After creating a landing page and directing traffic towards that page you will find that little tweaks can help or hurt your conversion rating. Going through the testing of all these different tweaks can be time-consuming as well as expensive since traffic does not always come cheap. I want to give you some absolute musts for your landing page as well as items to consider nurturing your traffic and converting them into sales.

The ‘Absolutes’ below are items I would NOT create a landing page without while the ‘Essentials’ are highly recommended!

Absolutes

Absolute #1: The Headline with A Hook

• Grab the reader’s attention within 5 seconds
• Be informative – What are you about?
• Shorter the better
• Red text is shown to increase your conversions

If your reader is not interested in your headline then they will not commit the time and energy to reading the rest of your page. The below image you will see the headline grabs your attention with the word free then informs you what you get for free.

If you are having trouble thinking of a good headline google search ‘national enquirer headlines’ and you will see tons of short headlines that are crafted to grab attention.

Absolute #2: The Convincing Sub-headline

• Comes after the headline
• Expand on the headline while being convincing to get their attention

Your purpose above is to get their attention for those 5-10 seconds, but now you must convince them to stay and read your information. This will expand on your headline while teasing the reader’s wants; for example, above the sub-headline reads “you can grow a company twice your size.”

Absolute #3: Pictures/Visual Graphics

• Pictures should be as large as you can make it and not ruin the flow (How big is too big)
• Grab attention and relate to the product or service
• Picture needs to be a high-quality picture

As they say, “A picture is worth 1000 words,” a picture will convey your thoughts 60,000 times quicker than any block of text can. If you want to impose an idea or emotion it is best to do so with an image. If you look above at the “National Enquirer” covers you will notice they all have an image that relates to the headline and is meant to get your attention and read the headline.

Absolute #4: An Education

• Educate the reader on the product or service
• Use elements from other parts of the page to tie everything together
• Focus on the benefits that you are offering
• Straightforward

Now that we have the reader’s attention we need to educate them on what product or service you are offering and what problems are solved with it. The reader needs to understand what it is that they are looking at as quickly as possible. This can be done several ways but most of the time I would do this in a combination of written copy on the page as well as a video sales letter.

Absolute #5: Honorable Testimonials

• Establishes trust
• Pick testimonials from those in your buyer persona
• Image of the person
• Testimonials should be:
  • Short
  • Specific
  • Addresses one common objective
  • Truthful
  • Selling in a unique way

Testimonials are a key part of establishing trust. When the reader sees the testimonials, they will see that there are others like them that are happy with their results. If there were no testimonials to find than the reader may wonder how helpful can this truly be.

Absolute #6: Powerful Call To Action

• Single Most Important Part
• Go Big and Go Red (Contrast with the coloring theme)
• Use a button
• Green < Blue < Red (White background)

This is a must-have element or you will not be able to have your readers act. There needs to be a CTA that will bring your readers to the next location in their journey.

Absolute #7: Sales Flow

• Headline/Sub-headline
• Education (Struggle)
• Values & Benefits (Relief)
• Testimonials
• Call To Action

You need to give the reader the content that makes the most sense for the part of the buyer journey they are on. If you start with giving them testimonials before they even know the benefits it won’t be as powerful as if they were educated on the values and benefits first.

Essentials

Essential #1: Add Excessive Amounts of Value and Benefits

• Part of Education
• List of benefits; which should be reader focused

Focus on the reader and how they stand to benefit from this product or service. Once they are educated about the product they will need to know how that product is going to make their life better, every single way. This can be in an image, video, list or all three!

Essential #2: The Struggle

• What is the reader losing?

People that are struggling are more liking to purchase a product or service if they know it will solve their problem. Explain to them the struggles that are solved and show them through demonstration or testimonials that this struggle disappears when using this product or service.

Essential #3: The Moment of Relief

• How does the product or service relieve the struggle?

Consumers want to find the relief to their problems which can affect or impair people differently and affect their emotions. Finding the ways your product or service can help their emotional state by making them happier, less stressed out or any other positive emotion; tie your product to an emotion that people desire.

Essential #4: Methods of Contact

• Address and/or Phone #
• Contact Form or Email Address
• Shows you exist

To buy from you the reader is going to need to know that this is a real entity and not some African prince scam artist. This can exist in the footer and this can be A/B tested to identify the best location and size of this. You may find that without is better, but that is rare.

Essential #5: An Outrageous Guarantee

• Locate close to call to action
• Builds trusts

There are many different types of guarantees that can be used even if you think there is not one for you. My personal favorite from this source is #12 which is a satisfaction guarantee that needs proof that they took action with your product.