A great landing page doesn’t just welcome users to your site—it meets their needs proactively and encourages them to convert.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to write a landing page that captures your target audience’s attention. We’ll also share real-life examples of how brands use these landing page copywriting tips to get users to engage and take action.
8 Landing Page Copywriting Tips
Every element of a landing page matters, from headline and copy to visuals.
Here are eight tips to make your landing page as effective as possible.
1. Write an Impactful Headline
The headline on your landing page is the first thing users see. Make it clear and simple so everyone can understand it at a glance.
Most importantly?
Focus on the value you’re offering as a hook to keep people from clicking away.
This Uber landing page targeting driver signups does a good job of making an instant impact.
The headline “Drive when you want, make what you need” is value-focused, explaining the proposition in eight words. The contrast between the words “want” and “need” carries some weight, hooking users who are looking for an opportunity to earn money flexibly.
The headline is also a critical part of your landing page design. Since it sits in such a prominent space on the page, a landing page headline has multiple jobs to do.
Your landing page headline should do the following:
- Sum up what you’re offering and why it’s beneficial as concisely as possible. To achieve this, write your headline like a value proposition. This means answering the question, “What value can users get from your product that they can’t get elsewhere?”
- Hook users and keep them interested. Write a short and simple headline so readers can digest it quickly. And use language devices like alliteration to make it catchy.
- Flow naturally as part of the user journey. If your users click through from an ad on a search engine results page (SERP), the headline should follow the ad copy, picking up the same ideas.
- Contribute to search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) landing page optimization. Ensure your headline includes your target keywords to maximize relevance to users.
Keeping these objectives top-of-mind when you write a headline will help you make a strong first impression on users, keeping them on the page longer.
2. Make Your Copy Easy to Scan
People don’t read webpages like they do books. Keep your landing page copy short and create an easily scannable layout so your key points stand out.
Take this ExpressVPN landing page as an example. The header is simple, with a headline and subheading featuring easy-to-scan phrases like “VPN,” “just works,” and “#1.”
Further down the page, there’s a guide to getting started with a VPN that’s laid out in three simple steps: sign up for ExpressVPN, download a VPN app, and connect to a VPN server location.
Finally, there’s a list of persuasive, scannable benefits like 24-hour live chat support and best-in-class encryption:
There are plenty of subheadings and bold text to ensure users can see the most important points easily.
Why does this matter?
The Nielsen Norman Group has studied how people read online since 1997. Their findings show consistently that web users scan text instead of reading it.
They also noticed some recurring scanning habits, like the F-Pattern. Users start by reading a heading horizontally, then skip down to another prominent row of text.
You can apply these findings in your landing page copywriting to maximize its impact.
Prioritize key information in headings and subheadings, which users are most likely to read. Follow these headings up immediately with short, simple sentences that expand on the point and deliver other important information.
And remember, 58.3% of internet traffic came from mobile devices in Q1 2023. So, optimize your copy structure for those users. That means keeping headings short and using plenty of white space to ensure readability.
You can use our SEO Writing Assistant to assess your copy’s overall readability. Enter your target keywords and paste your text into the tool.
SEO Writing Assistant will score your content out of 10 for readability, SEO, originality, and tone of voice.
SEO Writing Assistant will generate custom recommendations for each scoring area. The readability recommendations are based on the Flesch Reading Ease score.
You can then redraft your copy manually based on the advice or use the built-in AI-powered writing features to improve it automatically.
The tool will also offer SEO recommendations that can help your landing page rank higher in organic search results.
3. Focus on Benefits Over Features
A common copywriting principle says, “Features tell, benefits sell.” This means people are more persuaded by how a product or service will improve their lives than by its bells and whistles.
Apply this concept to your landing page copywriting by focusing on the benefits of your product to maximize your conversion rate.
For example, the Asana pricing page, which doubles as a landing page in the company’s paid advertising campaigns, sells its benefits well:
The headline “Easily organize your work. Start free” quickly gets to the point, telling users what they’ll be able to do with the platform.
