Table of Contents
- What is a Landing Page?
- What is the Purpose of a Landing Page?
- What is its Function?
- Using the PageFly App with Pre-designed Page Template Packs
- BFCM Fashion - Product
- BFCM Sale
- BFCM Collection
- BFCM Home
- BFCM Upcoming
- Shopify Landing Page Checklist
It’s important for Shopify merchants to take advantage of the features available to them. When designing your site, you must acknowledge that only having a great homepage is not sufficient for your visitors’ all-around experience.
Collection page, product pages, blog, contact - these are all important - but there’s one page with enormous potential that can often be overlooked: the Shopify landing page.
Before reading, download our Shopify Landing Page Checklist here.
When you are advertising your store, where do users arrive when they click the link? The homepage? This makes sense because they have full access to your store, but there is a much better technique to increasing traffic and conversion rates from your ad campaigns.
Using effective landing pages will essentially see your customers pledging to make a purchase by clicking the advertisement, or at least have a significantly higher interest in the specific content of the page. The landing page will be relevant to a certain promotion that already appeals to the visitors who access the ad.
In this article, we’ll go over some fundamental features to include on a solid landing page. With this Shopify landing page checklist, you will have gain the knowledge of how to make a functional and converting landing page.
What is a Landing Page?
In short, the meaning is in the name. The landing page is where a visitor will “land” on your site after clicking on an external link. This link and page will often have a very specific purpose serving as the reason the user decided to click the link in the first place. Your Shopify store will benefit from a great landing page.
The landing page will usually be connected to a specific promotion, marketing campaign, event, or function. Say for example an online store is having a Black Friday sale, they will create a landing page that clearly outlines the products on promotion, a call to action for visitors to purchase, and an express function to add products to the cart.
Because of this, the landing page needs to be both persuasive and user-friendly. When the user lands, the message should be clear and they should feel compelled to follow through with a purchase. After all, they would not have clicked on the initial link if they were not already interested in the content, right?
What is the Purpose of a Landing Page?
The landing page essentially relies on subjective, relatable content that has already piqued the interest of the user. Whether that be a seasonal promotion, an employment application, a sign up form, etc. The user should already have a good idea what they’re in for and have at least some intention of following through.
Effective landing pages will increase traffic by playing to the interests of web users, increase conversion based on the assumption that the visitor is already intrigued, and expedite the purchasing process through the use of “Buy Now” buttons and techniques.
Remember that the landing page has an ideal purpose and outcome where the potential customer should be enticed to complete their purchase from the same page. The page should operate like an ecommerce sales funnel:
What is its Function?
Landing pages should drive traffic to your site based on attractive content and increase conversion rates due to visitors knowing what they are looking for. They should also be highly efficient and have a clear, simple message. The user should know exactly what information will be presented to them based on the initial link.
These pages can also add variety to your store and help you stay relevant. Instead of every visitor starting from your homepage, you can adapt to certain seasonal events and functions that will attract a more diverse demographic to your page.
Unfortunately, Shopify does not feature a landing page customization tool. So how do you go about creating one?
You should always use a landing page for marketing campaigns, consumer holidays, and follow online trends to be able to capitalize on them. Use thePageFly app to fully customize all the pages on your Shopify store, specifically the landing page.
