If you are buying traffic and you’re directing your hard-won prospects to your online shop’s Product Detail Pages (or worse, your homepage), you are in for a treat today…

Because I am going to show you one simple thing that, if you implement, will skyrocket your ecommerce conversions!

I want you to think about this for a minute…

When a visitor performs a search and clicks through an ad on the search results, what usually happens?

Now let’s step into our customers’ shoes and consider the typical journey they make…

Imagine your ideal prospect.

Let’s call him Bob.

Bob is thinking of upgrading to a high-speed blender.

(You’re probably selling something completely different but for our purposes, the blender in this thought exercise is a “placeholder” – it could be any product.)

“Best high-speed compact blender under £300” he Googles, to see what his best options are.

He sees an article from a kitchen website he’s familiar with featuring purportedly unbiased reviews of the “top 10 blenders”.

The first one mentioned is the Bullet X3000 (I made that one up).

It looks durable so he Googles: “Bullet X3000 best deals”.

Now he sees a row of Google Ads with images.

He clicks on one.

He lands on the Product Detail Page (PDP) for Bullet X3000 in your ecommerce store.

He reads the description, reviews, price, shipping details, etc.

But then he also sees pictures and links to similar products…

His curiosity piqued, he clicks on one of them.

“It looks great, too. And it’s cheaper!” Bob mutters under his breath.

Right below the “Similar Items” list is the “Compatible Products” list so he decides he might as well check out other kitchen items…

Pretty soon he’s at the home improvement section, drooling over outdoor dining sets…

Now Bob is deep down the online window shopping rabbit hole, clicking mindlessly on whatever takes his fancy.

An hour passes, and he still hasn’t bought any high-speed blender.

Thanks to the “related products” at the bottom of the pages he visited, now he’s thinking of buying something else.

But hey, he’s not in a hurry. So why act now?

Without even really thinking about it, Bob clicks away and decides to browse YouTube.

This is typical e-commerce visitor behaviour.

And for ecommerce shop owners like you, it’s highly problematic.

You’ve worked so hard and invested so much to get their attention, only to lose them in the end.

And because of what?

Well, because of sub-optimal Landing Pages.

The good news is that there is a way to minimise the odds of these prospects from clicking away empty-handed:

Dedicated Ecommerce Landing Pages!

What is a Dedicated Landing Page?

A Dedicated Landing Page is a custom (standalone) page that specifically suits the unique needs of a target persona or user profile, and it’s designed to achieve ONE conversion goal.

If you’re running PPC campaigns, you should definitely create dedicated Landing Pages for specific keywords.

Because they are focused and highly targeted, they help you get well-matched traffic and thus minimise bounce rates.

This in turn helps minimise wasted ad spend and increase your paid ads’ Quality Score and Ad Rank!

Why Should You Use Dedicated Ecommerce Landing Pages?

I’ll answer that question by showing the problems that are causing “conversion leaks” from ecommerce pages in the first place and then demonstrating how Dedicated Landing Pages fix those leakages.

1. A Dedicated Landing Page is designed to focus the user’s attention and persuade them to take one clearly defined action.

When you pay for traffic you don’t want to give them any excuse to leave by clicking away.

Unlike a website homepage or a Product Page, a Dedicated Landing Page has minimal to no navigation links.

This helps focus the visitors’ attention and persuade them to perform the target action. (Your target action can be creating an account, taking a quiz, subscribing to your list, claiming a discount coupon, etc).

Because it’s customised to match the prospect’s intent, a Dedicated Landing Page immediately gives the prospect exactly what they’re looking for, right there on the page.

This is the above-the-fold area. Notice how there are no links leading the visitor elsewhere.

As you can see, this page has ONE goal only, and the design demonstrates that.

Now compare it to the above-the-fold section of a typical Product Detail Page:

In an era where most people (me included) have attention spans shorter than a goldfish’s, it’s easy to see why this doesn’t help conversion-wise:

Notice how the navigation links serve as “temptations” for visitors to go elsewhere and do something else.

