Welcome back to the DTC Boardroom series, where we ask podcast guests and friends of DTC to dive into their personal picks for the most exciting strategies and tactics to help brands WIN BIG! 🙌
Today’s guest is Ryan McKenzie, cofounder of Tru Earth – one of Canada’s fastest-growing and sustainable CPG brands. Ryan has $100M in CPG products sold under his belt and is a big proponent of a well-built landing page to maximize conversions.
“If you're spending money advertising and sending customers directly to your ecommerce product page, you could be leaving tons of money on the table.
Nearly every test I've done yields the same result: sending visitors to a landing page (LP) instead of a standard product description page (PDP) improves conversion rates by at least 25%. 💥
I've even seen a properly built landing page 2x conversion rate. When building, there are 11 key elements to create the perfect ecommerce landing page.
Before I jump in, I want to be clear that sending somebody to your landing page isn't always going to be the clear winner when we're talking top-of-funnel direct response advertising.
Landing pages typically crush product description pages, especially PDPs led by a buy box. Sometimes retargeting works better with the PDP, but like all advice, mileage may vary.
Make sure you test this and don’t follow my advice blindly. 🤝 Let’s dig in.
1️⃣ The hero header
The first element of your ecommerce landing page should be the hero header.
This generally consists of:
- Hero images of your product
- A strong headline
- Some benefits
- And potentially social proof
Between the headline and product images, it should be EXTREMELY clear what your product does, who it’s for, and what problem it solves.
2️⃣ Benefits / why us?
The next section is focused on additional benefits and the ‘why.’
The goal here is to demonstrate the product benefits and give a few extra notes on what else they need to know about that particular benefit.
This is a great place to use images. Less words is more.
3️⃣ Featured in or featured review
This is a great place to demonstrate places your brand has been talked about in the press. If you don’t have a ton of notable press coverage, consider using a featured review, ideally with a person’s face.
This is just a single testimonial – a single review that really is concise and gets the point across for your customer. Not your review widget.
4️⃣ How it works
We want to show the potential customers the specifics. If there's step by step instructions, we want to show them here.
If you have a subscription box or something that customers may not fully understand, this is a great place to showcase how the product works.
5️⃣ Let the customer buy (Buy Box)
So now that we've given the customer enough information to get excited about the product, we want to get down to making an offer or putting the buy box on the page.
You can either embed the buy box on the page or send the customer to your PDP to complete their journey. If the potential customer needs more information, they can keep scrolling.
6️⃣ Review widget
The next section on the perfect ecommerce landing page is going to be your review widget. As you scroll down your page, you've already gone past either the press or individual reviews.
This section of your LP is going to be where the rest of your reviews live. This is your opportunity to shine. I try to feature reviews with faces that include the product in the photo. Most review tools will let you customize how it outputs.
7️⃣ Frequently asked questions
The next section is your frequently asked questions. Not every single question is going to be answered in the benefits of your whys or in your testimonials.
There are going to be certain things that people want to know. The goal is to continue to move people forward, eliminate friction and get people to the point where they're confident that they can make to purchase.
If you are unsure of what questions aren’t covered, consider putting an email in your post-purchase flow asking customers, “What questions did you have before purchasing that were holding you back from buying?”
Also, consider combing through your social media comments for clues on what questions potential customers need answering.
8️⃣ Competitive comparison
The next section is the competitive comparison section. The goal here is to show your potential customer why your product is the best option, especially when compared to the other people offering similar products.
You want to demonstrate why you're the best in every single category, but you don't want to do it in a way that makes it look like you are exaggerating.
Make sure the competition has a few check boxes checked, so you don’t lose customer confidence. Also, make sure you don’t lie about the competition; you don’t want to get sued.
9️⃣ Risk reversal
The next item that you need to have on your eCommerce landing page is risk reversal. I'm talking about a money-back guarantee.
If the potential customer is not sure if your product is going to be the right fit for them, how do we remove that risk so they will give you a shot? With a money-back guarantee or some form of guarantee.
You want to set your potential customer's minds at ease that if the product doesn't do what you say it does, then there's no risk to them. If you can bust that objection, you have a much higher chance of completing the sale.
🔟 Additional call to action
If somebody scrolled past the buy box, you don't want to have to make them scroll all the way back up.
Create additional calls to action throughout the landing page to make the sale as frictionless as possible.
Click the call to action, you are quickly returned to the buy box.
1️⃣1️⃣ Boring footer
A lot of times, you'll see 10+ site navigation links in the footer.
Don’t get me wrong, that's fantastic if this is your regular homepage or if it's a page that people are going to find through just generally shopping your site. But if you're pushing somebody to a landing page, your footer should contain as few links as possible.
It shouldn't have anything other than your shipping and privacy policy.
Every link that you have pointing to social media is a traffic leak. When you pay $3-$4 per click for traffic, you don’t want to risk distracting somebody with information that won’t directly lead to a sale.
Make your footer simple, clean, and aim to reduce the number of people that leave your site through distractions to help you make more sales.
✨ Conclusion
That’s it! This is the format I have used to generate more than $100M in e-commerce sales. Some landing pages differ, but these are the core elements I try to include.
If you prefer to consume video, check out my 15-minute video tutorial breaking this article down in depth.”
