so important that most experts recommend starting there when you are troubleshooting your page or building a new one.

At the core, the Add to Cart button is likely the most important part of the page. It needs to stand out from the surrounding content. The area around the CTA must be easy to identify and immediately visible above the bottom of the screen. In many ways, the CTA is more important than your content, as the placement of your call-to-action can impact your sales volume.

Finally, your call-to-action button needs to be clear. This is not the place to be clever – a direct CTA that clearly defines what you want your visitor to do, such as ‘add to cart’ or ‘submit order’. Save your wit for the content. You don’t want to leave any room for confusion as to what will happen when a visitor clicks the button.

2. Make Your Product Look Great

Ecommerce is great. You can sell pretty much whatever you want without the high overhead costs of maintaining a physical retails space. However, eCommerce does come with some major drawbacks, with the biggest being that your clients can’t see, touch, taste, or even try your products before they buy the item.  

See, people do judge a book by its cover, especially when purchasing a product online. The better your product looks, the more likely a person is to buy it. This is one area not to skimp, either. Invest in professional photography with someone who can get the high-quality photographs you need for a stunning product page.

Your products are unique, which means your product pictures need to be too. It is the best opportunity you have to create an experience that shows your product in the best light. Use numerous viewpoints and distances, pay close attention to unique features. Good photography builds expectations and integrity.

4. Link Your Images and Variants

Naming your merchandise alternatives (colors, aromas, etc.) can be a great way to add some character to your products. However, if you take it too far, your potential clients might not know what “Undeniably Iridescent” really looks like on a t-shirt. Is it pink? White? Multicolor? Transparent?

Often, when people name their products and colors with creative names, they end up hurting their sales because people don’t know if they are picking the color they want.

Having a quirky business persona is great, but it also needs to include some clarity to help your customers find what they want on your site

5. Give Enough Detail to Explain the Price

Selling at a low price point, you may not need to explain your price at quite the level of detail that you might need for a more expensive, luxury item. If you are selling a simple item that has a higher price point, you may need to include content that backs up that price.

The mistake that merchants tend to make when pricing their product is that their customers will automatically know and understand the product just as much as they do. Unfortunately, this is the furthest thing from the truth. Your job is to communicate the quality and value of your product. Not everyone is going to understand your product right away.

Even if you’re not a premium brand and don’t have any aspirations to become one, assessing if you have enough data on your merchandise pages to respond to your clients’ queries is critical in making sure that your products sell. 

6. Account for Your Customers

Your product and its cost are two factors that determine how much content you need on your page. However, these two elements mean nothing if you do not account for your customers.

Your customers vary in terms of familiarity they have with your product, therefore your product page description must clearly explain the benefits of your products to your customers. Some effective ways to provide consumers with the right type of content include:

·       Use video to greater effect. A well created product video condenses complex details and storytelling into a short, easy to digest video clip.

·       Don’t forget the User Experience. Adding special effects like drop-downs, image overlay, movement and hover-reveal for content can help customers get the right amount of detail they need to make a purchasing decision.

·       Break the Text Walls with Headings & Subheadings. Using headings and subheadings in optimal places within your content to make it easier for readers to quickly scan through the content to find the information they want more easily.

·       Assume your intended audience will have questions about your product. Using product guides to demonstrate proper use of your product will help answer those questions in a way that is easy to understand.

7. Branding, Branding Everywhere

Your brand is more than a few brands and slogans. It is the ‘face’ you introduce to your audience, the voice that tells your brand story, the mind behind the product. It is the very DNA of your company and your ability to weave that into a singe page will be the make-or-break point for your landing page.

Keep in mind that some visitors may never visit your home page, so their first interaction with you and your company will be with your product page. Although you should put effort into your home page design, your landing page is the best opportunity to showcase your product in the best possible way.

8. Targeted Content = Better Sales

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most customers aren’t buying your products because they love you, your brand, or even your message. They buy your products because it benefits them in some way. Your landing pages need to easily demonstrate how your products do that.

9. Add Your Flavor to the Content

Attempting to get all your features onto the page can make it easy to slip into boring bullets and uninspired sections. That’s fine for an initial draft if you make sure to go back through it to add your brand personal. Unfortunately, you won’t attract too many customers with boring descriptions. It may take a bit more time but using more elaborate descriptions that speak to the audience can help increase your sales.  

10. Leverage Social Proof

No matter what you call it, a product page is a landing page. It wouldn’t be a landing page without some social proof, and the same goes for your product pages. You boost the credibility of your company and your product with reviews, Instagram photos, and testimonials – even when you are just starting out, these tools help build consumer trust in your brand and ultimately increase your sales.

11. Know Your Customer

For any of these tactics to work, you need to have a firm understanding of who your customer is and what they want in your products. This understanding is central to every decision you make on your landing page – from how much detail to include in your description to which attributes should be highlighted.

You can have an amazing product, but if you don’t understand your customer, then you won’t know how to market to them. Some companies use one or more customer profiles to define your ideal consumer, then adapt your store and marketing to fit their needs. This may not be the fastest way to get your products to market in the highly competitive online retail market, but it is the best way to make sure your product will sell.