Besides your home page, your website should have landing pages specific to an industry or topic. Landing pages create meaningful inroads for Organic Search, and they are critical in digital advertising. 

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a sales page with highly directed sales writing and a prominent call to action. The intention is to highlight features and benefits related to a specific audience and then ask for direct action. The CTA can be a simple lead generation with a form to capture name and email, or it can be a sale, with an on-page Add to Cart button or Checkout. 

Here are three tips to improve your landing page:

1: Use a Writing Framework

There are two very effective writing frameworks for writing landing page copy: AIDA and PAS. Use these together or apart to create powerful landing page content. 

AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

• Attention: Introduce the reader to your pitch with a great story, fact, or statistic. Focus on the why here. 
• Interest: Build further interest by focusing further on the needs of your audience and addressing them head-on. If you talk to them about issues they can relate to, they will remain interested. 
• Desire: Bring in emotional language to highlight benefits. For example, Apple does merely say, “Apple Watch 6 has an O2 sensor for reading your blood oxygen level.” They say, “The future of health in your wrist.” There is a big difference when it comes to generating desire.
• Action: Give the user a clear path forward and ask them to take that next step.

PAS: Pain-Agitate-Solution

• Pain: Identify your target audience’s primary pain points and address them – this is the surface level pain, the one almost everyone knows about. Again, this is about talking to them directly. You show that you understand them by addressing them and not your own experience.
• Agitate: You know their pain; you have described it, but it would help if you stirred that pot a little more. You don’t be comically dramatic, but create more urgency for a solution by peeling back the onion layers a little more. Talk about the hidden impacts of the problem. 
• Solution: Don’t leave them hanging there! Your product or service solves this problem. Show them how and offer them a chance to take the next step. 

There are many other ideas and resources on these frameworks (and many others) around the web if you are interested in learning more. 

2: Call to Action at the Top

It may feel odd to hit your audience with the call to action instantly, but a surprising number of landing page visitors will opt-in immediately. Maybe the user is desperate for what you are offering and ready to take the next step with anyone who appears credible. 

You don’t want to delay that person by making them hunt for their next step. Lead off your landing page with a restating of your value proposition and most significant benefit, and ask for the user to take the next step!

3: Get Rid of the Fluff

You can have longer content on your landing page, but make it all count. The engaged user will spend time diving into your landing page content, but having lots of words for the sake of it will not sell well. 

Consider structuring your using the inverted pyramid. Need to know content goes at the top of the page, and the nice to know lower down. Keep the top of the page content short and sweet using easy-to-read sentences and bullet points. 

In between each break in content importance, include your call to action again. Some users will be sold before they ever hit the less prominent content, give them a chance to convert. Other users will want to keep reading – they need to convince themselves your product or service is for them. 

Become the Earnest Hemingway of landing page content. Hemingway said, “If I started to write elaborately… I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”

If you need help creating some great landing pages, contact us here.