How to Create High Converting Landing Pages for Your Ecommerce Brand

Every ecommerce brand understands that traffic is not the same as sales.

Sure, paid campaigns can bring people to your site, but how do you convert those visitors into paying customers? The majority of the advice found online focuses on killer headlines and social proof, but the most fundamental principle of conversion rate optimization is actually quite simple.

Customers need to know what you’re selling.

New organic traffic often comes to your site without quite knowing what you offer. Users come through after searching for something on Google -make sure that you have a strong SEO strategy- but they need to quickly determine if your brand can provide what they’re looking for.

Intuitive navigation drives the user experience. Here are 6 simple tips and advice from ecommerce experts to help you create a high-converting landing page. 

1. Know your audience’s needs

This sounds simple, but many ecommerce landing pages miss this point. A landing page is not the place to relate your brand story or overwhelm customers with sales pitches. Get straight to the point. Who is your audience, and what are they shopping for?

Cassandra Cross, of Coalition Technologies shared about their client in the food and beverage industry. “Our client wanted to increase the B2B side of their business by targeting breweries and taprooms. The client’s fruit purees are often used in beers, cocktails, and other recipes, but a purchaser from a brewery wouldn’t require too much context. We added a “quick view” button to product listings for easy comparison.”

The pop-up allows users to compare the different products without leaving the home page. Allowing them to quickly scroll through the catalog and locate the exact flavors they need.

2. Simplify the navigation

A landing page is where users start. But it’s not always where they finish.

Once a user has found your site, they need to navigate it easily. Full-width templates that don’t include navigation bars often hurt more than they help. An option to explore increases user engagement and raises the likelihood of them finding what they are looking for.

In the case of Coalition Technologies, they worked heavily on the site’s navigation, still remembering the first step of knowing their audience, ensuring that a user looking for a specific item could find it.

Sinem Yarasgil from Optimum7 shared with us what they did for a client in the luxury jewelry industry. The first tip that they gave was for brands to make sure that if their landing page is a category page, they should have a search and filter functionality similar to Amazon—since their pages convert at 30-40%.

The second thing that is important on the product pages is to have a sticky menu, sticky add-to-cart as well as multiple calls-to-action and calls-to-action above the fold. This ensures that your user knows what they have to do when they get to your site. 

• Are they going to opt-in for an email? 
• Are they going to request a discount? 
• Are they going to add an item to the cart? 
• Are they going to call you? 
• Are they going to join the chat? 

These are some of the top elements that brands have to consider to create high-converting landing pages which are essentially product pages and category pages on an ecommerce site.

Sinem also mentioned in further detail that all the optimizations that they’ve made to improve mobile usability—a sticky Add to Cart button, prominent call-to-actions (CTAs), and page speed enhancements— significantly boosted the jewelry brand’s site traffic within the first six months.

3. A/B test

As per any design, an important rule to remember when optimizing your conversion path is that you should test everything and change what’s not working.

It’s extremely important for ecommerce brands to continuously monitor visitors' behavior on your website or landing page and pinpoint friction points in the shopping experience. That way, there’s a lower chance of them dropping off before even getting to the payment part.

An important element of any conversion page is the Call-to-Action (CTA). The CTA guides visitors to the next step; without it, your conversion rate will undoubtedly plummet. 

Increase your conversion rates by testing:

• the copy of your CTA, 
• the design of your CTA, 
• Location of your CTA on the page

Omniconvert applied this testing principle for a retail store offering photographic and video equipment for beginners and professionals. 

Here’s an example of the controlled version. 

The CTA asks for a strong purchase commitment. Even if the original functionality of the button was adding the product to the cart, the copy and the minimalist design hinted toward completing a purchase before the visitor was ready to make the decision.

And here is the variation version:

For the variation, the Omniconvert team experimented with the page copy and design.

The message explains the real functionality of the button, and the design helps visitors visualize the action of adding to the cart. The color palette was also simplified to emphasize the message and capture attention.

The experiment was evenly split (50/50) for all website visitors. The results?

