A great landing page can mean more conversions, and revenue for your business. It can also lower your customer acquisition costs, which means fewer frowns all around. 

To create a great landing page with high conversions you need to;

  • Have a clear marketing objective
  • Communicate clearly
  • Deliver a great user experience

So we’ll discuss all the above points. Then we’ll look at one example of a Saas landing page, and what makes it great.

Table of Contents

  1. Have A Clear Marketing Objective
  2. Communicate Clearly
  3. Shopify Landing Page Example
  4. Deliver A Great User Experience

This post will focus on landing pages for Saas and other businesses that do lead generation. For ecommerce and direct to consumer brands, you can check out our post about building product pages.

1. Have A Clear Marketing Objective

A great landing page has a well defined identity and objective. Its role in the sales and conversion funnel is clearly set out. 

The main call to action (CTA) on the page should be derived from the key objective of the landing page.

There also needs to be a plan on how to get landing page traffic and what steps to take after someone visits the landing page.

There are many types of landing pages, each with its own goals which can be to;

  • Collect qualified leads
  • Collect contacts 
  • Sell a subscription, or service

Mediocre landing pages will often try to do too much. Some might have forms with a gazillion fields, too many CTAs, and the wrong messaging. 

The success or failure of a landing page can be measured by looking at;

  • Conversions
  • Page engagement
  • Marketing efficiency

You can also watch recordings of people interacting with the landing page. It might give you good insights and context to landing page data. Lets look at how you can measure performance.

Conversions

A landing page conversion is where the visitor takes an action that you wanted them to take when they visited the landing page. Common examples of conversion you can track include;

  • Calls 
  • Form submissions
  • Booked appointments
  • Sales
  • Subscriptions
  • Number of leads
  • Conversion rates
  • Sign ups

Page Engagement

These metrics help you know how page visitors are consuming the content, interacting with the landing page, and browsing around your website. Examples include;

  • Time on page
  • Engaged sessions
  • Scroll depth
  • Link clicks
  • Event count
  • Video views

Marketing Efficiency

Marketing efficiency is about how much money is spent on marketing to bring in revenue. It looks at the unit costs of getting sales. Suppose company A spends $10 to sell a subscription worth $100. Then company B spends $20 to sell the same subscription. We can conclude that company A has a better marketing efficiency.

Landing pages affect marketing efficiency because they convert web traffic into leads or sales. Landing pages with high conversion rates will often have better marketing efficiency than those with lower conversion rates.

A landing page should be tested and optimized to reduce the unit costs for acquiring customers and leads. Key metrics to track are;

  • Customer acquisition costs
  • Costs per lead
  • Return on ad spend

2. Communicate Clearly

Landing page content must be concise and easy to consume. Use language, visuals, and media that is immediately understandable to your target audience.

The biggest input that should go into messaging is the voice of our target audience.

So the people responsible for landing page content must first have a deep understanding of the product, potential customer, landing page objectives, and the industry.

 A landing page can communicate its message through several formats including;

  • Copy (written text)
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Images and graphics

Whether to use one or a combination of these formats depends on the type of goals and resources you have.

These formats help us tell visitors about what we sell and why they should buy. We ought to choose formats that best communicate the idea we want to share. 

The rule of thumb when creating content is to ensure that you show and tell as much as possible. In the section below we’ll look at the types of information that you can add on a landing page. After that we will go through a real world example with a SaaS brand.

A landing page communicates to visitors through different elements that should work together for a convincing pitch. These include; 

Product Information

This is where we provide a detailed description of how our service solves the customer’s pain points. This content should cover what the product is, what it does, who it is for, and why someone should choose it.

You can also share the industry certifications, badges, and awards that the service has been awarded, if any. 

Social Proof

Social proof is where we take feedback from previous customers and use it to influence prospective customers.

The psychology behind social proof is that we tend to believe people and we also seldom want to be first to use a product or service. We’d rather choose products or services that are proven. And that proof will usually come from people who have bought the product. Social proof can come in form of;

  • Testimonials
  • Ratings
  • Reviews
  • Case studies
  • Social media posts and comments

Here’s a brief look at each of these forms of social proof;

Testimonials

They show that others have used the service and were happy with it. It is great to have video testimonials. Text testimonials work well if they have a clear image. No stock photos here. 

Give context about the person providing a testimonial. Beyond the name, their job title and company can be key if your target audience is businesses. If it is a location specific service or offer, add the location in all testimonials.

Reviews

If you source your own reviews, you get lots of control on how to use them. Such reviews can be sourced in a way that meets your brand and editorial standards.

You can get reviews from third parties such as Google, Yelp etc. But these can come with constraints on how you can use them. For instance, you might not be allowed to use them on paid advertising campaigns, or on third party platforms. Or, you might have to pay these third parties for the right to use such material.

In some industries, you will find “professional reviewers” who buy products or services with the express intention of reviewing them rather than ordinary consumption. It can be possible and useful to acquire their reviews and use them on your landing pages.

Know the constraints that come with opting for third party reviews and see if it’s good for your business.

Ratings

These represent what previous customers feel about the value they got from consuming a service. Ratings are also affected by the overall experience customers get when they buy from the business.

Ratings are usually implemented through stars e.g 5 out of 5, 4 out of 5 etc. Some companies will use a scale of 1 to 10. Others might go with happy, slightly happy, or very happy. 

It is great if you can use third party ratings e.g Trustpilot, Yelp etc. These are more trusted by customers than in-house ratings. We have all seen that one business that deletes bad ratings and reviews. 

