13 Tips for Writing a Captivating Landing Page

Like most other copy, writing a captivating landing page takes a lot of effort in order to one-up your competition and gain an advantage. Your job, as a copywriter, is to make this happen. The following 13 tips will help you in your quest…

01. Know Your Target Audience

The better you know your readers, the more likely you will be to cater to them in a way that will keep them interested in what you’re promoting. Get personal. Know everything you can to make yourself part of their community.

• Knowing what your readers’ ages and genders are, their interests, their locations and even what browsers they use allows you to get into their heads that little bit more.

• Use a tool like Google Analytics to build your knowledge about who is visiting your site and use this information to focus your copy.

• Create a persona of your audience. Use the demographics you’ve researched to build a character depicting your average visitor and start addressing this user persona directly in your copy.

02. Write a Striking, Meaningful Headline

Your headline is the first thing that a visitor should see on visiting your page. You need to ensure that it is striking and relevant to the copy that follows. Your headline must keep your audience interested.

• Your headline must relate well to the original copy that helped your visitor to arrive on your landing page. Make sure that you refer to any promises made in previous promotions or posts.

• Personalise your content. Address your visitors as “you” and include action words.

• Identify your visitors’ problems that need solving and the solutions that you have for them.

• Make sure that your headline is well-positioned and easy to see.

• Add secondary headlines when necessary to elaborate on your main headline.

03. Include Your Primary Information First

You must include any primary, vitally-important information as close to the top of your landing page as possible. Without cramping the layout, make sure that your audience can identify what is truly important without having to search for it.

• Display your product’s benefits without discouraging your visitors through needless babble. Make the information clear and concise so that your audience is compelled to investigate further.

• Make sure that everything of primary relevance appears “above the fold”. In other words, it should be visible on the landing page without having to scroll down at all.

04. Describe Your Product’s Features as Benefits

You should resist describing your product’s features in depth on your landing page. Instead, do this on the ‘features’ page of your website. On your landing page you want to focus solely on drawing attention to the benefits that these features have for the potential customer.

• Explain your product’s functionality in a way that relays how useful and convenient it is to users.

• Don’t emphasise specifications or features that users may struggle to make sense of or picture. Your landing page needs to relay information that is easily grasped by visitors, in a way that makes them want to follow through and become customers.

05. Provide Evidence to Substantiate Your Claims

Without going into unnecessary detail, provide some evidence to support the benefits you’ve stated in your copy. This goes a long way to establishing a better rapport with your audience.

• Quote relevant numbers or percentages to back up your benefits.

• Make sure that what you quote is trustworthy and believable.

06. Address Your Audience on a Personal Level

Your copy’s primary task is to drive conversions. By creating a personal connection with your reader you have a much-improved chance of doing this. Address your visitors as you would if you were speaking to them individually.

• Include words like “you”, “your”, and “yours”. Being conversational and addressing your visitors as individuals as opposed to as a crowd will enhance your authenticity and believability.

• Use short and direct sentences that tell your readers what to do. “Try this now”, “Sign up here” or “Give it a test run” are good examples of this. A landing page is, in itself, a call-to-action so call your audience to action!

• Focus on your audience as opposed to drawing excessive attention to yourself or your brand. Your landing page is about catering to your readers’ needs.

07. Use Everyday Words That Your Audience Uses

You’re treating your audience as individuals. The best way to create a comfortable, unpressured environment is to adapt your language to fit in with that of your visitors. Don’t ‘high brow’ them with your copy.

• Avoid any industry slang, jargon and terminology that your audience may battle to understand or relate to.

• Keep your copy simple, short and sweet for your visitors. Don’t ‘dummy down’ too much either. Your audience is intelligent but may not be industry-savvy. Know the difference.

08. Make Sure That Your Formatting Allows for Easy Reading

Visitors generally won’t hang around your landing page for information. Cluttering up your page with too much text or long paragraphs will not encourage your audience to investigate further. Format your page sensibly, enabling visitors to skim through and still gather the information you want them to.

• Use bulleted lists.

• Make sure that your sentences and paragraphs are short.

• Make use of font formatting like bold print and italics. Leave underlining for links.

• Use caps for emphasis but don’t ‘shout’ too often.

• Space your copy using headings and subheadings.

09. Include Graphics, Logos and Images on Your Page

Just as an interior designer would tell you when designing a home layout, the utilisation of space makes a huge difference to how your landing page will be perceived by visitors.

• Break up your copy by utilising graphics, logos, icons, or images to capture your audience’s attention. Avoid the over-use of text.

• Using white space is another way of making your landing page appear less cluttered. Open areas of the page contribute to maintaining a visitor’s relaxed feeling when on your page.

10. Use an Active Voice in Your Copy

An active voice allows for more direct, concise sentences. This means that you are able to use less words in your copy and generate shorter sentences.

• Active voice sentences are easier to understand than sentences written in a passive voice.

• An active voice will resonate more strongly with an audience than a passive voice would.

11. Make Use of Testimonials and Reviews on Your Page

Using customer testimonials and reviews, or even review statistics, brings an enhanced air of authenticity to your landing page. Your audience is more likely to trust existing users than they are straight advertising material.

• Honest customer testimonials improve trust among visitors and, hence, their levels of comfort in your page and your product will be greater.

• Carry out testing to establish whether static testimonials or video content will work better for you.

• Including names and images of real people assists with trust-building.

• Testimonials and reviews that mention your product’s benefits are more impactful than those that don’t.

• Use review statistics that show great ‘star ratings’ over a large number of reviews.

• Being able to display recognised logos of established brands will bolster the authenticity of your product.

12. Provide a Powerful Finish

Once you’ve devised the layout and text for your copy, and made sure that everything is as you want it, you’ll want to finish off with a strong call-to-action.

• Make sure that your audience is well aware that their access to your product may be limited.

• Create a sense of urgency by encouraging your audience to take action. This can be done by giving the offer a time limit or restricting the number of customers that will be accepted at the offered price.

• Tell your readers exactly what the next step that they should take is, in order to not miss out on your offer.

• Add a call-to-action button, using short, sharp, striking copy for maximum effect.

13. Make Use of Technology

Online technology exists to make your life easier so it makes sense to use it.

• An AI content generator, like ContentBot, can assist you by generating your full landing page which you can then tweak to properly suit your needs. This can save you a lot of time when you need to meet stringent deadlines, and ultimately increase your productivity.

• An A/B Testing tool, such as Taboola, assists with looking at different headline options, videos and more.

• An on-page SEO checker, like the one available from Alexa, can assist with identifying SEO problems and potential solutions in your completed copy.

In Conclusion

Landing pages are an increasingly-effective way to market targeted specials and promotions. In today’s competitive digital marketplace you’re best served by being able to create pages that are better than your competition’s. By identifying which of these 13 tips for writing a captivating landing page suit you and fit into your landing page marketing strategy, and putting them into practice, you’re likely to gain an advantage you didn’t have before.

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