Using the PageFly App with Pre-designed Page Template Packs
PageFly premium users have the luxury of using an excellent variety of templates from SellerSmith. There is consistently a large range of templates available, but for the upcoming major retail date Black Friday/Cyber Monday, five special templates have been created specifically for designing the landing page and all others on your store. These are tools that you won’t want to pass up if you intend to have a benchmark BFCM:
BFCM Fashion - Product:
BFCM Sale:
BFCM Collection:
BFCM Home:
BFCM Upcoming:
Shopify Landing Page Checklist
- ❏ Start with your Unique Value Proposition
- ❏ Maximize the speed and performance of the page
- ❏ Check your Shopify landing page functionality on mobile, tablet, and laptop/desktop
- ❏ Effective buttons on featured product(s)
- ❏ Include as much positive information as possible to reinforce the benefits and trust
- ❏ Host images on Shopify Content Delivery Network
- ❏ Have a strong title and brief, effective paragraphs
- ❏ Invest in product image quality
- ❏ Be fastidious with grammar and spelling
- ❏ Use videos to showcase products
- ❏ Use sliders to maximize the space on your landing page
- ❏ Have a strong, visually present call-to-action
- ❏ Use a countdown timer to create urgency
- ❏ Include an FAQ section so many customer inquiries can be solved from the same page
- ❏ Make your advertisement and landing page identical
- ❏ Use the optimum length
There are some more obvious elements to include on your Shopify landing page:
- Copy
- Image
- Call-to-Action (CTA)
- Layout
- Form
- User Experience
- Goal Clarity
- Trustworthiness
Aside from having a very clear message, making sure the landing page is well-designed and persuasive, and making it easy for your visitors to purchase, there is a lot that you can do to optimize the page that might not occur to every Shopify merchant.
The following is our Shopify Landing page checklist to make sure you minimize any lost clients through a beautiful, trustworthy and responsive landing page:
Start with your Unique Value Proposition:
Your customers need to be convinced that your products will solve their problems. You also need to explain how your offer is most beneficial and why it is unique. This doesn’t necessarily need to be a long-winded explanation of what you’re offering, but needs to succinctly express the reason the visitor should purchase from you instead of a competitor.
Maximize the speed and performance of the page:
Speed is one of the biggest factors in whether or not a visitor will abandon a page (and a purchase!). The best tool for making sure your page will perform at its very best is Google Page Speed Insights.
All you need to do is copy your URL and select “analyze.
This tool will provide a rating for how quick your page is and a description below. It will assess both mobile and desktop response times and offer insights into how to improve the page speed as in the example below. If the rating is low, Shopify merchants should certainly do whatever they can to optimize their landing page to avoid abandonment.
Programs like ImageOptim make it easy to optimize image files for upload to your store. There is also an Image Optimizer App available from the Shopify App Store.
Check your Shopify landing page functionality on mobile, tablet, and laptop/desktop:
As you may have noticed in the page speed analysis above, the same page can have vastly different performance on different devices.
It’s important to check for yourself how to landing page behaves across all platforms. This will ensure that no matter where visitors are accessing the page from, they are having a positive experience.
You can also right click in Google Chrome and select the “inspect” option to view the page from different interfaces.
Effective buttons on featured product(s):
For featured items, a big, bold “BUY NOW” or “ADD TO CART” button will remove the need for visitors to sift through several product or collection pages, instead compelling them to add the item to their cart from the same page.
Also make sure that the button is functional, typically adding the item to the cart without leaving the current page. This allows the visitor to continue browsing uninterrupted and hopefully purchase additional items.
Every Shopify store is equipped with a ‘buy now’ button feature.
Include as much positive information as possible to reinforce the benefits and trust:
Each product should have descriptions that detail why the product is unique, how it will benefit the buyer and the outstanding features that is possesses.
Click here for some great device on how to create an exemplary product description.
You should also include testimonials from customers who have purchased the specific product to enhance the belief in the product and provide social proof that others have found satisfaction in it.
Host images on Shopify Content Delivery Network:
Shopify CDN will ensure that the images present on your store are cached at servers around the globe. This will make your page load faster when accessed from anywhere in the world, a powerful feature in preventing abandonment due to sluggish load times.
All Shopify merchants are afforded CDN privileges for owning a Shopify store. Click here for all the information you’ll need.
You can upload image files from the “files” settings section of your Shopify admin:
Have a strong title and brief, effective paragraphs:
Once you have a lightning-fast landing page, visitors need to be able to scan and digest the present information very rapidly. A creative but clear title is fundamental, and any supporting paragraphs need to be brief and communicative by enhancing the UVP.