It even links to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It’s fodder for easily distractible minds.

For this reason, we don’t recommend the all-too-common practice of putting “related products” at the bottom of a product page if you’re going to use it as a landing page for your paid ads.

Because after working on optimising hundreds of landing pages, I can tell you this:
Multiple choices = Conversion killer

2. Most generic landing pages do not utilise conversion principles.

I can say the following about most of the pages we’re asked to optimise:

• They don’t have clear Unique Value Propositions above the fold.
• No compelling benefit-driven or promise-oriented headline that hooks the reader’s attention
• No bullet points highlighting the benefits that appeal to the target persona. In fact, product pages are often feature-focused.Consider these two headlines:“Get this 12 megapixel camera phone today!” (feature-driven)
  VS“Take incredible photos of your family that will last forever!” (benefit-driven)(Benefits appeal to our emotions. And as much as we all want to think we are rational beings, Science has already established that it’s actually our emotions that drive our decisions and behaviour!)
• Zero trust-building elements (e.g., testimonial) above the fold.
• They don’t implement the AIDA principle.AIDA stands for Attention – Interest – Desire – Action.That is, you grab your prospect’s attention first, then create interest.Then you take the narrative deeper to develop a strong desire in them. And then you persuade them to take action.Instead, what I often see is a hodgepodge of information on the page, seemingly thrown together in a manner that completely disregards what’s going on inside the minds of the prospects.

• Not enough credibility-boosting elements on the page (or they’re not positioned optimally).
• The Call to Action is either weak, or it’s not prominent or there are far too many links competing for the reader’s attention thus making the CTA disappear into the background “noise”.

Again, this is not to say that Product Detail Pages are useless or that you shouldn’t use them at all.

I’m saying that they have a time and place (which I’ll demonstrate in a minute) and using them as landing pages for paid traffic isn’t one of them.

For example, the product page featured in the image below has many good elements going on. It’s clean, prospects’ questions about the product are addressed, the page is aesthetically pleasing, etc, etc…

But at the end of the day, it still fulfills many of the points I just made in the bullet list above.

3. A Dedicated Landing Page addresses the problem of standardised messaging.

According to Monetate:

“Visitors who land on a Product Detail Page (PDP) are 72% more likely to bounce than those who land on any other type of page.”

“When PDPs serve as landing pages they generally fail to trigger engagement, leading visitors to bounce at drastically higher rates and view significantly fewer pages.”

The implications are shocking.

In other words…
25% of all ecommerce landing pages are Product Detail Pages, and yet the data shows that when we direct visitors to PDPs, they are 72% more likely to bounce (compared to if we had sent them to any other type of Landing Page)!

Why is this so?

One problem my friends, is standardisation.

A Chinese proverb goes: “When you chase two rabbits, you catch none.”

It would behoove you to chase only one rabbit, my young padawan.

Remember that as marketers we’re often selling to a spectrum of customer profiles and market segments.

This means they won’t have the same pain points, needs, buying criteria or sometimes even goals.

If you’re selling a fitness program for people who want to gain muscle mass and tone their bodies, you’ll be dealing with personas such as:

If you’re selling a software that could be used by small organizations, educators, students, as well as by enterprises, a one-size-fits-all PDP would have to use messaging that applies to all of those user profiles so as not to alienate any one.

The result? A lacklustre pitch that appeals to nobody.

And this is one of the many issues with Product Detail Pages: they appeal to anyone and everyone, so the value proposition sounds bland and generic. The message becomes watered down.

Consider the screenshot below.

The product is a powerful blender that normally costs £499.

Notice how the copy is trying to appeal to everyone who could want a blender.

But if you’re a restaurant owner who’s looking to invest in a heavy duty blender that can withstand the demands of daily commercial use, you have questions and concerns that are different from those of a bachelor bodybuilder who makes several protein smoothies every day, for example.