• A 6% increase in the conversion rate
• Uplift of 1.68% in revenue per visitor
• Validation with 99.21% in statistical relevance   

“Testing CTAs is a small and subtle change—yet the results can be inspiring and make all the difference in your conversions. It’s good practice to test your CTAs and make sure the copy isn’t too pushy and the overall design catches visitors’ eyes.” Oana Predoiu, Senior Copywriter at OmniConvert

4. Close the deal

If you have an ecommerce store, then you know—abandoned carts are the bane of your existence. How does a user come so close to buying something without converting?

That final cart page needs to close the deal. What are the reasons someone might hesitate to finish a purchase?

From a B2B perspective, a business owner would want to know about transit time, the number of pallets that will arrive at their loading dock, and how to properly store the products. By anticipating these questions, the Coalition Technologies team created an informational cart page.

In B2C, these concerns may be more along the lines of a return policy, a money-back guarantee, or delivery estimates. But the point remains the same. Users need plenty of reassurance that completing their purchase is a good idea.

In just three months, Cassandra shared that their client saw a 60% increase in organic revenue. And 18 months later, the client saw a 3,859.67% return on ad spend (ROAS) from their Facebook campaigns and a 2,434% ROAS from Google ads.

5. Boost your website’s load speed

From a technical standpoint, if your website is running too slow, it’s causing your traffic to bounce at different stages of your funnel. Reducing seconds of the loading time can improve your conversion rate significantly.

No matter how beautiful your website is or how amazing the products are, if your store page doesn’t load fast, users won’t stick around long enough to see the site design or scroll through the products. Much less cart out. 

Nearly 70% of consumers state that page speed influences their decisions to buy from an online retailer. Here are a couple of simple tips the Oddit team has shared to improve your site speed:

• Use compressed images
• Optimize the use of Shopify apps
• Minify HTML and JS
• Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS
• Use a single hero image instead of sliders

6. Optimize for mobile

The share of mobile ecommerce sales in total ecommerce sales has increased from its 52.4 percent market share in 2016 to the current 72.9 percent market share. In other words, nearly three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases today is done so through a mobile device. 

In the US alone, the amount of time spent on mobile devices every day by consumers has increased from 188 minutes in 2016 to 234 minutes in 2021. This marks a 24.5 percent increase in just five years.  

A site that’s mobile-friendly has a 67% greater chance of converting but websites that aren’t mobile-friendly have a 61% higher chance that visitors will bounce off.

This is an example of a retro and vintage fashion store that Calashock created. A sticky add-to-cart button is particularly important on a mobile device where the smaller screen makes scrolling essential to view even the vital product card information. And this is only a small part of what you can do to improve your mobile pages.

The Checklist

Jean Pascal Charles, Founder of Ecommerce Boost shares a quick checklist that they used to help a skincare brand improve their conversion rate from 1.83% conversion rate to 4.08%. Here’s what you should include on your landing page: 

• Product descriptions must answer the pain points your customers have
• Showcase your reviews and testimonials
• Display lifestyle images, UGC as well as product images
• Provide clear shipping information (particularly how long the delivery timeframe is)
• Ensure that your copy is talking in the tone of voice that aligns with your consumer
• A/B test your headline and CTA button
• Ensure that you have multiple payment options on the checkout (PayPal, Credit Card, BNPL option relevant to your market)

Before you get started

We have a couple more resources to help you along the way. Here’s a Twitter thread on 25 CRO best practices from Carl Weische, Co-Founder & CMO of Accelerated Agency.

Ecommerce brands don’t need gimmicks or fanciful but complicated web design. The six steps above are great ways to help you make your products visible, and your solutions to customers’ pain point known.

Now that you've got your high converting landing pages for your ecommerce brand, here are some articles to help you propel that growth:

• 16 Top Ecommerce Communities to Join to Grow Your Business
• A Guide to TikTok for Ecommerce Businesses
• A Guide to Pinterest for Ecommerce Businesses
• 15 YouTube Channels for Building and Growing Your Ecommerce Brand
• 33 Shopify Experts To Hire If You Want To Explode Your Sales