The Missing Element In Your Website’s Sales Page

Susan Gilbert — November 24, 2016 Follow @SusanGilbert

How To Add Spice To Your Website Sales Page

In addition to our normal website pages, individual landing or sales pages are used for specific products or services, especially when doing a promotion or using paid advertising.

Visuals are an absolute necessity on sales pages. Marketers spend a great deal of time focusing on headlines, calls to action, fonts, and other details while often missing this important element. You can’t have a successful sales page without images that generate curiosity, tell a story, and speak directly to your customers. Well-chosen and well-placed visuals lead to higher conversion rates.

I don’t know about you, but I have a definite favorite between these two. Which one draws you in more?

Option A:

OR

Option B:

While a response will vary based on who your target market is, my guess is that you chose Option B. According to Clay Collins, CEO of LeadPages, only 22 percent of businesses are happy with their conversion rates despite the fact that 61 percent are testing out five or less landing pages per month.

In order to encourage more subscribers who will be interested in what your business has to offer I have put together several key factors:

No Filler

A common mistake marketers make is to add images for filler. If there’s an empty space on the page without text, they use a generic stock image to fill it. But every element on a sales page should lead the customer to a sale, and filler content doesn’t do that. The images you use need to communicate effectively the value of what you’re offering and they need to do this in a way that text alone cannot.

The Human Touch

Images that show a human face are often used on good sales pages. They add the personal aspect that is so often missing in online transactions. The best practice is to use an image in which the person is not making direct contact with the camera. Images that include direct eye contact can disturb the path of the readers’ eyes and distract them. As they’re skimming down the page, your customer may instinctively stop to return the look. Here’s a great example from ConversionLab:

Image Captions

Consider whether you want your images to have captions, even if you feel that what the picture is depicting is obvious. Captions can explain exactly what the image shows. You can also leverage your captions to use them to deliver a mini sales message. They can further stimulate curiosity about the product or provide a customer testimonial. Image captions are actually valuable text space. Marie Forleo’s B-School does this well by providing feedback from former students:

Positioning Images

Positioning your images is tricky because they should grab attention without interrupting the reader’s eye path. The only way to truly know where to place images is to test their placement. You can do this by using split-testing software to create identical pages with only the image’s position changed. You can then see which converts better. If you don’t want to invest in software, you can try changing picture placement to see which position gets the best response.

Videos for Sales Pages

Images aren’t the only visual content that works well on a sales page. Videos offer an excellent alternative way for your visitors to get your message, and they almost always lead to higher conversions. A video gives your page more personality and allows the viewer to see for themselves how your product works. Create a video that’s short and to the point; your visitors won’t be likely to sit through a 20-minute demonstration.

Getting Ideas

For ideas on what images to use and how to use them, look at websites, magazines, newspapers, and other marketing materials to see how visuals are used. See how they get your attention or enhance the message for you. Take these ideas and put them to work for you online.

Once you have an eye-catching layout and great images in place, keep the rest of your sales page consistent such as colors, font usage, branding, etc. When you have a professional, high-quality appeal your conversions rates will soar because your audience perceives you as a trusted brand.

Remember that this is the first impression of your business, and even though you will have created a “sales” page, you will want to avoid spammy or hyped up content. Write your copy with the customer in mind instead. Keep your message simple with paragraphs broken up into bite sized pieces — this is especially important for mobile devices.

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