Landing Pages
The Ingredients
A good angle.
The first ingredient for any good landing page is a hook or an angle (hence the name, HOOX). 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, jewelry, 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
In 30 seconds, there are 4 angles with a large TAM that would use Cadence for different purposes. Without a good angle, you're just pushing capsules; with a good angle, you're pushing a solution with a real purpose.
For each HOOX landing page, a client tells us their objective in their post-purchase onboarding form, and based on their objective, we build a 7-8 page research document to then craft an angle of why someone should buy the product we're building a landing page for.
Stellar Copywriting
I remember when I joined Hint Water, the ads said, "Zero sugar, zero calories, flavored water!" and I thought... that's not why I like to drink the product. I love it because it's "The dessert that mom never gets mad about" or "The addiction that moms can get behind." When you drink a bottle of hint, it's not just fruit-infused water, it's "Mouth-watering water with none of the bad stuff."
Good copywriting makes the difference between a landing page with a 2% conversion rate and a landing page with a 9% conversion rate.
The main trick is to always think of the copy on the page has gone through a conveyer belt:
At 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, jewelry, 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:
- Customer reviews
- "Established" sources
- User-generated content (UGC)
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.
When you put reviews on the LP, look for reviews that specifically call out how someone's life benefitted from the product.
A bad example of a review to feature: "Excellent solution to an overflowing cosmetic case!"
A great example of a review to feature: "I am in love with my Cadence capsules! They hold more than you’d think & make packing so much easier! I already bought more for my essential oils. (My cadence capsules didn’t leak, but my essential oil bottles did on my most recent trip.) I just can’t say enough good things about these incredible capsules. Definitely worth the investment!"
The second review touched on a few things:
- They hold so much
- Packing gets easier
- They don't leak compared to her old solution
- Worth the $$$
"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.
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.
With Emma Chamberlain, her audience is much younger, so we focused on pulling in TikTok videos that show the product in perfect light, how easy it is to make it, and how good it tastes on this page.
73 questions with VOGUE (minus 68, and also forget VOGUE) — The 5 main questions every LP needs to answer
Over and over again, this is what you need to answer on a landing page:
- What is this product
- Why does it exist
- How does it benefit my life
- Why is it the best option for this product
- How soon can I get it if I order now
I also like to make sure that every section of the landing page is alternating with a push and pull section. A push section is where you're pushing out information/education/content for someone to learn about why they should consider buying your product. A pull section is where you're asking for a purchase, you have a CTA, or you're looking for something from the site visitor.
Similarly, every ad that goes out should answer those 5 questions (that's how you keep the click-through rate high), and each ad coming into a landing page should match what's on the page itself (down to the color of the clothing or the flavor of the beverage). Most of your post-click drop-off can be lowered by simply making sure that whatever is in your ad, is also available on the page it's driving to.
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 complicated, overwhelming, or like there are too many options to choose from.
For every additional option you give, you lower their chances of converting. Have you been to In N Out before? This is what their menu looks like. Keep it simple and do the work of telling someone what they should get. Most people don't know, and if you force them to figure it out, they'll leave the page to start doing research, at which point another competitor may swoop in.
Sure, your brand might be strong enough to win them back, but is it even worth taking that chance? Probably not.
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.
The cost per use is great for any type of consumable product. With an electrolyte powder, when we had a landing page with the price running a test against the price AND price per day ($1/day), we saw the conversion rate increase by 60% on the landing page showing the price per day. Make it easy for someone to see how this is a no-brainer purchase for them.
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.
I was guilty of this when starting HOOX, too. I assumed everyone knew that our process included a kick-off call, a research document, a UX wireframe, copywriting, approvals, UI design, and development. No one really had a clue until I realized I forgot to write it out and list it like this.
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, I do think that 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.
The brand story can also just speak to the efficacy of the product. If you're buying from Everlane, the brand story might communicate their mission to create high-quality fashion while being sustainable and conscious of the planet. If you buy from Ridge, you know the quality is going to be top-notch (3x more valuable than the price you pay) and you're getting something that's been perfectly engineered by guys, for guys.
At the end of the day, you just need to prove efficacy and sell efficacy. The founder or brand story/mission always helps. If you have the efficacy, you can charge whatever you want and people will pay for it — just look at luxury and spirits brands, or any celebrity skincare brand.
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.
- Floating CTA — as you scroll, there should be a CTA ready to click at any time.
- Microsoft Clarity — this lets you see user-session recordings, heat maps, and scroll-depth maps for 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 — even though 10-50% of the traffic will end up in checkout or on another page of your site, putting 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.
Types of landing pages
I was going to continue writing the second part — different types of pages, and how to create an experience where customers WANT to be on the landing page, versus feeling like they were tricked to be there — but this email is getting too long. If you think I should explain a number of LP types next week (wholesale, BYOB, advertorial, etc), tweet me and let me know.