In six words, the company makes its value proposition clear. It also tells the web visitor they can start for free (“no credit card required”), lowering any objections to conversion.
There’s no mention of features because they’re not important. Asana knows people want the benefit of the features (the ability to organize their work).
What’s the difference between a feature and a benefit?
- Features describe what the product does, often getting specific with technical terms
- Benefits explain what the product’s features will help the user achieve
Benefits push users into making a purchase decision. This means they should be the priority in the most prominent landing page copy, like your headline or subheadings.
You can still cover features, but that comes later when users are already invested.
A benefit-focused headline tells the reader why they need the product. It sparks an emotional response, unlike the feature-focused headline, which is purely practical.
4. Include Social Proof
Use social proof in your landing page copywriting to get users to trust your business.
Why?
Because it demonstrates that other people used and liked your product, decreasing an important barrier to conversion and showing prospective customers the product or service you offer is valuable.
Social proof comes in many forms on the web, including:
- Reviews: Direct user-submitted reviews, often displayed in the form of a feed pulled from a platform like Trustpilot or Google
- Testimonials: Selected customer testimonials, which act like longer-form reviews. Most useful for demonstrating the value of high-cost products
- Customer logos: A group of logos representing notable customers, typically used in business-to-business (B2B) sectors to show the product’s popularity
- Awards/accreditations: Icons that represent awards or accreditations the product won, highlighting its quality in an indirect way to overcome user objections
The following Lingoda landing page example uses two types of social proof below the header to build trust with users.
As you can see, the landing page features aggregate review score badges from Google and Trustpilot—two trusted organizations.
There’s also an accreditation from Cambridge University, which gives Lingoda’s classes more credibility.
Reviews, in particular, offer incredible value.
A survey by Brightlocal found that 98% of web users read company reviews as part of their shopping process. And 46% of people trust them just as much as personal recommendations from friends or family.
Being proactive by including reviews in your landing page copy or design gives visitors all the social proof they need without forcing them to leave your site to find reviews elsewhere.
5. Write Compelling Calls-to-Action (CTAs)
A call-to-action, or CTA, plays the important role of telling users what to do next if they’re interested in your product. You can optimize your CTAs to encourage more people to click through to the next step of the buying process, increasing your conversion rate.
For example, the CTA on this Wrike landing page is simple and relatively common for software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses. But it still manages to be highly effective.
After summing up the platform’s key benefits, Wrike invites users to sign up for a free trial immediately. The simple form field for their email address and the easily visible “Start for free” button make it easy to know what to do.
Immediately below the CTA, there’s a dose of social proof in the form of logos from high-profile brands like Siemens, Edelman, Ogilvy, and Pfizer that use the product.
Making CTAs inviting also makes them more compelling.
For example, in a VWO case study, a simple change in CTA text from “For Skin Consultation, Register Here” to “I want an expert opinion. Sign me up!” increased sales by 22% and conversions by 137.5 percent.
A more conversational, friendly tone had a more significant impact. The phrase “Expert opinion” is also more impactful than “skin consultation” alone.
The CTA text that will work best on your page depends on various factors, like what the conversion event is and what you’re selling.
But there are some general landing page copywriting guidelines you can follow to maximize CTA impact:
- Make your CTA specific: Tell the user exactly what they’ll get when they click
- Use emotive, first-person language: Match the user’s motivation wherever possible
- Include social proof: Add social proof near the CTA to overcome final objections
6. Optimize for Organic Search
Landing pages are most associated with paid advertising campaigns, but they can contribute to organic traffic, too. Follow SEO copywriting best practices to maximize your chances of unlocking additional traffic opportunities.
For a landing page, this includes identifying the keywords your ideal customers type into search engines. Once you’ve done this, you’ll want to use these keywords on your landing page, including in the header and body of the text.
