How To Create High-Converting Ecommerce Landing Pages

• By Ammar Naeem
• 06-09-2021
• E-commerce

You wouldn't call an eCommerce website "eCommerce" if it didn't have product pages now, would you?

They are the bread and butter of an online store. They are present to convey what a business is offering to customers. It’s got details, features – the whole nine yards.

But what if you're looking to target new customers? Would that same product display page be able to convince them to purchase from your store? It's possible, but it's a long shot. Sure, your existing customers know the website, but new visitors won't feel the same way.
To make sure that they get a picture of what you're about, you need to condense that information into smaller chunks. This is where the concept of landing pages comes in.

But what are landing pages?

Take a marketing campaign designed to attract new customers. A landing page is the web page on which people who are attracted by the campaign message visit.

Google and Facebook ads are common examples of this. Users click on an ad they're interested in and are led to the landing page.
They differ from product pages since they only either show the message of the company or a handful of the successful products. The goal is to generate leads through and through.

The ingredients of a high converting landing page

For a marketing campaign, success is the end goal. When done right, landing pages can get you boost the conversion rates for your store. So, what does a landing page need to be effective?
Let’s find out.

1. Clear call to action buttons:
The more CTAs you have on your landing page, the muddier they make your message. You want to convince the customer, but don't force it on them. Subtlety is the art of marketing for a reason.
One or two CTAs in the right position can work like magic. Take the example of Spotify. They have a single CTA at the top.

For users interested in the Spotify subscription, they can click on the top CTA and be led to the registration page. For those who want to learn more, they can scroll down, read some basic information. When they're convinced, they don't have to scroll back up. Instead, Spotify has cleverly placed a CTA at the very bottom so users can register.

They’ve maintained a perfect balance in the CTA usage. Precise and to the point, they provided some content, a CTA, and they moved on with some basic information.

Even though Spotify is a huge brand in and of itself, they still adhere to creating Zen in their CTAs. Now, you don't need to be hard and fast with this rule. You can add more CTAs to your landing page copy if you think it's right to do so. Just don't force it on them.

2. Avoid navigation links:
The navigation bar needs to go. This isn’t your regular web page, it’s a landing page for a marketing campaign. To avoid deviating the visitor to external links like your About Us page and product page, you should remove the navigation from your landing page.

Intercom does this well. Their email marketing automation landing page has no navigation links. It's to the point with their goals and what they want to achieve: which is to get email addresses from people interested in their product or service. Again, don't deviate from the customer.

If you want your customer to purchase or download something, you don’t want them to navigate to other places.

3. Simple copy:
We can't stress the importance of having a simple, yet effective copy. You don't want to include so much text that your message gets muddled in the process. Instead, focus on action words that are to the point and get the message across. Take the example of Intercom again.

Both the heading and subheading are neatly written to be short, simple, yet effective.

Now, let's look at Spotify.

There's nothing extra in their copy as well. They've managed to add all the features and value you get from the Spotify subscription in less than 150 words.

Most companies make the mistake of advertising their services without a focus on the customer. This doesn’t build interest. When you focus on the customer, you build more engagement. Think about how the customer will benefit from the product.

4. Background images:
You can’t have just text on your landing pages. You need to capture them with colors as well. Background images work well in this regard. If you can, use an image that’s not pixelated since it can harm the viewing experience for users. It’s also very unprofessional. Focus on using full-width images that completely capture the user's attention.

Take this example from HubSpot – the sales and marketing giant. They use full-width images to convey their message in the middle of it.

5. Social proof:
All of what we've said above has an impact on the customer. But if you want to convince the customer, you have to add social proof to your landing page. Social proof is your way of showing off the popularity of your product. For the customer, it's confirming whether or not your product/service is legitimate or not. It also persuades the customer to look at your services with more interest.

Let's revise the Intercom's example. If you scroll down below, you will see that the Intercom adds social proof, and a good one at that, in its landing page. The aim of this is to convince the customer that the product is indeed effective.

6. Special deals:
This one is optional, but if you wish to add more value to the visitor's experience, give out a special deal for people who enter their email address or purchase a product. The deal could be anything: from physical to digital – it depends on your business model. The more value you add to a singular offering, the higher the chances of your conversion rates increasing.

7. Urgency:
Yes, your campaign isn't there to last forever. There is a limited time frame considering the marketing budgets and all. Everything on your landing page should be present to build urgency and persuade the customer to get interested in the service/product. Of course, you shouldn't forget the case of bombarding them with it. Maintain balance and things will work out for you if you do them right.

What’s an eCommerce landing page?
Now that we’ve covered what a landing page should look like, it’s time we differentiate it with an eCommerce landing page.
Let’s look at landing pages designed specifically for eCommerce pages.

The intent of such a landing page is similar to any regular landing page. The only difference is that you show off your products and encourage conversions with your offerings.

You can create a customized eCommerce landing page for each of your customer groups based on their demographics. The primary benefit of this is that you make it more granular and improve the chances of conversions.

All of the best practices we’ve talked about till now apply to eCommerce landing pages as well. Fewer distractions in the navigation, effectively written copy, catchy CTAs, and others can be applied depending on the type of eCommerce process you have.

The use cases are generally endless and can be practically applied to any eCommerce niche that you might be working on. Anything from lead generation, seasonal campaigns, product promotion, and more can be optimized effectively using the various ad platforms.

Now, there is plenty of competition out there when it comes to eCommerce landing pages.

Depending on your product niche, you can face that competition or not. However, there are some best eCommerce landing page best practices that you can use to take your store to the next level.

Representative of your campaign:
Whatever message that you might have on your eCommerce store, should match the message of your overall campaign.

Whichever way they come from on your website (whether through search ads, social media, email), there are chances that they are interested in what you have to offer. They would not have clicked on the ad otherwise.

They already are expecting product offerings. Now the worst thing you can do in this scenario is to deviate from the message that you’re trying to convey. Your advertisement copy should be representative of your website offerings.

They shouldn’t be too different things. This convinces the customer that their search is now complete and they’ve found what they were looking for.

Keep the message straightforward
Concise and to the point. This concept right here is the bread and butter of an eCommerce landing page and landing pages in general.

You have to understand that you’re advertising in an age of information overload. Everyone is on the internet nowadays and competition is fierce. No one has the time to read long paragraphs.

You should, therefore, condense your copy to be effective and actionable instead of long. Keep your copy limited to your offerings, use bullet points, and divide the content with headings.

Lastly, proofread your content to ensure that it’s error-free.

Optimized web experience
With more and more smart devices powering up our lives, the user experience differs from person to person.

Your visitors might visit your eCommerce landing page from their phones and proceed to purchase from their desktops and laptops.

Because of this, you need to ensure that your landing page is optimized for every device.

This ensures an optimal web experience on all devices and ensures a positive user experience.

In addition to that, you should also focus on reducing your load times as little as possible.

Conversion focused:

Your landing page campaign is designed for a reason: conversion.

Because this is your end goal, you should not deviate from it. All the extra from your landing page, whether it’s present on the landing page design, copy, images, or whatever, should be removed to ensure that the user is focused on the end goal.

This last point ties in with everything we’ve discussed in this post.

Whether you’re using effective CTAs, optimizing your design, or web copy, it should all be done for the sole purpose of gaining conversions.

Your offerings need to be sold. If not, all your effort is wasted.

Conclusion:

Landing pages are a great way to get new users interested in what you’re offering. This post discussed the seven ways you can improve your landing page design for higher conversions.

We hope you liked this post and thanks for reading it.