Imagine yourself walking down a street filled with many shops.
You notice a shop with a huge banner that says, "40% off new leather shoes (For Today Only! Hurry up!)."
As you enter the shop, you notice that the staff is busy, there is no separate corner for the discounted items, and the sense of excitement displayed on the banner that you saw outside is missing inside the store. You talk to a salesperson who points towards a shelf - telling you that you will have to find which shoes on that shelf have a discount sticker on them!
What will you do in such a situation if you are already getting late? Will you buy from them? Will you ever return to that shop? Very unlikely!
A similar kind of thing happens online. Most Shopify merchants find it tempting to direct their email readers, ad visitors, or social media traffic to their homepage because it is the gateway to all other areas of their website. But it is not a smart strategy if you want to boost your conversion rate; homepages have dozens of distractions and weak guidance mechanisms. It takes customers several clicks to navigate through different pages to finally reach what they actually came for.
Do you see the problem? With increasing e-commerce competition; rising customer expectations; shirking attention spans; and bombardment of deals, promotions, and limited-time offers, from all over the online shopping world: leaving your hard-won eCommerce store visitors stranded and clueless is like shooting oneself in the foot!
Such an experience would never inspire your customers to take action or ever return to your website.
That’s where a landing page comes in handy!
What is a landing page?
A landing page is a hyper-focused and specialized webpage that provides ultra-relevant information to website visitors. You can think of it as a well-dressed and well-informed salesperson that can provide a super detailed yet super easy-to-understand proposal - perfectly tailored to the specific need of the customer - and close the deal. It is called a landing page because visitors "land" on it from another stage of the sales journey. This could be, for example, a link in a social media ad or email newsletter, or simply a Google search for a specific keyword. Therefore, a landing page is an extension of the ad or search engine listing that the user clicked on.
What is the purpose of a landing page?
A landing page works as a middleman between the advertisement or promotional message and its destination — such as an e-commerce shopping cart. The purpose of a landing page is to excite your website visitors, capture them into leads, and convert them into customers. It can help you reduce the bounce rate by making it easy for visitors to find relevant information.
What are the practical uses of a landing page?
You can use a landing page in a variety of ways to grow your e-commerce business.
Landing pages are designed to achieve specific business goals and objectives.
Here are some examples:
Announce a new product or service launchGrow your email newsletter subscribersPromote your special offers and dealsInvite people to your conference or event
Can you use the same landing page for all your campaigns?
Not surprisingly, the answer is "no". Using the same landing for every function is not a wise idea because such a practice goes against the core purpose of a landing page—which is to provide hyper-relevant information about a specific product, service, event, or offer. Therefore, you should create a customized landing page according to your goals and objectives?
Does it sound complicated to you, knowing that Shopify does not offer any tools for customizing landing pages? Don’t worry - Zeno Landing Page Builder has got you covered with its powerful tools and conversion-focused features.
Using Template-Rich Zeno App to Create a Campaign-Specific Landing Page
Zeno offers tons of professionally-designed, visually pleasing landing page templates that you can easily customize with just a couple of clicks. It allows you to create as many landing pages as you want, even with the starter package.
You can use the app even if you don’t have any experience in creating landing pages. All you need to do is:
Choose the right template that suits your marketing goalsUse the drag and drop feature to customize the layoutReplace dummy text, images, and buttons with your page copy, product images, and CTAsPublish it instantly to your website with just one buttonWait and see your conversion rate touch the sky!
Shopify Landing Page Checklist to Skyrocket Your Conversions
Write a benefit-rich yet concise headline that can spark interest
The headline is the first place your prospect’s eyes are likely to go. It sets a frame for the rest of the landing page. Adding the most important benefit of your product or service in the headline can help you grab the reader’s attention and inspire him or her to read more.
Here is an example of a benefit-rich headline by Betterco for its posture corrector.
“15 minutes a day to relieve your back pain”
This headline will attract people who follow a very busy lifestyle.
Make your USP stand out and catch the attention of the reader
Once you have your readers hooked by appealing to their pain and showing the benefit, now it’s time to tell them about yourself: who are you and what are the specific features of your product that will solve their problem. The key here is to make sure that the prospect does not miss reading your unique selling proposition USP; you need to place it at just the right place where it is most visible—with large and bold fonts.
Make your content easily scannable and eye-catching
Only 16 percent of people read online content word-for-word; 79 percent of people only scan (Forbes).
Most people, nowadays, are multitasking when searching the internet, so they don’t give online content their full attention.
No one likes to read large blocks of text. If you want to make your landing page super effective, you need to make sure that your content is divided up in chunks or sections—making it easier for the readers to process the information.
Translate the features of your offering to clear and meaningful benefits
Features and specifications of your offerings are important but they do not tell how they are going to change the lives of your customers. If you want to make your landing page persuasive and compelling, you need to convert all the features into unique benefits that can give your customers a reason to buy.
For example, if your product is made of a certain special type of material, don't just write the name of the material; instead, tell your customers how that material will improve their overall experience.
