Landing pages are designed to convince visitors of an ecommerce site to grab a few items and head to the checkout window. They're used for marketing purposes and link-building campaigns, and when well-designed, they can increase your conversions by leaps and bounds. Despite their importance, ecommerce landing pages are often neglected. These pages could catapult sales, but business owners either don't know how to design a good page or they're unaware of the value of doing so.
If you're looking to make a better impression on your customers, more successfully promote your products and services, reduce abandon and bounce rates, increase leads, and raise revenue, you'll put a little more energy into creating better landing pages. Here are six crucial items every landing page needs.
1. Customer Testimonials
When trying to get visitors on a website to convert to customers, one of the best things you can do is provide social proof. Satisfied customers can share their experiences and effectively convince others to try it out for themselves. After all, more than 80 percent of consumers seek the advice of others-even complete strangers-when determining whether or not to purchase a product. Using testimonials on your landing page could be the perfect ingredient to more engagement.
As an example of using testimonials to convert, take a look at Mood CBD's site. This company sells CBD products, and to help convert their target audience, they've included a variety of testimonials from their satisfied customers. Their most successful testimonies are in video form, since videos typically receive more attention than text or even images.
Gathering customer testimonials requires a savvy strategy that entices consumers to participate. You might use mentions on social media, video, companies or authority figures who use your products, case studies, statistics, and customer reviews.
You might simply email customers after they've made a purchase and ask them to leave a review for your product that can be posted publicly to your page. If they're satisfied, they're more than likely to comply, helping you develop the social proof you need for success.
2. Obvious CTAs
One of the biggest mistakes landing page developers make is failing to give consumers direction. They're given a page with videos, text, and information about a product or service, but then they're not told what to do with it. Or perhaps the call-to-action is too small or too unrecognizable to drive conversions.
Your CTAs should be obvious and compelling. Create a sense of urgency in your text to play on the impulse emotion of your customers. Use bright colors and images to make your CTA stand out. Most importantly, make it a clickable button-consumers can't resist the satisfaction of clicking a button!
A single, well-designed CTA is not enough, however. Each landing page should boast multiple calls to action in order to push your customer closer to action. Spread them out over your page so that consumers can easily access your CTA, whether they decide to make a purchase at the beginning, middle, or end of the page.
3. Transparent Navigation
Navigation plays a bigger role in conversions than many businesses realize. An essential component of driving sales is offering the least amount of resistance possible. If your navigation is difficult to find or requires too many steps, it will interfere with your customer's ability to act.
As a general rule of thumb, it should never take a consumer more than three clicks to get from the landing page to the intended destination. Many developers eliminate the traditional navigation bar from their landing pages so that the only buttons that can be clicked are the CTA buttons that take the consumer from the page to their final destination. This transparent, simple navigation generates faster sales and reduces the time a consumer might have to talk themselves out of a purchase.
4. Sales Funnel Structure
All landing pages should adhere to the sales funnel structure in some form or another. The landing page is perceived as low in the funnel because it's getting the consumer closer to making a final sale. Oftentimes, when consumers find your landing page, they've already nearly decided to purchase your product.
At this point, you're probably running an abandoned cart campaign to encourage a completed checkout. You'll also want to include bundles, related products, or upsells to try to increase the amount of revenue at checkout. Use CTAs and simple navigation to increase their purchase and encourage return sales.
5. Clear Branding
According to Direct Marketing News research, nearly two thirds of customers say that brand consistency influences their spending. More than a third say they're willing to spend more if they recognize and can identify with a consistent brand.
Nowhere is branding more important than on the landing page. It provides opportunity to further develop your brand and create a permanent image in the minds of your target audience.
Think about the typography, colors, logo, page structure, URLs, image placement, and other factors that create a consistent brand. Each should match your brand and be used advantageously to establish authority and move customers to action.
6. Mobile-Friendly Design
Unless you're still living in the dark ages, your website is probably designed for mobile responsiveness. However, that doesn't mean that every page on your website is easy to use and act on when put to a smaller screen.
There's a specific structure that must be derived for mobile use, namely a linear pattern that makes it easy to scroll and find the information and buttons consumers need. When the CTA is clicked, it must take them to another page that's mobile-friendly so that it doesn't interrupt or prevent a sale. You might also consider advertising your mobile app with a banner or popup on your landing page. Mobile-apps are almost always easier to use than web browsers, and it might increase conversions among your interested customers.
Altogether, these six components lead to a stronger, more compelling landing page design. When you're looking to increase conversions and spread brand awareness for your ecommerce site, start with these tips and let your success become quickly apparent.