why the homepages get so much attention in the design process even though they're proven to be terrible at converting visitors into customers I want to show you the secret weapon pages you should be focusing on instead hey guys West McDowell we'll hear from the deep end and in this video I want to show you where the bulk of your attention should go on your website when I'm talking about our conversion focused landing pages now there's a lot of confusion around exactly what a landing page is and how it's different from your home page so let's
clear that up first of all most businesses assume that their home page is how everybody has to find their website but the truth is any page on your website can be an entry point into your business and the more you can tailor those individual pages to a specific person or a specific product or service the better it's going to work in short that is what a landing page is all about it's meant to be specifically about one product or service or offer and move visitors toward a specific action like calling you filling out a form
or making a purchase on the flip side of that a home page is terrible at completing conversions because it just isn't focused it usually has to multitask and represent everything you offer you know for instance let's say you own an accounting firm and you handle bookkeeping and tax prep and financial reporting and to further complicate things you worked with private individuals and you work with businesses too you know with all those services your home page is trying to speak to a lot of needs and a lot of people but what if you had a page
for bookkeeping and one for tax prep for individuals and one for businesses and what if each of those were written and laid out specifically for your ideal customer in each category wouldn't you rather each of those pages be your customers entry point into your site rather than just come the more generic homepage yes you absolutely do because when that happens in your customers mind you go from being a generalist who may be able to help them to a specialist in exactly what your customer wants and as a small business owner would you rather hire someone
who specializes in your exact situation as a small business who knows the ins and outs of that or someone who handles everything you know you want the small business guy right so right now I want to help you develop the landing page strategy that's gonna do that for you but before we get there I want to give you two examples of how landing pages can work first let's take a look at palms and associates they're an insurance broker and they offer a lot of different services and when we researched all the keyword phrases they could
be found for in internet searches we found that there were quite a few services they offered that lots of people were actually searching for in Google every month so we developed a simple landing page strategy for them which laid out the top 10 service pages that would make the most sense to include based on how profitable each service is and also how many people were searching for that service from there it was just a matter of putting some persuasive writing on each page with the help of a good copywriter and using the most relevant keywords
within the text on the pages you know using those keywords on the pages helps Google find the most relevant page for people so now when someone searches for say risk management they won't be taken to the general homepage which just talks about everything in general terms but rather it goes to the page that's specifically about risk management and speaks to those concerns directly which is just a much better user experience for that customer and much more persuasive to you know as you can imagine they get quite a few more consults booked as a result of
closely matching their content to what the visitor is looking for because based this one page they really appear to specialize in risk management when in reality they actually specialize in many many areas and here's another example about how landing pages might actually be more customer focused rather than on specific products or services we recently wrapped up a project with caucho they sell very high-end salon sheers it's pretty niche you know enduring discovery with them we found out that while other shears are on the higher end price-wise some were much higher price than the others so
we learned that though these premium models were almost exclusively purchased by more senior stylist in their late 30s and up and the more base level models were almost always bought by more junior level stylists usually in their 20s so the landing pages we created for them each one after one of those markets one for senior stylist with messaging related to their expertise and status and the other for the juniors with messaging geared more toward you know building their future with a sheer they can use forever not only was the messaging different but the products we
chose to feature on each page were different too the seniors were shown the more expensive models while the juniors got the more entry-level shears shown to them and they've been seeing pretty incredible results from these two landing pages they each convert to sales about three times as much as the more general homepage which is actually laid out in a very similar way it looks the same but it has to speak to everybody so now that you know why landing pages should be the focus of your next site let's talk about what needs to go into
a successful landing page now obviously the specifics are gonna change based on your offer and your audience but generally speaking every landing page should include a few key elements and each one of those elements should work together to reinforce your offer and make an airtight case for it you'll want to include conversion focus sales copy that tells your customer what they need to know or believe before they'll take action remember we defined that in the last section and this is why so next you'll introduce your offer then you need to take all those objections you
came up with in the last section all the reasons why your customers a might saying no and address each one this works best if it's naturally worked in somewhere you can do this in a video or in an FAQ section for instance let for example let's say you're a dentist and you know that people are staying away because they're afraid of the pain involved you know you could make a really quick video just using your smartphone where you talk about the cutting edge pain free methods you use so you're basically treating that objection like a
myth that you can bust or if it were a price objection you could have a whole little mini section on the page devoted to the payment plans that you offer and ideally you also want to include some reviews or testimonials right here on the landing page as well you know it's one thing to talk about yourself and glowing terms on your website but it hits much harder and it's much more believable when it's one of your customers doing it for you and here's another pro tip get at least one video testimonial or review if you
can you know there's just an authenticity in video yet written text can't duplicate so if you can get someone on video a former customer or a current customer who's genuinely excited about what you did for them that excitement will be infectious and inspire others to take you up on your offer as well and of course all of this content is meant to drive one specific action or conversion so what does that action you want people to take based on your landing pages do you want them to pick up the phone and call you do you
want them to schedule a consultation or appointment or if you're an e-commerce store do you want them to actually buy right then and there whatever that action is I want you to put it front and center don't be shy you know there needs to be a big bold button that takes them to the next step whatever that next step is and that button needs to stand out from every other element on the page and you know most web designers totally understand this but just make sure you let them know that you want a true landing
page structure with a single call to action okay guys I hope this has given you some great ideas for what to focus on on your own landing pages and for more tips like these just subscribe to our Channel right down here and if you'd like to speak with me to see what I can do about getting you set up with the new strategy based website just go to the deep end design com I'm Wes McDowell with the deep end - see you next time [Music]
