How to create a high converting landing page?

Thanks to how WordPress has helped democratize digital publishing, and WooCommerce the same for E-commerce. Creating a landing page is easier than ever with the tools available today.

In this new world where more and more actors crowd the online market, one thing still remains certain. We who buy and sell things to each other are human beings. Our consumption patterns and societies have changed, but in the end, we are not far away from our cousins ​​who lived as hunters and gatherers. Therefore, old truths in psychology, sales, and marketing are also relevant today, albeit in a new light.

Understand your recipient

communication and empathy are some of the most important things that we humans use every day. Marketing and sales are about applying these elements to a purpose. If we can understand our potential customer’s starting point and can communicate exactly how our product or service helps them solve their perceived problems – we’ve made it.

At the core of every high-converting landing page is a deep understanding of the various problems, priorities, concerns, and desires that our potential customer has.

Building this understanding should start even before they are on your website. By carefully researching which keywords and issues people search for on, for example, Google (suggestively using Google Trends), we can create an idea of ​​what problems our potential customer wants to solve.

Contextual relevance

When we sit down and write text, we need to keep in mind that all text must be contextually relevant. This is related to our understanding of the recipient who will be looking at the landing page. How deep is their understanding? It is very likely that the recipient’s understanding is not at all on the same level as yours.

Situational relevance / timing

One type of relevance that is interesting to look at is situational relevance. If the visitor sits on the subway or walks between meetings, it is rare that he will sit down and read a text of 5000 words. Therefore, a text that is straightforward and quick to the point may be more suitable.

Another situation you often see (especially with B2B companies) is that when people are home from work (normally Saturday-Sunday) they usually don’t perform purchases. Maybe instead of focusing on closing sales, you could focus on getting people to sign up for interest to be contacted during working hours?

Situational relevance is usually the most difficult information to map and implement, but can be incredibly beneficial to your conversion rate.

Problem awareness

In his book Breakthrough Advertising, psychologist Eugene Schwartz constructs potential clients’ awareness levels of their problems and the potential solutions.

• Fully aware: The Customer is aware of the problem, what results can be expected, what different solutions different actors offer, and why your product is the right match. This customer really only needs to know the terms for the purchase.
• Product aware: The Customer is aware of the problem, what results can be expected, what different solutions different actors offer, but does not know which product is the right match.
• Solution Aware: The customer is aware of the problem and what results can be expected, but does not know which solution to choose (or that your product can solve the problem).
• Problem-aware: The Customer is aware of the problem, but does not know that there is a solution.
• Unaware: Has no idea that there is even a problem that needs to be solved.

The first and most common mistake you make is to address the recipient at the completely wrong level of awareness. Marketing to the completely unaware is often to “preach to deaf ears”, but marketing to the solution-aware can also often cause you to miss many important customers. It’s easy to end up talking about cool features and technical specifications rather than the value your product adds.

Starting by marketing the problem for which you have a solution is often what gives the best results. This way, as many people as possible can recognize themselves in your message and understand that it is a solution for them.

Developing this knowledge is complex and requires a deep understanding of the customer and their problems. Do market research, analyze data, and conduct in-depth interviews to find out more about your customers. It will pay off if you want to sell more.

Now that we have finally mapped out our contextual relevance, it is time to present the answers to the questions people have on our landing pages. To be able to do this, the landing page must follow a natural narrative. We want to tackle the questions in an educational and straightforward way and answer them one by one.

A good landing page usually has the following narrative:

• What kind of business is this?
• Why should I care?
• Who else cares? (Social evidence)
• How does it work?
• Why should I trust you?
• If I trust you, what should I do next?

The design of the page should then be governed by its content. The form is there to strengthen and emphasize the content, never the other way around. Through our landing page we need to get our visitors to understand the following:

• they have a problem that needs to be solved
• The problem causes the discomfort of various kinds (often referred to as “pains”)
• The product/service you provide is the solution to the problem.

If we manage this, we have successfully built our high-converting landing page.