How To Create E-Commerce Landing Pages That Convert into Sales

They’ve seen your advert, content or social media accounts and they’ve clicked through to your landing page – that’s great! But just because you’ve got them there it doesn’t mean your job is done and they’re a sure thing. Far from it actually!

Your landing pages need to be well-designed and persuasive if you hope to convince the visitor to make a purchase and convert to a sale. But this can take a lot of careful planning and crafting of your pages and if you’ve never done it before (or if your last landing pages weren’t converting as well as you’d like) it can feel overwhelming trying to get it right.

So if you’re not sure how to create e-commerce landing pages that convert into sales, let us give you some advice.

Make your landing pages simple and stylish

Complicated landing pages can be overwhelming and off-putting, especially if you’ve thrown lots of text and information on the page. So to make it as simple as possible for your visitors and to make the user journey as enjoyable as possible, you need to keep your pages simple and stylish. Choose aesthetically pleasing designs and effective layouts that convey all the important information without crowding the page. You might wish to design these yourself or have a professional do it if you’re not confident in your own creative skillset.

Make your offer clear and concise

On a similar note, your landing pages need to make it very clear and simple what’s on offer, whether that’s a discount, exclusive offer or even just your products. Either way, you need to make it immediately clear what is being sold and why the visitor needs it in their life. Make any important copy bigger and bolder so it stands out. For example, ’50% off’ or Buy one get one free’.

Be sure to include photos or visuals

Whether it’s as simple as fun, bold slogans or even a short video clip, it’s a good idea to make sure you have some visual elements to your landing pages – don’t let it just be text as this is very boring and unappealing. Branding and aesthetics could have just as much to do with someones buying choices as the product. That’s why we like to buy items with bright and interesting packaging over something dull or drab.

So although you need to be careful not to overcrowd your landing page, visuals will play a huge part in this and need to be taken into consideration at the design stage.

Create sales copy that converts

The text that you include on your landing page is going to play a huge role in whether your visitor converts or not. As such, it’s important to create short and snappy content that helps to sell your goods or services. Subheadings and bullet points can be a helpful way to break up information and lay it out clearly. You can use these to include a few points about what makes your business unique (your USP) and why they need to make the purchase.

Page headlines also need to be strong in order to grab the visitors attention. Make these as catchy and simple as possible too. But just remember, don’t include too much text on your landing page as this can be distracting and unhelpful.

Include a CTA (or two)

One of the most important aspects of your landing page is going to be your call to action (CTA). This should be a button  or banner offering clear instructions – what is it that you want your users to do?

For example, ‘buy now’ or ‘sign up for our newsletter’. You could even include more than one call to action on the page to make it even easier for the visitor. Simply space these out across the page so no matter where they are in the navigation they can quickly make the desired action – such as making a purchase.

Create a sense of urgency on your pages

You should also use headlines, copy and CTAs to create a sense of urgency. This can persuade the user to make a purchase quicker. This could be a onetime offer or exclusive deal that will run out if they don’t act fast.

Creating a sense of urgency can also be done by outlining why your product is so great, how it can add real value to their life and why they must buy one right away. This sense of urgency can prompt more purchases in particular spontaneous buying of items they didn’t originally come to your e-commerce site for.

Make sure that your sales page is mobile-friendly

Now this one is vital – you need to make sure that your landing pages are mobile-friendly. Statistics have shown that over 50% of e-commerce traffic comes from mobile devices such as smartphones. As such, businesses can’t afford to ignore this important trend. If a user has clicked through to your landing page only to find they have to zoom in really close, scroll a long way down the page or that they simply can’t see the information properly, they’ll abandon the page pretty quickly.

Therefore, it’s vital that you make all your landing pages mobile-friendly so that customers can make purchases no matter where they are or which device they’re using. This is an important part of creating a seamless consumer journey and could cost you sales if you don’t take it seriously.

Test your landing pages and designs

Last but not least, one of the best ways to create landing pages that convert is to test your content, headlines and designs to see what works best and what customers are interacting with. You can do this by adding tracking to your adverts and running analytics to see what’s working. You could also use AB testing and roll these out to different groups of consumers to see which people favour. You can then apply the better-received techniques to your future landing pages.

Written by Sarah McCann of NI Parcels – a courier comparison website for online shoppers and businesses.