Guest post by Natasha Lane.

When designing product or download landing pages, there’s a lot to keep in mind.

First, you need the page to be attractive. A great design will be eye-catching, engaging, and will drive action.

Next, they need to be optimized for user experience, so they seamlessly lead web visitors through the sales funnel.

Finally, they need to contain all the right information that will not only drive conversions but also effectively manage expectations. The latter is important to ensure that your customer retention rates remain high.

This isn’t easy. It requires careful planning, a solid knowledge of your audience and products, and most of all, continual testing of all elements to fully optimize the page for conversions.

If you’re looking to take your call-to-action (CTA) landing pages to the next level, here are several best practices you can implement to boost your conversion performance.

Layout & Design Considerations

Before you begin with a complete visual redesign, it’s helpful to consider exactly how people look at web pages.

According to analytical data, it takes 50 milliseconds for people to form an opinion of your website and 2.6 seconds for them to find the area that influences their first impression. That’s why knowing exactly where and how to place your content is of paramount importance when designing product landing pages.

People tend to visually navigate pages in an F-Shaped pattern when viewing content. They are also naturally drawn to headlines, large images, and text broken up into bullet points. None of this is difficult to implement; it’s just challenging to really get it right.

To optimize visual appearance and layout, here are four areas to focus on.

1. Choose visual elements that serve as focal points.

There’s truth in the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Just consider the fact that we process visual information 60,000 thousand times faster than text.

But you need to choose those images carefully. Your product pages need to show visuals that are relevant, engaging, and help prospects evaluate your product or offer. Furthermore, different product pages require distinct types of visuals, so don’t limit yourself to a single medium.

• Images (illustrations or photos) are the best choice for showing how products look and work. They’re relatively inexpensive to produce, effectively demonstrate features, and resonate well with audiences. When using them on your product pages, go with high-quality, show plenty of detail, and use imagery to tell a story.

Even if your products are of a technical nature, you can still create a narrative through the images you use. Tesla’s Solar Roof product landing page is an excellent demonstration of this.

• Videos inspire even more engagement than images. In fact, 66% of consumers prefer watching videos over reading product descriptions, and 55% of shoppers use it while purchasing in-store. So, adding videos to your landing pages is an excellent strategy.

But, as with pictures, videos have to be produced properly. The style and content need to fit your product or offer. Create content that is short (under three minutes), emotionally driven, and that shows off your product’s features. Smartphone manufacturers have got this down pretty well, as you can see in this example by OnePlus.

• Infographics are ideal for showing a workflow or communicating a large amount of statistics data succinctly . They work well for visually representing software, services, and abstract concepts (such as breathability in footwear).

In these cases, infographics or illustrations can provide the required information while serving as a focal point for your visitors. For excellent examples of how to do this, take a look at Amerisleep’s product pages, or the features section on the Organic Basics website.

2. Know the value of CTA buttons.

In addition to presenting your product well, including a highly visible, well-worded call to action on your page is vital to maximizing the conversion rate.

Everything you show and write about your product, ebook, or other CTA (adding an item to their cart, signing up for a service, downloading an app, etc.) should guide visitors toward the action you want them to take.

To ensure that your CTA buttons are effective, pay attention to their position, visual appearance, and language. Make them clear, concise, and compelling. Furthermore, use color and contrast to keep them highly visible, and don’t be afraid to repeat them several times on your page.

3. Make the most of social proof.

One of the best ways to establish your company as an authority is to let others do the talking. So with your products, don’t just rave about how awesome they are—let other people say so!

To take your product landing pages to the next level, leverage the power of social proof. According to psychological research, people tend to look to their peers for instructions on how to behave.

This is especially true in situations in which they feel uncertain or out of their depth. So, naturally, if a person is unfamiliar with your services, they will tend to look for others who have tried them out and form their opinions based on those shared experiences.

By including a reviews section on your website, you can leverage user experiences that may persuade others to shop with you. Furthermore, great reviews help you show off areas of expertise, while negative ones may allow you to demonstrate your responsiveness and commitment to customer satisfaction. You can also share user-generated content to help promote your offerings.

A great example of social proof management comes from the brand Salomon whose pages heavily rely on users’ opinions. Images tagged on social media are the main focal point of the page, reviews take up a good amount of space towards the bottom, and customer service representatives take the time to reply to each and every review helpfully and proactively.

4. Optimize lead generation elements.

Even if the main objective on your product pages is to make a sale, don’t overlook their value for lead generation.

One of the common mistakes in ecommerce is that website designs often disregard web visitors who are still in the early stages of the sales funnel. They are interested in a certain product but not yet ready to make a purchase, particularly if the product is complex or expensive (or both).

The great news is that there are several ways to help you capture these leads, allowing you to nurture them into customers.

• Invite people to sign up for a newsletter. Offer a discount, free shipping, or exclusive perks to those who convert.
• Include a wishlist button on your product pages to let visitors quickly navigate back to the items that caught their attention.
• Don’t hide out of stock items, but instead add a “notify me when in stock” button.
• Include related product recommendations to maximize average order and customer lifetime values.
• Provide clear and concise shipping information to prevent high cart abandonment rates.
• Add a FAQ section to speed up the move from the interest to the purchase phase.
• Include a live chat or chatbot feature to ensure users can get help at all times.

Final Considerations

Your work doesn’t end when you’ve got a great layout with compelling imagery and functional elements.

You need to complement these efforts with a serious approach to SEO and mobile optimization, as well as paying close attention to your copy. And conversion rate optimization (CTO) is a moving target, so never stop testing. Watch your metrics and make changes whenever you see room for improvement.

Natasha Lane is a lady of a keyboard and one hell of a geek. She is always happy to collaborate with awesome blogs and share her knowledge about branding, digital marketing trends, and business growth strategies. To see what she is up to next, check out her Twitter feed.

The post Designing Product Landing Pages: Best Practices for 2020 and Beyond appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity.