Ah, landing pages, the place where your customers go to get converted.
It’s a simple enough concept: launch a campaign, send those clicks to a landing page and see those conversions start to trickle in.
In theory.
But, in practice, designing landing pages that actually drive sales is not so simple. It’s an art on targeting, copywriting, functionality, and thoughtful design.
Because, when you’re creating a landing page, you have to take into account a few things, mainly:
- Your target audience
- Your campaign
- Objective: are you trying to sell a product? Get new email subscribers?
With a crystal clear definition of these 3 concepts, you then have to make sure each component of your landing page (copy, CTA placement, and design elements) are true to each of them, as well as your brand.
The thing is, you could have a killer campaign, but a lackluster landing page can cost you lots of conversions and potential sales.
So, let’s take a look at a few best practices, and a step by step guide on how to build beautiful Shopify landing pages to get the results you’re after.
What is a Shopify landing page?
Let’s start from the beginning. A Shopify landing page (or any landing page for that matter) is a standalone web page that is specifically designed to receive and convert traffic from a marketing or advertising campaign.
It's where a visitor "lands" after they click on a link in an email, an ad, a social post, or other web content. Unlike a traditional web page, which typically encourages a visitor to explore additional content, like your homepage or blog, landing pages are designed with a single focus: convert the visitor into a lead.
A landing page achieves this goal by pairing a narrowly focused, action-oriented call-to-action with a form to capture the visitor's information. This campaign functions differently from the other campaign types in that it does not display over your existing site content. Instead, it is an entirely self-contained campaign that you can direct your contacts to via a link.
Even though you can create a landing page within Shopify itself, we don't recommend it. If you want creative freedom, and are not particularly well versed in html coding, you’ll be better off starting with a landing page template, and easily dragging and dropping the elements you’re after.
3 Shopify landing page examples
So, what makes a great landing page? Honestly just one thing: conversions.
There’s no secret formula, although keeping it short and action focused will help you get high-converting landing pages. But, don’t be afraid to get creative, try new things, and test a few until you find that secret sauce for your audience.
For some inspiration, let’s take a look at some awesome landing pages and what makes them so great:
Winc
Their headline is literally three words, but it shows the power of copy. It’s a simple website, the CTA is front and center, the product is right there, that’s it. No fuss. Their campaign to drive more sales by offering a $20 discount, takes traffic to this page, where they can instantly shop and redeem their coupon.
Gillette
Gillette’s campaign advertising their subscription service drives traffic to this stylist and product focused landing page. Again, with a simple header, they’re conveying the ultimate benefit of the product (in this case subscribing to monthly deliveries of razors). Plus, the words “free” and highlight of perks at the bottom help. By addressing objections head on, like “free of commitments” they’re quelling usual fears like committing to a service you might not want later on.
Mr. Draper
Mr. Draper nails its target audience: men, with images of their product, alone and being worn.
It’s a styling service that takes the pressure off, for the fashion-minded, who need some guidance or just don’t have the time. All of this is clear from the landing page, with smart copy detailing the process, a customer testimonial providing social proof, and a CTA that’s front and center.
How to create a Shopify landing page with Privy
Privy offers a landing page builder that’s easy to use, but highly customizable, so you can create high-quality landing pages that are targeted to your audience, and specific to your online store.
Since you can create all sorts of campaigns in Privy (email, social media, gamified popups and flyouts) having a platform that allows you to track all of it, really helps.
With Privy (designed with Shopify stores in mind), you can create and execute a campaign from start to finish (customization of landing pages included) and immediately see how it’s impacting your bottom line in the analytics dashboard. Here’s how to do it:
1. Create the campaign
- Navigate to Convert > All Campaigns and click the New campaign button.
- On the Plays dashboard, select the Build your own option, provide an internal name, and then click the Create Campaign button.
- In the Create step of the campaign builder, select the desired Form fields and Validations for the campaign. Three fields or less are recommended, while the validation depends on your intended audiences and desired discount availability.
- Next, select the Add a display option.
- Select Landing Page from the sidebar, choose a template to customize, and then click the Choose selected option in the upper right. Use the campaign designer to configure the campaign to your liking.
- Select the Save option at the upper right when you are done with your changes. After saving, a new Landing Page Design section will be available under the Create tab.
Tip: It's best practice to use a thank-you page after signup action; however, you can opt to redirect the user or do nothing instead.
2. Target your audience
This depends on what type of campaign you’re running. If it’s email, you’ll have to choose the correct segment, on social media, you’ll have to adjust the desired parameters on your ads, etc. The main thing to think about is what you’re offering, and who will most want it.
