What is a Website Landing Page?

A landing page is where somebody lands on your website. Individuals don’t always walk through the front door to the home page of a website. They frequently land somewhere deep in your website, where they were directed by the search engines, emails, social media or, maybe, a pay-per-click ad.

And that is a great thing since if they arrive deep in your website, they came for a reason and the content on that page is more likely to be appropriate for the visitor’s needs. The intention of a landing page is to get action. You’d like the visitor to sign up for a newsletter, buy a product, or download a webinar. The landing page includes a call to action and an order or sign up form.

12 Copywriting Tips for Website Conversions

1. Clearly outline the objective. Before you begin creating your website’s landing-page copy, determine a specific goal. If you do not know what you want your targeted website visitor to do, they’re going to be clueless.

2. Who’s the target? You can’t write for your website visitor unless you know who they are—their demographics and needs and wants.

3. Get inside their minds. Now you’ve got to start empathizing with your target reader. What problem are you helping them to solve? Or are you creating a unbelievable opportunity? Does it remove discomfort or create pleasure? Keep all this top of mind as you write.

4. Write a benefit-oriented headline. That means creating a headline that explains in a compelling way “what’s in it for me?”

5. Be precise. When explaining what you offer, be as specific as possible. Broad generalities don’t paint a picture. Specifics do.

6. Build credibility. As you write, ask why the reader should believe you. You can boost your credibility by adding testimonials and support research.

7. Tell them something they know. This goes back to getting within the web visitor’s minds. If you tell the website visitor, for example, “you’re frustrated with landing pages that don’t convert,” you get them thinking to themselves. “Yes I am. This person understands where I’m coming from.”

8. Tell them something they don’t know. Now offer them a golden nugget of information that causes surprise and shock. They realize they don’t know everything and makes them want to discover more.

9. Write for scanners. This means lots of white space. Short paragraphs. Bullet points. And ensure you put your most crucial points at the beginning and end of sentences, where people are most likely to read.

10. Use the word “you.” Web visitors wish to read about themselves. They’d like to feel the web landing page is solely for them, not for many others. So use “you.” Don’t use “we,” “us,” or “I.”

11. Write long copy first then edit, edit, edit. If you need lots of words to sell your product, that’s OK. Just don’t use any more than you need.

12. Tell the visitor what to do. If you tell someone what to do, they're likelier to do it. Do it several times. In other words, include a strong call to action.

Hopefully these tips help, but if you need more assistance with copywriting to increase your website landing page’s conversion rate, contact a website copywriter.

Written by Carolyn Frith of Carolyn Frith Marketing, LLC. With over a quarter century of marketing experience, Carolyn Frith concentrates on marketing consulting, website copywriting and search engine optimization services.

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