Of course there are many cases of malicious ratings and reviews on these third party platforms. In some cases you can have them pulled down, but sometimes, you can’t. You also need to adhere to some terms and conditions. Know the risks and constraints before you decide whether to import third party ratings to your landing page.

Case Studies

Case studies work well for complex and high value services. For instance, consulting, SAAS, and most business to business solutions.

They give you the opportunity to explain the problems, how you solved them, and the impact it had on the client. All this information is packaged in a story rich in data and details that shows expertise.

Case studies in themselves can be an individual component in the conversion funnel.

Make the case study be about the solution to customer problems. Focus on results/impact, and then explain how this was achieved.

  • Make case studies available in convenient formats for your target audience (e.g video and downloadable pdfs)
  • If you include clickable links in case studies, tag them for performance tracking
  • Be succinct
  • Use visuals and charts that simplify the message

Social Media Posts And Comments

You can consider these as shorter testimonials or reviews. Because you didn’t solicit them (hopefully), they add an authentic voice to your marketing. 

Always seek permission from the original posters before you use their comments or posts. Be explicit how you intend to use the post, whether in videos, paid ads, or any other media.

3. Shopify Landing Page Example

For great landing pages, the design will be simple, giving the message the spotlight, with all elements working in harmony. Brevity is the name of the game.

Above The Fold

This is the part of the landing page that a website visitor will see before they scroll down. It is the first  opportunity to convince them that we have what they want. Clearly say what you’re selling in this part.

Have a call to action button in this section in case the user is already sold on the offer. That way the user can make the purchase or submit their contact, or do any other action we want them to take. 

Here are key points about your above the fold section;

  • Have one hero image that represents your service or target customer
  • Use concise text, and communicating the main message
  • Make sure your CTA focuses on and what action you want the reader to take

Visuals on this section could be still graphics or images, or video. Mediocre landing pages may have this section covered with text, animations, video, images and slideshows.

Note the simple design, and clear message. The visual shows a shoe in an online store, it complements the copy. Then there’s a clear call to action.

Below The Fold

Below the fold is where people will navigate to if they want to learn more before they can decide to take action. It is where you;

  • Substantiate any claims made (with case studies, testimonials, reviews, ratings, industry awards, and other social proof.
  • Provide more information about your solution or service 
  • Overcome objections by answering questions that potential customers could be having

Here’s part of the “Below the fold” section of the Shopify page we shared above. Note how the CTA is sticky. When users scroll down, they can choose to click on it at any point when they are still on the landing page.

The content explains the key selling proposition of “Sell Everywhere” that was mentioned in the “above the fold” section.

When landing page content isn’t sufficient to make visitors decide, they will probably go to your competitors. They might also contact your team for more details.

4. Deliver A Great User Experience

A great user experience will mean that page visitors can easily find what they want, take action, and leave. Obstacles will make users leave the website or fail to convert on the landing page.  Below are the usability factors that can make or break landing page performance;

Contrast

The text, background and call to action buttons should be clearly distinguishable. Each section of the page should also be be clearly differentiated, e.g the top menu, the CTA, and other parts of the landing page

Readability

Readability is affected by contrast, font size, font colors, line length, and sentence structure. When there’s good contrast, text is easier to read.Text should be also in a font size that is easy to read, both on mobile, tablet, and desktop displays. Add sufficient space between lines, text and paragraphs for easy reading.

Short sentences are easier to read and understand. Longer sentences tend to be complex. Not great when you’re trying to sell. Finally, minimize the length of lines. It is proven that people don’t like reading long lines.

Site Speed

Ensure the page loads in under two seconds. People are quite impatient, and will navigate away from the page if it loads slower than they expect. You can test for landing page speed using tools like Pagespeed Insights.

If you use Pagespeed Insights, look at the metrics and the screenshots to ensure the page loads fast enough. Sometimes, the metrics may be okay, but not representative of what users see.

If the content that has loaded is not useful to a website visitor then ignore the “okay” metrics. Animations like a floating dot can be counted as content by this tool. A human wants to see images or text. 

Easy To Fill Forms

If the landing page has a form, make it easy to use. Here are some best practices;

  • Integrate autocorrect and autofill, this will reduce the amount of work website visitors need to do.
  • Provide clear information about the next steps after users fill the form
  • Use inline field labels and ensure the action buttons stand out and are clear.
  • Clearly indicate optional and compulsory fields either using text or asterisks.
  • Keep the number of form fields at a minimum. If you need lots of information, you can use a multi-form process.
  • One column forms are easier to fill 
  • Optimize the form for mobile  
  • Indicate field constraints. For instance the character count and input type; whether numeric or text or alphanumeric.

Testing 

Testing is where we run comprehensive tests on each feature and element on the landing page, both on mobile and desktop.

Ensure all buttons and navigation arrows work as they should. Test any forms and the submission process. Check if data collection works as it should. 

If any actions should trigger another action, test the whole process. For instance, maybe a new “subscribe” action should send a double opt in email. Go through the process, see if the double opt in email is sent.

Ensure all text is readable, audio is audible, and video is visible. Does the page scroll as it should? The key is to ensure everything works as it should, always.

Information from testing helps you make improvements to the landing page. Here is a post that digs deeper into the differences between A/B tests and conversion rate optimization.

Conclusion

The overall idea is that a great landing page is focused on the target audience at every point. On the landing page, we are simply connecting audience needs and aspirations to our service.

Copywriters, marketers, and designers must really understand the psyche, needs, and expectations of website visitors. Then the execution of the landing page should be so that it is easy to use and understand.

However, no landing page is perfect. We still need to monitor usage and performance, and then make continuous  improvements. This is how you build a SaaS landing page that converts.