8 Actionable Tips For Making the Most of ECommerce Landing Pages
ECommerce is huge and getting bigger all the time. Global eCommerce sales in 2019 reached a staggering USD $3.53 trillion, and that figure is expected to grow to USD $6.54 trillion in 2022.
If you want to succeed in such a packed marketplace, your work begins in knowing how to choose the best eCommerce website designs. Once you have established a baseline for your online presence, start looking at the more detailed strategies.
Good eCommerce marketplace management is essential if you want your business to thrive. What exactly does this mean? Brands have to approach the eCommerce space with an omnichannel mindset. There must be consistency across all your digital touchpoints—from how your website is built to what content you use to engage with your customers.
With so many competitors out there occupying the marketplace, it has never been more vital that your own site is sleek, streamlined and as optimized as possible. ECommerce landing pages are an important part of that, as they are often one of the consumer’s initial impressions of your business and key opportunities for conversion.
Here we’re going to look at eight great tips to help you make the most of your eCommerce landing pages.
1. Call to action
It may sound obvious, but you would be surprised how often businesses fail to include a call to action (CTA) on an eCommerce landing page, much less one that can excite customers. Your call to action should be clear and stand out so that your customer can’t miss it. When putting together a CTA, simply think: what action do I want the user to take after viewing this page?
Use words and phrases that clearly encourage action, such as call now, download, buy, sign up, transfer to virtual robot chat, etc.
But it’s not just about the wording you use. You want that CTA to stand out in every way possible. A clickable button in a contrasting color is usually a good idea; anything to make the CTA unmissable on that particular landing page should work.
2. User-Generated Content (UGC)
It cannot be overstated how important user-generated content (UGC) has become for brands in 2021. The abundance, quality and influence of UGC have grown tremendously in recent years. This is because brands have seen the results they get from using this authentic content as part of their marketing. People trust UGC content more than brand-created content. It offers a more tangible connection for potential customers as it includes ideas and thoughts that come from their peers, whom they relate to much more than brands.
With the growth of platforms like TikTok, video tools and enterprise UGC solutions like Stackla, it has never been easier for businesses to find, organize and utilize quality user-generated content.
3. Testing, testing
Optimizing your eCommerce landing pages can take some trial and error. It’s easy to get carried away with designs, fonts and colors without considering the effect those things have on bounce rates and conversions. It’s best to start by establishing a ‘baseline’ before doing any testing on other pages.
Testing is relevant for every level of an online business, whether you are small and using low-cost web hosting or if you are a large multinational with several different high-end websites.
Once you have that control page, you can commence A/B testing. You may find that the red CTA button on your control page produces a conversion rate of one percent, but when you test another page where that button is blue, that conversion rate increases to two percent. You then change the CTA on your control page and move on to other factors (images, text, fonts, etc.).
4. Mobile optimization
Around 50 percent of all internet access comes from a mobile device. So if your eCommerce landing page does not perform well on mobile, you are effectively losing half of your potential customers before you’ve even left the starting line. Ensuring that all your landing pages are accessible from mobile devices is crucial to your success.
With so many sites not optimized for mobile use, ensuring that yours is optimized means you have an edge over some of your competitors. Some 40 percent of mobile consumers left for a competitor’s website because of poor user experience.
Make sure that your site is responsive so that it can adjust for mobile device screens. Compress any images you include and minify the page HTML and CSS. Don’t forget to verify that your checkout process is also optimized for mobile users.
5. Remove navigation
Even though it should coexist well with your overall digital presence, you should always think of your eCommerce landing page as its own standalone page. Remove any and all navigable links from that page—the only thing you want customers to be able to click is your CTA. Some pages may have anchor links throughout the text that directs users to that CTA, but even those may be unnecessary in most cases.
Think of your eCommerce landing page as the be-all-end-all of a user’s journey. The whole focus of that page should be on getting the customer to make the desired action—purchasing, downloading, signing up to a mailing list, etc. You want the customer to fully engage with your brand so ensure everything directs them to do that.
6. Design
If you overlook basic design rules, then you may drive traffic away from your page. This is where A/B testing can be an enormous benefit. Don’t just look at your page and think it looks good; test it to see how it works in real life. This should include always using high-quality authentic images at all times. In fact, everything on your landing page should be of the highest possible quality. That includes any written content too. Your copy has to be relevant to the audience and to the product or service you are promoting. While long-form may be great for blog pieces, remember that a landing page should be more concise and clearly highlight your CTA.
7. Videos
It’s proven that using videos to market your product can boost eCommerce sales. Videos and video technology now play a big part in how we do business, from marketing to the expanding use of free online meeting software to meet the needs of remote working. Videos can inform, educate and entertain all at the same time.
If you have good video content, users will often share that content to their own social media feeds, thus extending your reach. With easily accessible video technology, too, you don’t have to be an expert to make great-looking videos.
Sometimes a customer may feel unsure about a product because it’s something technical or they can’t see the immediate benefits that it can bring. Videos are good for explaining things in an understandable manner or showing the product in action so that the customer has a better idea of what it will do for them. Using videos on your eCommerce landing page can also increase conversion rates.
8. Focus
Think of a landing page as a single page within a book. If your landing page has multiple offers on it, then it will not be as effective as a page with one single offer.
Ensure each landing page has a clear focus and presents one primary product or service. “This is X, it will do Y for you and here’s why it is better than Z!” A clear and concise focus on that one product followed by an equally clear CTA that drives the user to make a purchase is key.
The takeaway
There are a wealth of ways we can promote or build our eCommerce websites. Things like UGC offer a great way to get on the customer’s level and engage with them in a more authentic way. Utilizing technology such as customer support software can ensure that the customer experience is a 360-degree one.
Your landing pages have two main goals: the first is to provide a positive customer experience and journey. The second, which should occur naturally when you meet the first goal, is to see increases in your conversion rates which leads to better sales figures. With so much competition, making the most of your landing pages is not a choice, it’s a necessity.
