How Just a Few Words Can Dramatically Improve Landing Page Conversions

Updated: December 11, 2013

Conversions – whether they involve purchasing a product or providing contact information – is the one metric pretty much everyone understands and is interested in. If you’re working in the marketing department of a large company, conversions are likely the sole focus of your CEO and managers.

They hardly know what a click-through rate is, nor do they care…

What they want to know is how many people are purchasing, subscribing or otherwise becoming a lead.

Several elements have to coalesce in order for your sales landing pages to be successful – easy navigation, engaging design and copy are the top three that immediately come to mind.

Copy, or the explanation of your offer and how it can help the visitor solve their problem, is one of the easiest page elements to change

 

A recent webinar from MECLABS explored how tweaks to copy can improve conversions – their specific case study examined how adding one paragraph yielded a 36% lift in conversions. The page was for an organization selling car repair products, and all results from their study were validated at a 95% level of confidence.

How did the additional paragraph result in a boost to the page’s conversion rate?

Fundamentally speaking, the answer lies in “story” and how human thoughts are sequenced. This idea was covered quite extensively in a previous MECLABS webinar – the process of story, which includes elements like the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution, is as true today as it was in Aristotle’s time.

The first page didn’t perform as well because it failed to connect or build the problem – not discussing the “problem” means you’re missing out on the best opportunity to relate to the reader, establish a rapport and grab their attention. You never want to present a solution without presenting a problem first.

This is in fact a common problem with a majority of sales landing pages online…

How can I integrate the “problem” into my sales landing pages?

The end goal of sales/conversion style landing pages is to get the customer to “want” their needs rather than just seeing them according to MECLABS’ information-rich webinar.

For presenting the “problem,” there are 3 intensifiers to getting the customer to “want” their needs. These include:

1. Relevance – the degree to which an offer is connected to a recipient’s situation and motivations. There are two types of relevance – internal and external. In order to establish relevance in your marketing copy, you need to identify with at least one of these. In the original example for the car parts store, the copy only focused on the solution. The average person reading this will likely not see the relevance of your offer to them. (Examples @ 18:00 mark) Empathy is a big part of making sales/conversion landing pages a success. Like other webinars and articles have explained, it’s essential you see your pages and offer(s) through your customer’s eyes.
2. Importance – the degree to which your offer is vital to the customer’s livelihood. To establish importance, you absolutely must identify with an underlying need in the recipient. Examples of this can include:
   • Being safe
   • Meeting expectations (job, family, etc.)
   • A feeling of belonging
   • Self-affirmation
     Directly connect your problem to a consequence, and provide specifics on how your offer will address the problem. (Examples @ 27:00 mark)
3. Urgency – the degree of immediacy associated with an offer imposed by either the recipient’s situation or the nature of the offer itself. You enable urgency in one of two ways – natural and artificial. Natural urgency can be defined as things that just happen – the ripping of your suit right before a big work presentation is a good example. Artificial urgency can be defined as limited-time sales, promotions and so forth. The big thing to remember about artificial urgency is that it absolutely must be true – if your customer finds out otherwise, your credibility will suffer.

We highly suggest watching the latest webinar from MECLABS presented by Austin McGraw. The usual instructor, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, is currently traveling, but Austin’s presentation was very engaging and jam-packed with valuable insights.

Do your sales landing pages build a problem before presenting a solution? Or, do you just present the solution?

Let us know in the comments section below, or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

If you answered yes to the second question, you should consider how you can build the problem to get the customer to “want” their needs rather than just getting them to see their needs.

A few pages I work on could use some sprucing up in this respect. If we make any changes to sales pages, I’ll try my best to come back and share my observations. In the meantime, take an hour or so and watch the webinar (below) and tell us your thoughts.