Five Tips for Optimizing E-Commerce Landing Pages
When you own an e-commerce business, your website is all that you have. This is your tool for connecting customers to your product. And, while you might hear that first impressions aren’t everything, in e-commerce, nothing could be further from the truth.
First impressions can make or break the sale, and your first impression comes from your landing page. Is it optimized to generate the high-quality leads that you want and deserve? Here are 5 tips that will help get you there.
Communicate Value on Every Page
When a visitor lands on your page, what is it that they see? The only correct answer here is value.
We’re not necessarily talking about rock bottom prices. What we’re talking about is that the consumer should immediately see something that is of value to them in some way.
The first thing to ask yourself is what ultimately transitions a lead into a customer? When asked, consumers say that the top three factors that are either important or very important in their buying decision are:
- Price 87%
- Shipping Costs and Speed 80%
- Discount Offers 71%
These might be what consumers want, but that doesn’t mean that they want to look for it. If they can’t easily determine the cost of a great pair of boots, what’s to stop them from thinking that they can find a better deal at a shoe outlet or Amazon? Their instinct isn’t to look for your price, but to back out and go with what they already know.
The same applies for shipping information and discounts. Is this information easy to find? If it isn’t, you are giving away your revenue to the competition.
Those three factors are big, but they aren’t the only things that communicate value to your customers. Depending on who your market is, they might be interested in information about a loyalty program, your commitment to environmental issues, your support of a cause or suggestions that upsell or compliment their product choices.
Here is a great example.
This e-commerce landing page features several elements that add value to the consumer.
- The banner promotes both a complimentary service and a commitment to fast delivery
- Easy navigation to their product page
- Mention of a loyalty program in the navigation bar
- Current suggestions with prices points included
Get the Content Right
Never underestimate the value of great content, even for an e-commerce page. Sure, your visitors probably aren’t there to read your latest blog post (although they might be), but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t invest some of your resources into creating the right type of content to meet your goals.
What is the right type of content? Well, that depends.
The content you provide needs to match what you are selling. Are you catering to a specialized or high-end market? If so, your customers want a bit more content, and details about why they want this and how it will benefit their lives. How about a simple, inexpensive product or even a free CTA? Short bodies of content that highlight just the basics are what will appeal to your base.
sproutsocial incorporates a clear call to action button on every page to entice visitors to start a free trial. They also include videos on all of their product pages.
Also, keep up on content trends. Video is something you should be using on your landing pages. Product videos increase the likelihood of purchase by 85%. Consumers feel more confident in their purchases when they have had the chance to view a video related to the product.
Ask Yourself if You are Attracting the Right Traffic
If you think the goal of your landing page is to generate leads, you are only part correct. The goal is to generate QUALITY leads. The point is to focus less on traffic that won’t generate sales, and more on the traffic that will.
You need to build your landing page for the consumers who will buy. You have a great tool for helping you do this. Your website analytics. This is your starting point. Site analytics clue you in on site traffic along with what marketing avenues brought them to your site. This is key for understanding who your target market is and what they want.
you are beautiful offers a discount for new email subscribers. This landing page also highlights a value prop: free shipping on all orders that are $65 or more.
Additionally, you need to be gathering more personal details about your target market. Who is engaging with you on social media, and are they the ones who are purchasing? Think about offering an incentive, like a cart completion discount for customers who are willing to fill out a survey at the time of purchase. The goal is to identify who is purchasing so that you can create a landing page that fills their needs. Once you’ve gathered the necessary data, there are many landing page tools that can help optimize these pages as well.
Pay Attention to Behavioral Marketing
You probably already know that behavioral marketing is important for generating sales, but you might not realize that it is just as important to consider when designing your landing page. Let’s look at this landing page as an example.
This landing page for Baby K’Tan knows their customer. She is a new mom, or maybe a mom to be. She has a lot on her mind, and the job of taking care of an infant can make it difficult to focus on any one task for too long. She is the perfect example of the “come back” customer.
She isn’t going to make a purchase on her first visit. Maybe she heard about the wrap from a friend, or saw a picture of Facebook. She found her way to the site, but it was only to look around, not buy at that moment. She has every intention of coming back, but another wrap, or another site, might grab her attention before she returns.
How does this landing page use behavioral marketing to adapt? By offering a value incentive for submitting an email. The 10% off could be the difference between a purchase for you and a purchase for Amazon. And, by being added to the email list, her consumer behavior patterns can be tracked to provide further insights.
Make It Hard to Say No
Finally, the one thing that makes a lead back out without purchasing every time is hesitation. They just aren’t ready to commit. Chances are they are asking themselves at least one of the following questions that your landing page hasn’t answered.
- Do I need this right now?
- Is this the best price?
- Will I regret this purchase?
- Do I trust this brand/company?
If you can find a way to alleviate these hesitations on your landing page, you are more likely to create a true customer. You can achieve this by:
- Providing information about how the product will make the consumer’s life easier.
- Providing a great limited time value incentive that seems to good to pass up
- Having details or a link to your return policy or satisfaction promise easily accessible
- Make it easy for the viewer to connect with you on social media
Insomnia Cookies features a slider that calls out red velvet cookies that are available for a limited time only which encourages visitors to buy them. They also incorporate photos from their Instagram feed to encourage potential customers to interact with them on social media.
A powerful tool when building and testing landing pages is leveraging the power of A/B testing, which is the practice of testing slightly different versions of your landing pages to maximize the effectiveness of your copy and call-to-action elements. Wishpond is a great landing page tool that incorporates powerful A/B testing functionality.
Now is the perfect time to rebuild your e-commerce landing pages for success. Need some help with executing these strategies? Get in touch with the e-commerce web design professionals that can help you construct landing pages that will resonate with your current and future customers.
About the author
Leilani oversees content production for the white label services team at UpCity. Previously she led the content department at L2TMedia, a digital marketing agency focused on the automotive industry. Her prior experience includes marketing Chicago-area flea markets, teaching photo history to Columbia College students, and writing articles for LAist.com and Citysearch. In her free time, Leilani enjoys photographing architecture, researching local history, and hunting for Mid Century Modern decor.