74% of online customers get frustrated with content (on a website) that has nothing to do with their interests. [Source: VWO]

Wouldn’t you say that you would have a much higher chance of buying if the page was made specifically for restaurant owners like you?

If the page addresses your particular concerns, without you having to search high and low for the answers, wouldn’t you feel more empowered to make a buying decision right there and then?

That, my friends, is why dedicated landing pages are more effective.

Because they leverage the art of personalisation.

A dedicated landing page features Unique Value Propositions personalised to a specific user profile. Therefore, they highlight the benefits that are most relevant to the prospect’s goals and pains.

The result is a hyper targeted messaging that presses their buying buttons.

Look at the screenshot below of a landing page we made.

Even though it’s a product that can benefit women of all ages, we didn’t try to appeal to ALL women.

Notice how we designed it to appeal to the needs and desires of a specific age group:

4. A DLP can be custom made to load much faster.

It seems inconsequential, and I know we harp about this all the time, but…

When it comes to paid traffic, load time can make or break your campaigns.

In fact, according to Google…

There’s no question about it: if you’re buying traffic, load time can make or break your conversion.

Now the problem is load speeds of most ecommerce themes are slow.

So PDPs of many default themes are clunky and heavy because they’re coded sub-optimally.

The same can be said for Page Builders.

If you’re using Page Builders, you’re losing money because of their bad load time.

And you can’t really make them faster.

Although themes can be customised (to a certain extent), for the most part you’re still limited. So it may not be as easy/straightforward to apply the conversion principles you’re learning here if you’re being constrained by your existing theme.

The best way to get around these issues is by building custom pages.

5. Dedicated Landing Pages take prospects through a process that considers where they are in the buying process.

According to Marketo, 96% of visitors who land on Product Pages are not ready to buy yet.

This makes sense, considering that there are stages to the customer journey:

Just like you wouldn’t put on your pants before your undies (even Superman doesn’t do that anymore), your prospects wouldn’t buy before they’ve gone through their version of the buying process and narrowed their options down.

Think about your own experience as a consumer. Don’t you go through certain phases before you are confident to buy and you feel good about moving forward with your top choice?

Let’s take “Bob the blender hunter” from our earlier example…

Below are examples of conversations he’s having in his head depending on where he is at the Buyer’s Journey.

(Again, think of the blender here as a mere “placeholder” then apply the framework to your own product or business.)

When Bob is Problem-Aware:

• “I’m no longer happy with my poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. I’m always eating unhealthy meals…”
• “But what healthy meals can I eat instead? I hate cooking and I don’t want to spend ages in the kitchen!”

At this stage, Bob is aware of his problems but has no idea yet that one viable solution is to use a blender to (1) make healthier meals and (2) speed up his meal prepping.

When Bob becomes Solution-Aware:

• “If I buy a blender, I can quickly make fruit smoothies and keto pancakes for breakfast…”
• “I can prepare green smoothies and protein shakes and take them to work.”
• “I can easily blend a variety of vegetable soups in big batches, portion them, and then chuck them in the freezer, ready to defrost anytime!”
• “I can make stews and casseroles with sauces that I can blend up, mix with the rest of the ingredients, and pop everything in the oven!”

At this stage, Bob is considering the many possibilities that could open to him if he uses a blender to solve his problem. But he doesn’t know yet which particular blender is best suited for his needs.

When Bob becomes Provider-Aware:

• “So for my needs, I could get a blender from either Brand A, B, C or D…”
• “Brand A is compact so it won’t take up too much space in my kitchen.”
• “Brand B is the most bad-ass in terms of speed and durability but also the most expensive…”
• “Overall, I think Brand C offers the best value for money. It may not be the fastest but it’s faster than what I need it to be, considering my usage.”

Only when Bob reaches the last point in the final stage (when he narrows down his options to just one blender) is he truly ready to buy.

