In the end game of this online sales thing, the only true measure of how well your business is doing really comes down to how many actual sales you have to date. In the topsy-turvy world of interweb sales, there’s a lot of chafe out there when it comes to sales page designs and the respective calls-to-action they deliver to prospects.
If you’re just getting started in online sales, or find that nothing you do seems to get many clicks started into your funnel, here’s 10 of the most fundamental tips for landing page design and CTA’s that’ll have customers begging you to take their hard-earned money!
1. Headline
Nobody’s going to buy your product, especially your newly released product, if you don’t have a thought-provoking headline that fulfills visitor’s needs. Headlines that start with “How to…”, “Ways to…” “Top 10”, “Most popular”, etcetera., have a higher chance of catching the visitor’s attention. If people are spending less than 10 seconds on the page, chances are your headline needs some tweaking. Check out this older post we did about using Upworthy.com as an example of how to create stellar headlines.
Here’s a few more good headlines:
What you should know about…
Here’s a Quick Way to….
Little Known Ways to….
The Secret of….
Profitable tips for….
2. Traffic Targeting
Poorly targeted traffic is one of the biggest boo-boos made by newbie marketers. Targeted Traffic = Sales. Stupid simple, right? Poorly targeted traffic is just a waste of your bandwidth and a waste of visitor’s time. They’re not going to send their friends to your offer. Nor will you gain any useful data from them via your webmaster stats. Find people who need the solution you offer. Focus on search engine traffic, as social is still considered wholly unreliable due to all the uncertain variables that go into a person’s “sharing” though process (including sharing for the sake of sharing).
3. Images
All images need to relate to the product you’re selling, so the prospect doesn’t get confused and abandon the page prematurely. Dating offers need to show happy couples, hot girls, and handsome happy men with smiles on their faces. Weight loss needs to show before and after pictures to motivate buyer curiosity. Pictures add credibility to your offer and build trust with visitors. 67% of ecommerce customers say that product images and relevant supporting images are more important that product descriptions (source).
4. Size of Purchase Button
If they can’t see it, they won’t click it. There are numerous other things you can do to optimize your CTA. Visitors need to click at least one button to get to the shopping cart and this is it. Check out this awesome Copyblogger post about optimizing purchase buttons for maximum sales: http://www.copyblogger.com/call-to-action-buttons/
5. Fonts Used
Font is sooooo important! What you choose has to be highly readable, but it also needs to relate to the audience you’re trying to reach. To put this in simpler terms: consider how the Harvard grads you’re marketing a new winning stock trading formula might respond if you use an artsy font like Comic Sans on your sales page; they probably won’t. Font like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, Courier and Times New Roman are always good choices. Stick with 12 to 14pt size for perfect readability. Learn more about choosing fonts here: http://www.readabilityformulas.com/articles/website-text-can-impact-your-readers-buying-decision.php
6. Product Details
They may not sell as well as your product images do, but product details are very important nonetheless. This can be very niche-specific though too. Some consumers place more importance on them than others. For instance, the majority of people who buy t-shirts online don’t really care too much about the “weaving” process that’s used to make the t-shirts they buy. If you’re selling electronics like tablets, smartphones or computer parts, you better believe the majority of visitors will be expecting a comprehensive breakdown of your product to make their decision. Learn more about putting together a targeted product description: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/product-descriptions-that-sell/
7. User Focus?
I’ve viewed so many sales pages that fail to keep the user lazer-focused on the sales page and the message it’s trying to get across. Perhaps the biggest faux-pas is when a greedy product owner tries to further optimize their profit potential by putting adsense ads or affiliate banners in direct view of the customers who visit their landing page. The point is to sell YOUR product, not make the customer with other ads that capture their attention away from your CTA.
8. (Real) Testimonials
If they’re not really from someone who was enthralled with your product or service, then just leave them be. Why not, you ask? It just isn’t worth getting exposed down the road when someone sees their selfie attached to some fake name and fake testimonial on your site. On the other hand, with real testimonials, try to get as much information as you can about the person(s) giving their praise of your product including their name, state, and picture if possible.
9. Use the “9 – 5 Pricing Model”
I just made the title of this pricing technique because it sounds really cool. But, it’s true that having just one “9” or “5” after the decimal point will always convert better. The great thing is you can mix them together however you wish and not lose much effectiveness. Best, you can use this pricing tactic to add dollars to your end profits. Let me explain: Say you have a cute little teddy bear for infants that you have valued at $8.00 flat. You know people will pay this because you’ve done your research. However, the most recent marketing research tells us all that when you put $8.00 beside your product, it likely won’t sell very well. Take that same $8.00 teddy bear priced at $8.95 on the other hand, and you can watch your sales soar!
10. Limited Time Offer Sales
It doesn’t matter how many times someone visits a page with “Today Only” or “Only 5 Units Remaining”. The idea that if they don’t make up their mind right now that they’ll lose out on the opportunity to own whatever you’re selling is just too hard to pass up. Everything you sell should be sales price and the sale should always have an end date. Whether an hour from the time the prospect lands on your page, or at the end of a week or weekend. Scripts can be really helpful here. You can get scripts that update the price constantly to make it look like the sale’s ending soon and is also easily tweaked in Adwords ads too.
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