Enhance trustworthiness with social proofs (testimonials) or certifications
Eighty-eight percent of customers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations (Search Engine Land)
Adding social proofs (such as customer reviews/testimonials), certifications, and memberships can help you enhance the credibility of your brand and build trust in customers' minds.
Zeno Page Builder app offers professionally designed templates with separate sections for customer testimonials. You can also add a custom touch to the section as you desire.
Showcase your products using informative videos
Relevant videos [on your landing page] can boost your conversions by a whopping 86% (Eyeview)
People prefer watching a video more than reading text because videos require less effort to consume and absorb. They can explain complex concepts in a simple fashion using visuals.
Not only that, but videos can also improve your SEO performance because search engines favor videos over other forms of content because they are more convenient.
Zeno app helps you add videos to your landing page with a simple drag and drop option.
Optimize page speed by hosting images on Shopify CDN
Page speed is one of the key success factors for websites and online stores. Faster loading pages not only improve user experience but are also favored by search engines.
One of the best ways you can enhance the page speed of your landing page is by hosting your images, videos, and other content on a fast CDN.
Not sure how to do that? Don’t worry! Zeno has got you covered. All Zeno page builder packages already come with a high-Speed CDN.
Make sure the page is fully functional on mobile, tablet, and desktop
In the last quarter of 2021, 54.4 percent of global website traffic was generated by mobile phones—excluding tablets (Statista)
You need to make sure that your landing is fully functional across different devices; otherwise, you won’t be able to provide a great experience to your website visitors. Your customers will switch to your competitor's sites, and your bounce rate will increase.
Zeno app helps you customize your page elements and decide which ones to keep on which device.
If you have a limited time offer, post a count-down timer
A timer is the best way to tell the customers that it is a limited-time offer and they are going to kick themselves for missing it. It creates a sense of urgency and motivates visitors to take action quickly. This tactic will help you boost your conversions.
Here is an example of how a limited-time offer timer looks like in a Zeno Page Builder template:
Completely align your landing page with your ad or email copy
A landing page is the extension of your ad or email copy; it should continue the same experience. If the message and the style of your landing page are not consistent with that of your ad or email copy, you may find yourself losing the trust of your customers.
You can easily customize your landing page with the Zeno app, and make it similar to your ad or email copy.
Use directional cues to emphasize important parts (e.g. forms, CTAs)
A landing page is considered a final part of your campaign, but it is a small journey in itself too—from the landing page heading to the CTA. If your prospect leaves your landing page in between, your conversion rate won’t increase (but your bounce rate would!)
You can avoid this by using directional cues—arrows, lines, symbols, colors, and even white space—to guide your website visitors towards your CTA.
Add a simple FAQs section to answer the most important questions
This practice will help you make sure that your prospects don’t leave your landing page to find answers to any questions they might have; all information is already there.
For an effective FAQs section, you should focus on things that your prospects would want to know, instead of things that you want them to know.
You don't need to create a long FAQs section; just four to five important questions are enough.
Here is an example of a FAQs section from one of Zeno's many professionally well designed templates.
Remove all distractions, especially the top navigations
Remember, conversion is your main goal! You create a landing page to minimize the distractions, so you need to make sure you are not distracting your prospects inside a landing page too!
One of the best practices to minimize the distractions in a landing page is to remove the top navigation, footer, and sidebars—making sure that visitors only focus on your landing page, and do not jump to other pages of your website.
Add a strong and on-point CTA that incorporates irresistible elements
Your CTAs should not only be super visible but super compelling too. They should have persuasive elements that inspire action.
You can use trigger words like hurry, limited, bonus, free, exclusive, new, try now, closing soon, and instant access, to convey the authority and value of your offer.
You should avoid using words like submit, send, or click here because they give visitors the impression that they have to give you something.
Make sure the buttons are bold and big enough—and stand out against the background
This is what you created your landing page for, your CTA or lead form. If your prospects are missing them, you have essentially wasted all the time, energy, and money you have spent bringing traffic to your site and creating a landing page.
Therefore, you need to make sure that CTA buttons should stand out in contrast to the background; they should also have large bold fonts.
Included social share buttons on your thank you page
A satisfied customer is a very profitable resource for a business. Your landing page converts can help you grow your business by telling others about your brand. All you need to do is to make it easier for them to spread the word.
One of the most effective ways of doing that is by adding social share buttons on your thank you page.
Check the content for spelling and grammar errors
Sloppy landing pages have an 85 percent higher bounce rate than well-written and clean ones (Dux Public Relations)
Spelling and grammar mistakes can make your landing page look unprofessional, and ruin your brand’s image. Always double-check your content for any errors.
Make sure all elements of the page support one core objective
You should have the desired action (that you want your visitors to take) in mind while designing each and every element—be it copy, layout, images, CTAs, or anything else. All elements should push the visitors towards taking a single action.
We hope this helps you reach your conversion goals!
Keep visiting Zeno's blog for more exciting and informative content. We will keep an eagle eye on new trends and keep updating our landing page checklist.
Do you have any advice on how we can improve the content? Please throw us a comment. We would love to hear your feedback!
Best of luck with your Shopify store!