Treat your online business like brick and mortar

The landing page of your website is the equivalent to the front door of a brick and mortar store. If you owned a store you’d want to be looking after that customer and their experience from the moment they push the door handle right up until they head out of the parking lot.

If your door is locked or there’s no sign outside of your business you’re going to have a problem getting customers to even know you exist.

I often see online business owners making this mistakes with their websites.

My goal as a business owner is to turn my landing page into the best possible welcome mat for my business. This is where your relationship with the customer truly begins, it’s the most vital touchpoint for your brand.  
The landing page needs to keep the promise that you initially made via your offer, whatever it was that brought the customer traffic onto your site to begin with.

No matter what marketing channeling they’re coming in from you need to respect those visitors. You also need to provide an environment that propels the customer towards taking an action that will strengthen the business relationship between the two of you.

If there’s no call to action, then you simply have created an information page.


 

It’s a backward tactic

The strategy I prefer is to build my landing pages backward. Too many people model their landing pages off of their company home pages.

But the landing page has only 2 jobs, unlike your home page, which has a whole bunch. The homepage serves a variety of visitors from many sources, and must get them to a place in your site that serves them. It’s busy.

All your landing page needs to do is present an offer and encourage the prospect to take action on it. If you’re not clear on what you’re offering you need to go back and rethink your marketing funnel. Chances are you’re still building a homepage.

The simplest way to construct your landing page is to provide a form and a button to click. That’s the core of the page, and everything else gets built on top of it. The copy you use here matters a lot!

Again, it’s important to keep the initial promise you made that got them to your landing page in the first place.
 

Tie it all together

I like to collect all the payment and lead information I need upfront. This helps to minimize abandonment later on in the process. This is where the copywriter comes in as it’s their job to manage the prospect’s objectives and expectations in building out the value proposition.

The image selection is another component that needs to enhance the overall customer experience. Don’t pick something that ruins the flow of the conversation.

Throughout the copy, you should be inserting indicators to convey authority and build trust.

Logos are great trust builders because they give the weight of a larger organization behind your messages.

There are a lot of components coming together, so I recommend brining in a designer to arrange these elements in the right way.

 

Action Steps

  1. Have a strong offer for your page, make sure you’re not building a home page.
  2. Provide a form and collect all the information you’ll need for payment and lead segmentation.
  3. Add a checkbox to confirm your prospect’s opt-in.
  4. Write copy and use images that builds trust and authority around your value proposition.
  5. Have your designer arrange all the elements to draw the visitor into and through the page.

 

Result You Will Achieve

Better landing pages with stronger offers, equating to higher performing conversions across your funnel.

Mentor: Brian Massey

Conversion Scientist at Conversion Sciences. Brian Massey calls himself a Conversion Scientist™ and he has the lab coat to prove it. The company he founded in 2007, Conversion Sciences, was one of the first agencies focused exclusively on website optimization.

This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.