You’ll also want to use them in the page’s title tag and meta description.
You can find relevant keywords with a keyword research platform like Keyword Magic Tool. Navigate to Semrush and open the Keyword Magic Tool in the left-hand menu.
Then, enter a seed term your target audience would search to find your website or landing page.
You’ll see a full list of keywords related to your seed term, along with columns of data showing how many times each one is searched and how difficult they are to rank for.
Use the manual filters at the top of the screen or the pre-set keyword categories in the left-hand sidebar to trim the list.
For example, you can remove irrelevant keywords using the eye icon on the left-hand side.
Or filter results to only show questions in the top menu.
This process will help you identify the best-fit keywords for your landing page. When you know what your users are looking for, you can start your writing process.
Draft a well-organized landing page that matches your audience’s intent, using your target keywords naturally in the content.
SEO Writing Assistant can help you make your landing page copy even more visible to search engines.
Enter your target keywords into the tool and paste your draft into the text box. You’ll get tailored recommendations to improve optimization and readability.
7. Use Visuals to Complement Your Copy
Images and videos can help your landing pages grab attention. They also play a key role in explaining your product to users.
The video on this Wistia landing page auto-plays to demonstrate the product features as soon as users land.
The video captures your attention immediately and gives Wistia a chance to back up its introductory copy with practical visuals.
Why is video effective?
A comprehensive study on the effects of video in marketing by Wyzowl found that 96% of marketers think videos improve how well users understand their product.
The same study also found that 90% of marketers think videos have helped them generate leads, while 87% think videos increased both sales and website dwell time.
Google data shows images can be just as useful, with results from a consumer survey showing 50% of online shoppers use images to decide what to buy.
All this data leads to one solid conclusion:
The best landing pages aren’t just text-based. They merge landing page copywriting with visual assets to create a mixed-media experience that suits all kinds of users.
As you develop your landing page copy, think about where images or videos can draw attention, demonstrate features, or act as social proof.
8. Run Tests and Refine
The landing page copywriting process doesn’t end when the page is live. Collecting and analyzing user behavior data can tell you where your page is falling short, helping you make changes that boost results.
A CXL case study shows the importance of testing. The company started with a landing page that had a strong conversion rate of 12.1 percent.
Image Source: CXL
They then carried out tests one by one, changing individual elements on the page to see how that impacted the conversion rate.
The changes they made included reducing the number of form fields, refocusing the copy on benefits, and reducing the page length.
The result was a new version of the landing page that converted 21.7% of users, a 79.3% improvement on the old version.
Image Source: CXL
Testing changes individually can be an effective method. But there are several other ways to analyze landing page performance, including:
- User data analysis: Employing widely available user analytics platforms like Google Analytics to see how users interact with your page
- A/B testing: Testing two variations of the same landing page by automatically sending users to one or the other, showing which one performs best
- Heatmap testing: Using heatmap software to reveal how users interact with your landing page and what content they ignore
These testing methods vary in how complicated they are to set up, but the value of the insights they deliver tends to scale with complexity.
Analyzing basic user data like bounce rate through Google Analytics, for example, is easy to do. But it can only tell you so much about your page, meaning you have to apply some guesswork when it comes to making improvements.
On the other end of the scale, heatmap testing costs time and money to set up. However, the insights it delivers could be instrumental in finding weak spots on your landing pages.
These key takeaways can inspire changes that lead to increased revenue.
4 Landing Page Examples to Inspire Your Copy
Looking at effective landing pages is one of the best ways to learn how to create your own. Here are four of the best examples from across the web.
1. Slack
This Slack landing page is the complete package. It leverages many of the tips mentioned above to systematically persuade and convert visitors.
It starts with the clear and concise headline: “One platform for your team and your work.” This simple line sums up the product’s value proposition, selling the benefit of the dual functionality.
In the bullet points and the CTA button below, there’s a “Save 50%” offer. The company creates a sense of urgency by mentioning the “limited-time” nature of the discount in their landing page copywriting.
