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IBRAHIM ON LANDING PAGES

Hi there, all you DTC folks!

In yesterday’s newsletter, I wrote a small column on landing pages where I kinda dwelled into why you shouldn’t be driving your paid traffic to a website, and why should you instead be driving that traffic on to a landing page. If you missed that issue, you can click here to read. You’ll find my column at the bottom.

Since we’ve started talking about landing pages (LPs), on today’s deep dive (we’ll do this every Wednesday), I figured it’d be a good idea to dive a bit deeper into LPs and on what goes behind building a good landing page!

The 6 main questions every LP needs to answer

Over and over again, this is what you need to answer on a landing page:

1. What is this product?

2. Why does it exist?

3. How does it benefit my life?

4. Why is it the best option for this product?

5. What are others saying about this product?

6. How soon can I get it if I order now?

The Ingredients

A good angle

The first ingredient for any good landing page is a hook or an angle. You can sell a great product, but without an angle or a reason for someone to buy, you might not get someone over the finish line.

Cadence sells beautiful capsule-looking containers to hold your creams, serums, vitamins, jewellery, etc.

You could sell it as just a container product, or you can come up with hooks for different landing page tests against different audiences:

• The perfect way to travel with your existing routine

• The easiest way to sleepover at your partner's apartment

• The only leak-proof capsules that exist in the market

• The easiest way to go rock-climbing and keep your vitamins

Without a good angle, you're just pushing capsules; with a good angle, you're pushing a solution with a real purpose.

Exceptional Copywriting

Good copywriting makes the difference between a landing page with a 1% conversion rate and a landing page with a 7% conversion rate.

The main trick is to always think of the copy on the page has gone through a conveyer belt:

At the beginning of the conveyer belt is the value prop from the product or marketing team. After that is the customer you're trying to sell to, with this specific landing page. And lastly, is the benefit they receive.

Value prop → The customer you're selling to → The benefit they receive.

Your page, with the exception of a How It Works or FAQ section, should almost always be talking about the benefits of value props versus the value props themselves.

Ask yourself... what is it this person is buying when they buy from me? Continuing off the Cadence example, you're not JUST buying travel capsules, you're also getting:

• An easy to keep your hair and skin fresh with your own products, versus a hotel-supplied body wash and shampoo.

• Peace of mind that your products won't leak in your suitcase, and that it'll get through TSA.

• A fun way to transport your vitamins, jewellery, etc.

All that comes through via good copywriting.

Social Proof

There are 3 types of social proof that should always be on a landing page:

1. Customer reviews (brownie points if you collect images and videos as well!)

2. Established sources

3. User-generated content (UGC)

4. Customer Reviews

Your landing page is obviously going to tell people you're the best product on the market, or the best option to solve the problem someone is experiencing. But what's better than you saying it? Your existing customers saying that on your behalf.

It makes me sad when I visit some landing pages and notice they don’t even have customer reviews embedded on a landing page. A study concluded that ~95% of the customers read reviews before making a purchase. I’m an active online shopper, and I don’t think I’ve ever made a purchase without reading reviews.

One more thing to notice here is the date when the reviews are published. If I’m visiting your landing page, and if your reviews are 2 years old, my first impression is, “probably no one has bought from them since the past 2 years, so let me just get out of here”.

For a cold customer, trusting a brand online is already hard enough, don’t make it harder. Having reviews on your landing page is a part of the fundamentals.

You can actively request for customer reviews by setting up automated flows, and publish them automatically when a customer publishes it. If you’re unsure of what tool to use, Okendo does a great job at this!

1. “Established” Sources

I put this in quotes because “established” means different things to different people. Normally this is just press logos, but it depends on WHO you're selling to, again.

If you're selling to an older demographic, you might use news sources like CNBC, Forbes, Town & Country, New York Times, etc. Places where older demographics get their news from and have built-in trust—the whole idea is to play on the trust that someone already has with a source.

If you're selling to a younger demographic, you might use places like PopSugar, Well + Good, Refinery29, Complex, GQ, etc.

If you're selling to even younger, you might replace the press logos with YouTube channels, influencers, comments screenshotted from social media, etc.

Depending on who you're talking to, make the sources of the content relevant to them.

1. User-Generated Content

Now, I'm not talking about the UGC-for-hire people here. I am talking about taking TikToks from the wild or screenshots of what people put on their IG stories and pasting it into a landing page itself. Raw content usually outperforms the edited versions.

Why? Because it feels authentic.

The shop section

The shop section should be one of the most information-dense, but minimalistic sections, on your landing page. It should say a lot, but shouldn't feel cluttered, overwhelming, or like there are too many options to choose from.

If you give a customer way too many options to choose from, they could fall into this loop of analysis paralysis. Meaning, they just can’t seem to make a decision, and end up not making a decision at all.

The shop section should reiterate why someone is there, what they're buying, how many of what they're getting, what is the cost, what is the cost per use (if applicable), and how/when it will arrive.

How it works & what's inside

This is the section that most people avoid on their landing page — mainly because most people who build landing pages, work internally at a brand, so they forget how the brand needs to be perceived from the outside.

If you're selling consumables, you HAVE to include the ingredients panel — this is where most clicks for food, beverage, supplements, and beauty products end up around. If you're selling a non-consumable, explain how it arrives, why its special, what comes inside the box, etc.

Brand Story

While I don't think people will NOT buy a product due to the brand story, especially if what you're selling is solving a real problem for someone, but I do believe having an authentic brand story on the page can do wonders for building a relationship between a consumer and the brand.

The brand story also doesn't need to be a direct founder story that shows the problem a founder had, which led to the products that are now for sale on the landing page.

Pixels and Scripts

This is one that a lot of people forget. Here are the few scripts you always want to make sure are enabled on every landing page:

• Smooth scroll — this makes sure that when you click a link to anchor you to another section on the page, it doesn't just instantly take you there, you get there via a smooth scrolling animation. Click the CTA in the hero section on this page and you'll see.

• Microsoft Clarity — this lets you see user-session recordings, heat maps, and scroll-depth maps for 100% free.

• UTM pass-through — this makes sure your UTM parameters that were present coming INTO the page, are also attached when clicking out to the cart or back to your site.

• Advertising pixels — Inserting your ad pixels on the landing pages allows your ad platforms to collect as much traffic data as possible.

• Attribution software — for the same reason as with advertising pixels, put your GTM container on the landing page, so your attribution software has more data being ingested.

This ended up being longer than I had initially anticipated, but I didn’t want to cut out any sections out since they’re all critical parts of building a landing page.

That said, is there something I missed covering? Would you like to share any feedback? You can let me know by filling out this form.