Combining this with great layout and images will prevent any confusion and stop visitors having to question any information on the page.
Invest in product image quality:
Make sure your products are featured in high-quality and attractive images. It’s advisable to have a professional photographer take photos of your products and have consistency in how they are positioned or how they appear:
Having a random assortment of product images is just counterintuitive to attractive design and could be repellent to potential customers.
If you have the means and depending on the type of product you are selling, it may be worth investigating the potential of Shopify AR. This gives visitors the chance to experience a 3D model of the items and grants a 360 degree perspective of the product precisely to scale. Going forward, this will be a game changer in how online shoppers assess their purchases and we are only just on the precipice of its capabilities now.
Be fastidious with grammar and spelling:
While this may seem like a given, when you have so many other factors to consider it can be easy to overlook seemingly minor errors. Typos or grammar slip-ups can stick out like a sore thumb to visitors and can be costly in that they negatively affect the perception of your store. The potential customer could assume that the store owner did not pay enough attention to details and it can cause them to not feel “safe” in purchasing.
It may seem like this is blown out of proportion, but some good advice is to imagine each bit of text on your landing page as a billboard. If a mistake is made it will truly stand out:
Use videos to showcase products:
Videos are always the most stimulating form of media and will really give you the chance to highlight the best parts of your products. It’s wise to invest in having a professional video made that conveys your branding and possibly additional videos for each of your featured products.
Use sliders to maximize the space on your landing page:
With limited space, you’ll still want to give your visitors access to all of your promoted products. Use sliders to display fewer items at once but still have all others accessible from the landing page.
Have a strong, visually present call-to-action:
Depending on what your goals are for the page, you need to have a clear CTA that matches these goals. Use visual cues to lead visitors to the intended place and use words like “Now” and “Start” to create urgency.
Use a countdown timer to create urgency:
If you’re having a temporary promotion, make sure to use a countdown timer so you’re visitors are aware. There is nothing more persuasive than the awareness that these deals will be unavailable at some point in the future.
If you’ve ever watched a venture investment program like Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den, you’ve likely seen the situation where an entrepreneur receives an offer, but it is withdrawn when the pitcher is not immediately decisive or takes too much time. The countdown clock is the ecommerce psychological equivalent to that scenario.
Include an FAQ section so many customer inquiries can be solved from the same page:
Even if you have great response times to your customers questions, the goal of the landing page is to convert that lead immediately. If the visitor has a question and needs to contact you or address other support systems it vastly increases the potential that that individual will not be returning to buy.
Include a quality FAQ on the landing page so the user can solve the problem for themself. This will increase user-friendliness and also improve trust based on your transparency.
Make your advertisement and landing page identical:
The ording on your advertisement should perfectly match the headline on your landing page. This guarantees that the visitor knows they have unequivocally arrived in the correct place and, after all, affirms the reason they chose to click on the link in the first place:
Use the optimum length:
A longer or shorter landing page does not definitively create higher conversion. It’s all dependent on the content on the page and the type of person that will be visiting.
To determine the best length for your landing page, consult the analytics from the other pages on your store to figure out which pages perform best for which function and then assess the length and style of those pages to decide which is most suitable.
This checklist will surely help you optimize your landing pages. As each Shopify store is unique, it’s impossible to identify the perfect landing page for each one, but through trial and error, and being attentive to the behaviour of your customers, you will be increasing conversion in no time.
After all, you will have plenty of opportunities to practice making landing pages through each holiday season and with each promotion you run.
Read More:
- Pocket-Guide To Set Up Analytics Tracking For You Shopify Landing Page: Read Now.
- Shopify Conversion Tracking Guide For Shopify Merchants: Read Now
- Top 100+ Shopify Landing Pages You Can Learn From: Read Now
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We will continue to update the Shopify Landing Page Checklist with new tips going forward. Do you have any advice that should be included in the list right now?
Let us know below and we’ll be happy to amend the list.
Best of luck!