If it’s a new product launch, you could aim for repeat customers to get first dibs. While if you’re trying to collect new leads for your email list, you could offer a coupon or discount for their first purchase and target a lookalike audience on Facebook (which can be done if you have the Facebook Pixel installed on your website).
As far as your landing page, the only targeting option is how long you want it to live for. Since a landing page campaign only appears when it is visited, the only audience targeting option revolves around how long the page is available.
If you would like the campaign to expire after a fixed period, move to the Target step and update the How Long to Show It setting.
3. Build a follow-up workflow
Everything that happens after you get that conversion is just as important as what happens before! (Maybe even more so.)
Here are the options with Privy:
- Enable and customize the default after signup email to send an email to the individuals that decided to sign up for the campaign.
- Send welcome series to send additional after signup emails.
- Sync signups to a list in a linked account. If you're not using Privy Email, this setting is particularly important as it ensures the contact information (e.g., Email address) is available in the third-party provider.
- Send text message to send an after signup text message to the individuals that decided to sign up for the campaign.
4. Launch the campaign
Once you’re all done, just click publish, and voila! Your landing page is alive and ready to take on the world!
How to optimize a Shopify landing page
Now that we’ve got all that technical stuff out of the way, it’s time we look a little deeper.
Creating a Shopify landing page with Privy is super simple, but there are a few best practices you should know for optimization, that is if you want the best results. Here are some tips:
Identify your target customer
This is the foundation of your whole campaign, and by extension your landing page.
You need to know who it’s for and why they’ll care. Once you know that, you’ll know how to make your offer more attractive, and nail your landing page with enticing copy they won’t resist!
Your target customer will define the images you use, the offer and how you talk about it, and the incentives to drive that final action.
Define your landing page goal
Landing pages are to drive ONE action. They’re about one offer, one gift, one coupon, one product…
So you have to be extremely aware of what your goal is.
Do you want to increase sales by 10% this month? Do you want to grow your email list with 500 new subscribers? Do you want to finish off the last of your inventory? Having a clearly defined goal will help you assess your campaign performance, and beyond that, the performance of your landing page itself.
Test CTA buttons
One of the most important factors that will determine your landing page’s success is the Call-To-Action.
Yup, that little (well it shouldn’t be that little, it should be pretty prominent) button, is the final push, after they’ve read your copy, saw your images, your customers will see that button and make the final decision whether to click on it and do the desired action, or not.
It seems like a simple thing, especially with everything else that goes into a landing page. But it isn’t.
That’s why it’s so important to test different versions, sizes, placements, and the copy.
Think “Buy Now” or “Get Started”.
You could do some A/B testing between those two to see which one works best. Sometimes a little tweak in wording makes all the difference.
Your CTA should be totally action-oriented, and testing a few different versions will help you land on the one that resonates the most with your target audience.
Make the copy clear and concise
Resist the urge to embellish, or write long flowery sentences.
Focus on your objective and the benefit for your audience. And then just write that.
The thing is, while you might spend hours designing the perfect landing page, you’ve only got a few seconds to hook your audience. Make your offer and value clear - and don't forget to establish a sense of urgency, with things like offer ends on DATE or even a countdown timer.
Focus on one ask
Landing pages have one main goal, drive conversions. That’s why it’s so important to make the landing page only about that specific action you want your audience to take.
If you include different content, or options to navigate your website or find out more, you’ll lose momentum, and distract from your objective.
Instead drive your leads to take action, with just one ask. The simpler, the better.
That doesn’t mean you can only include one CTA though. Depending on your design you may choose to include two or three in different places, but all leading to the same offer.
Make sure it looks good on a cell phone
A lot of your traffic (more than half) will be getting to your landing page from their smartphones.
Make sure your landing page looks great on mobile devices, with the CTA in the right place, the images optimized for mobile and copy that doesn’t look chunky.
Track performance and iterate
After all that, you need to make sure it’s working, and change if it isn’t.
Check on traffic volume and conversion rate.
If you’re testing multiple landing pages for the same campaign, check what images, copy, and CTAs are getting you the most conversions until you find the perfect formula.
If you’re using multiple channels to run your campaign, you’ll want to find out which ones are driving the most traffic and from where are you converting the most. UTM parameters will help track the traffic source and measure channel performance.
For more advanced metrics, you can use Google Analytics and see how much time your visitors spent on the landing page, as well as the bounce rate.