And that’s the time when a Product Detail Page will do a great job at converting Bob!

Product Detail Pages suit prospects who have already decided that they’re going to buy and they just need to confirm certain details (e.g., color, size, capacity) and then add it to the cart.

This means that when you lead a problem-aware prospect straight to your generic product page without “priming” them or pre-selling them, you’re going to lose them.

Because at that point, they’re not at the stage yet where they are ready to buy.

No wonder “visitors who land on a PDP are 72% more likely to bounce than those who land on any other type of page.”

So you see, it’s all about presenting the right information that matches the right prospect at the right phase in their journey. 

Consider the screenshot below:

Notice that it’s not selling anything (yet).

Because it’s aimed at prospects who may or may not be aware of Kala Bikinis.

They’re solution-aware but not necessarily provider-aware.

Or they may already be aware of Kala but haven’t bought any pair of Kala bikinis yet.

So instead of pushing them to buy (an action they’re not yet ready to take anyway), we get them to enter our funnel as leads. From there we can nurture them until they are ready to get even more Kala Bikinis.

Here’s another example of a landing page we’ve done with this principle in mind:

Ready to create your dedicated landing pages?

Here are our top tips…

The Landing Page Guys’ Top 8 Tips for Designing Dedicated Ecommerce Landing Pages:

• Make sure it’s mobile optimised and that the page loads fast.
• Keep the code as lean as possible to make it load faster.
• Optimize your videos and images. Use an image optimisation tool and then re-upload them if you need to.
• Use Pingdom Tools Website Speed Test and Google’s PageSpeed Insights to evaluate your current pages.
• Be ruthless in eliminating all distractions.
• Focus on one goal.
  Remove navigation links.
  Get rid of anything that could dilute your message. If it doesn’t help advance your singular goal, it doesn’t belong there on the page.
• Follow the AIDA principle:
  Attention – make sure the headline grabs their attention
  Interest – pique their interest either by making a bold promise, or inducing curiosity
  Desire – develop their desire for your offer by making a compelling case.
  Action – persuade them to take ONE action to get their desires/needs met.
• Provide ample opportunities to click the CTA.
  Place the CTA strategically throughout the page but stick to the same conversion goal.
  Remember to make the CTA pop!
• The more you personalise it, the better it will convert.
  Remember: a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing doesn’t work.The more tailor your pitch to the specific needs and pain points of your prospect, the higher chances you’ll have of converting them.
• Your Landing Page needs to match where they are in the buying process:
  Problem-aware
  Solution-aware
  Provider-awareThe conversations they’re having inside their heads will depend on where they are in the buying journey.Align your messaging with those conversations and you’re golden!
• Sell only one conversion goal, and then upsell.
  Upsell only after they have purchased!
• And as always: test, test, test!Test the:
  – CTA text
  – Shipping costs
  – CTA colour
  – Emojis on CTA buttons
  – Price points
  – Your Unique Value Proposition
  – Product images
  – Testimonial above the fold

CONCLUSION

The whole point of Ecommerce sites is to sell products.

When you buy traffic, you need to drive those hard-won prospects to pages that are optimally designed to make them perform a single action that advances the sale.

And that’s exactly what a Dedicated Landing Page does.

In fact, we’ve seen dedicated Landing Pages convert 2x to 3x more compared to other pages.

To give you an idea how game-changing they could be, the average ad spend of our clients is US$10k-20k a day (we have clients spending as much as 100k a day).

Some may think those figures are ridiculous, but the reason they can spend that much on traffic is because their offers are converting.

So start with your best product today! Pick the one that’s converting the highest and custom-build a dedicated landing page for it using the principles I’ve shared here.

You can either get your developer to build them using your existing platform and then integrate it into your store at the backend, or…

If you need our help, just hit the button below to tell us all about your ecommerce project and we’ll get the ball rolling! We can work with any platform you’re using whether it’s Shopify, Konnektive, WooCommerce and many more!