Getting the landing page design right
Getting the landing page design right
Website and landing pages (LP) are not same. LPs are direct and fast. Websites are detailed and can be slow. Our DTC website has glaring issues creating a leaky boat. It needs fixing. LPs can help?
👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. I am Shantanu, writing about building businesses from scratch every week. Right now I focus on DTC brands. I am currently building one, and I have worked with hundreds in the last 8 years. I used to come in after the brand is set up and needs to scale. Starting a brand from scratch - setting up the website, GA tracking, ad pixel tracking, starting performance marketing, getting new distributors - is new to me. I am learning (rapidly).
I have to thank Singapore for this new chapter of life - MBA, entrepreneurship (aka failures) and business development. It was Singapore’s 58th National Day this month. The city state celebrates it in style - fighter planes, helicopters, skydives, fireworks and rallies. The celebrations are meant for the 9th of Aug, but full rehearsals happen 3 times before the final display. They are majestic is an understatement. Here are some pictures from this years NDP celebration. You can access the full library of pictures on Strait Times.
Missed tips on Meta Ads
I wasn’t happy after I sent last week’s post about getting Meta ads to work. I realised I missed sharing tactical information. The writer inside me chose simplicity and storytelling. Before I jump into today’s topic, let me share 5 nuggets from our paid ads experience in the past 5 months -
Continuous creative testing - We have run close to 30 different forms of static and video creatives. What we saw work well - Ads with numbers, trust badges, User reviews, less text, 1 problem focus worked better than others. We went as far as keeping everything same and changing a women’s face from young to old.
Videos are still being tested. We also lack quality UGC and video assets. So, we are building an asset base using our inhouse studio, paid influencers, paid UGC and original UGC.
Insider insight is since everyone is testing video, statics are cheaper and more effective.Managing budget - We invest $200-$500 to test a creative angle and then decide to scale or pause. This leads to high cost, however it the cost of learning and ROI is improving weekly.
Optimisations based on key customer interest metrics - We look at CTR, ATC, ATC to purchase, conversion count and value, CPA and optimise either the ad or the landing page (more on this later).
SG market has scaled up lot quicker than US market. My expectation was the opposite would happen. So, we focused our marketing investments in SG.
Landing page design has been a consistent bone of contention between us and the paid ads partner. Rightly so - It is needed to ensure ads perform, consumers get right information fast and can make a decision. For us it has been a question of bandwidth, priority and understanding what works. Two weeks after we launched our website, our fractional CMO said - set up landing pages and start testing. I was lost then. What did he mean?
Let’s look at the answer in three stages
What are landing pages?
What makes it successful?
All the things we are doing wrong today.
#1 Landing pages help you test fast
You cannot keep changing you website, product pages and checkout process everyday. It is one-time, maybe a quarterly process. All DTC ecommerce websites are content management systems with payment facilities (remember WordPress?). Now, how do you test what customer likes or dislikes? Enter landing pages (hereon, LP)
There are paid LP builders available, for example Unbounce and LeadPages. You could also build a landing page directly in your Shopify or BigCommerce page builder. We chose to stick out the native page builder since we don’t have to set up analytics tracking all over again. It doesn’t look the prettiest, but it works right now.
We also wouldn’t want to customer to feel that they are on a different website (designs could be wildly different). However, that being said, we are in the process of testing LP builders this month.
LP allows you to test hypotheses fast. Do customers care about GMP certified manufacturing? Put out a bold text section on your landing page and watch how customers are interacting with it.
LP allows you segment messaging for customers. We sell to customers in US and Singapore. During the National Day sale, we couldn’t have run the same banner in SG and US. So we used a LP for the event, directing SG traffic to it. It did phenomenally well.
Secret🤫- You can use Microsoft Clarity to watch people on your website.
#2 Five elements of landing pages that convert
Let’s get directly into it.
Communication - Direct language (no beating around the bush), speak about benefits, how to use information, how soon users can see benefits post usage, what’s unique about the product.
Trustable - Real user reviews, brand story, payment trust badges, ability to contact (Whatsapp and email), refund and return information
Genuineness - Real product images, certifications, FAQ, fresh website (banners, offers, colors). Our customers always ask - “Are you a Singapore brand?”
Speed - Bounce rate from clicking on ads to landing your website is at least 50% (when your page loads fast). On most occasions, only 30-40% of interested users reach your website. Hence, ensure you loading within 1.5 seconds.
Icons - Communicate key information in standard icons. Icons give assurance to users. Don’t overuse them.
With these basics, if you design your landing page well (colours, fonts, spacing), you will provide an elevated feeling to the customer. That in turn will drive further assurance, convincing them to make the purchase.
The trick is providing all these information without being verbose and long page. I will leave that to you to figure out.
#3 All the mistakes in our landing pages
You will surprised at the obvious mistakes.
We are using stock images
Our copy and communication is not powerful
Spacing looks weird ( I am sick and tired of this)
Missing UGC content
Missing videos (even today)
Lack of native checkouts for US. Took 3 months to get it sorted.
Poor reviews quality
Our About us page is poor. Not clear and direct.
People aren’t reading the blogs. It means we are doing it wrong.
Icons are poorly designed.
Customers don’t get an elevated feel (basic design)
Lacks freshness - Main banner hasn’t been updated over 30 days.
The list is longer. We are working on solving these one by one. We will get to a great website and landing design by end of this year.
For your eyes only
I must say the quality has improved, but I still cringe when I look at these pages. Let me know how do you guys find them.
Aim for the next 2 months is to get a pre-lander (LP) page for each of our products and see what’s working the best! I will share these once we are done.
Did I tell you that you are star? ✨
Thank you for reading this edition. I met my mentor few weeks back. He is the reason I selected Singapore for MBA and consequently everything good that has happened. I keep thanking him, but I believe it is never enough. I call him every time I am in trouble. Here is a sweet picture of us.
Thank you again! I am taking off next weekend, please wait for 10th Sep to read the next edition.
I can’t resist sharing this cute Jisoo GIF. She is the cutest 🥰
Okay, bye! See you after 2 weeks 👋