The social proof comes immediately below the CTA, with logos of some notable Slack customers like Etsy, Uber, and Spotify. This helps minimize any concerns users might have about the product’s value.
Further down the page, there’s more copy covering the benefits Slack offers.
The language used is tangible. There are specific terms like “move faster,” “solve problems aloud,” and “streamline collaboration” to address potential customers’ pain points.
After the benefits, some final stats reinforce the value on offer.
Each element on the page works together to create a compelling, persuasive case for joining Slack.
2. BetterHelp
BetterHelp is a platform for finding therapists online. This landing page focuses on addressing some of the biggest barriers to conversion in that sector.
The simple headline focuses on benefits, covering two of the most important for the product: convenience and cost. It’s also easy to scan, with the first four words summarizing the entire value proposition.
The copy immediately below goes on to cover two core objections, availability and credibility, with the mention of “33,000 licensed therapists.”
With that out of the way, there’s a prominent CTA that encourages users to convert right away.
Below the fold, the BetterHelp landing page provides social proof to reinforce its credibility.
The brand combines logos from credible publications the platform appeared in, like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, with real member testimonials. This reassures users of the platform’s legitimacy and provides evidence of its effectiveness.
The bottom of the page features a simple element focusing on the four main benefits—professional, affordable, convenient, and effective—followed by a final CTA.
The final copy on the page acts like a conclusion to an article. It summarizes the value proposition and adds one final bit of social proof by showing that over 4 million people used the service.
As a result, by the time they’ve reached the end of the landing page, users have answers to all their questions. They know what’s on offer and how it can help them, and they aren’t worried about BetterHelp’s credentials.
3. Shopify
This Shopify landing page is, first and foremost, a great example of a message satisfying search intent.
It’s the landing page for a Google Ads campaign targeting keywords like “create an online store” and “set up your online store.” The sponsored ad on Google includes a version of the keyword and a brief description of the platform’s capabilities.
The on-page header immediately addresses the search intent of the keyword, with the benefit-focused headline, “Set up your online store in minutes.”
This leads to an offer, “free for 3 days,” and a clear CTA, “start free trial,” which tells users exactly what’s on offer if they click.
All this above-the-fold copy sidesteps the biggest barriers to conversion. There’s no reason for users not to sign up. The page met their search intent, and the trial offer is risk-free.
The second half of the landing page is for users who aren’t convinced by the strong opening.
It provides a quick summary of the key benefits of Shopify’s SaaS product, addressing common pain points like ongoing pricing or lack of design skills.
Finally, there’s a selection of logos from existing customers and a conclusive user testimonial that reassures users they’re making the right choice.
4. Progressive
Progressive’s auto insurance landing page features copy that explains the value proposition effectively.
The headline is simple and immediately digestible. The landing page copywriting focuses on a key benefit, finding the right price quickly, which addresses one of the main pain points in the insurance buying journey.
A short line follows with the same focus and adds the benefit that users can compare prices with competitors, reinforcing the value proposition.
The CTA is straightforward, too. There’s only one field where users must enter their zip code before they can move on to the next stage, reducing barriers to conversion practically to zero.
The final element on the page upsells insurance bundles, with a clear subheading showing the potential savings on offer.
Users can also click to see all products, sending them to the main Progressive site where they can set off on their navigation journey.
This is a great example of how landing pages don’t have to be complex or long to be effective.
Why?
In some cases, using as few words as possible to meet the user’s intent is the best way to keep them interested.
Get Started on Your Next Landing Page Today
Landing pages play such a big role in the success of any digital marketing campaign that improving your landing page copywriting can pay off immediately.
Start working on your next landing page by searching for the right keywords with our Keyword Magic Tool.
Then, as you’re working on the copy, apply all the tips you’ve learned here and use SEO Writing Assistant to add the finishing touches.
Source link : Semrush.com
