After hundreds of tests and millions of visitors, this is all you need to focus on.
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Happy Sunday!
If you’re reading this, I hope you’re sitting at your desk (or couch), relaxed, and ready to dive into a fun newsletter. If you are actively testing landing pages with any ad traffic, today’s newsletter is for you.
But, before we get into 24 must-dos on your landing page...
Vendor of the Week
Impact.com — The go-to affiliate platform just released a massive Reddit report.
Most brands sleep on Reddit because it feels tricky and unpredictable, but with 1.22 billion users and a fresh $60M Google partnership boosting its visibility, it's actually a massive untapped opportunity for affiliate marketing.
Impact.com, the go-to platform for managing affiliate, creator, and referral programs, recently published a standout guide by Nick Andrews (founder of Revitrage). It breaks down how smart marketers are winning big on Reddit (without getting banned). Key highlights include strategies for quickly earning 1,000+ karma (the entry ticket to posting promotional content), targeting niche subreddits effectively, and even clever tricks like offering oddly-specific discounts (think 23% off instead of 20%) that significantly boost conversions.
If you're serious about diversifying your acquisition channels and capturing a lucrative audience, this guide is your roadmap.
This past week on Limited Supply, I went through a number of websites and broke down what was working, not working, and how it should be changed. Watch the full teardown on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts and follow along yourself.
Upcoming Events
Vibe Coding at Shopify NY: On August 19th, myself and Troy Osinoff will be taking over the Shopify space in SoHo to teach you how to build an app in 45 minutes. We are going to bring in Billy Howell, a vibe-coding expert, to teach you how to build a back-in-stock app so you no longer pay $50/month for random small apps. RSVP here!
Forward by Tatari: Bringing together top marketers to dive into the future of TV advertising, with speakers including Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, AppLovin’ CEO Adam Foroughi & speakers from leading brands like Saatva, BYLT Basics, Coterie, Dave, TickPick, and Gusto. RSVP here.
If you’re running landing pages, do these 24 things:
Surprisingly, no matter how much proof exists that landing pages out-compete the standard PDP, people still don’t test them enough. However, for those who are running active landing page experiments or just getting their landing pages for Q4 setup and ready to go, today’s email is for you.
Looking back at several landing pages I’ve designed/worked on and CRO experiments, these 24 tips are the highest leverage and highest-converting tips to implement.
Leverage social proof from who your think your audience would recognize (and believe) the most. Publications and paid celebrities aren’t always the best, sometimes you just need raw, real-world humans.
Copy is 80% of selling. Don't be so chunky. Instead, get punchy, savvy, and focus on benefits, not just the value props. Copy is how you bridge the gap between what your consumer cares about, and what you can solve.
Designing for desktop-first is like having a surround sound system with no subwoofer… sure, it still works, but it’s not going to be the best it can be. Design for mobile first. 80% of your traffic will be from mobile devices. Write copy for mobile first, as well. At Sharma Brands, we write all of our landing page and website copy for mobile first, then fit it for desktop after.
Make your pricing, discounts, and offers more noticeable and BIGGER (the bigger a price is, the less it seems like you’re hiding something)! Do anything that you can to make the pricing and discounts pop. Use a different color font, make it bold, use highlights, a sticker, etc. Another tip: use colored CTAs with contrast-colored outlines as they outperform traditional black and white CTAs. For example, if you sell a consumable, include your price per use. i.e. $1/bottle when you buy a 24 pack of drinks, or “Less than $1/day for a greens powder.”
As much as good copy matters, don’t discount what pictures can do for storytelling. A picture is worth a thousand words. Use a lot more of them, especially to portray the lifestyle that’s associated with your product. For example, if you’re DirecTV, your images shouldn’t just show the hardware or TV, it should show a group of friends all around the football game having a good time. This also includes illustrations, icons, graphs, charts, etc. Explain visually. People love to scan.
Make your pop-up subscribe form a value-added experience. Offer a discount or enter them into a raffle for a chance to win free products in exchange for entering their email. Don’t ask for their first name, last name, email, birthday, or location. Just offer something, then ask for their email address. Once you have that, ask for more. I use Alia for pop-ups, and they do this best.
Make sure everything you do is ADA-compliant! In short, this just means that you ensure your site is accessible to anyone. Make sure that your fonts are the appropriate size and that you don’t have a white font on a light background, etc. If you want to protect yourself to the max, I would hire an ADA lawyer like Nick and have his firm run quarterly audits and compile evidence of compliance. Otherwise, you end up having to settle.
Simplify your checkout experience. A customer should never have to make more than 2 clicks to check out from the landing page. The checkout should reiterate (inside the UI) why someone came to purchase in the first place.
Put your very best offer at the top of the page. If your page has an offer for 20%, 22% and 27%, display the 27% one at the top when encouraging site visitors to continue scrolling. This could be a banner bar or just the first bundle that you show being your current best offer on the site. You have to earn their time/trust!
Always have a comparison chart! I have never seen a comparison chart on a site that didn’t increase the conversion rate of the landing page. In one test, I’ve seen a subscription cohort’s LTV be higher as a result of using a comparison chart. It’s so simple, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t.
Invest in and elevate your UI design. If your LP doesn’t look beautiful, you’re not building trust. Why spend money to drive traffic to a site that has old/poor/lame/immature design? These first impressions really matter.
Always add buyer’s remorse-friendly language. Add shipping information and make it very clear. Answer the questions, if I buy today, does it ship today? When does the product arrive at my door? What about the return/refund policy? I always think to answer the buyer’s question of, “If my girlfriend/boyfriend thinks this was a stupid purchase, am I protected?”
Show customers what’s inside the box. Starting with your hero module, include an image showing what customers get (product and the lifestyle of those consuming). On the shop section of your LP or right underneath your variant selector on your website, show them what’s inside the box with a photo or show a UGC unboxing video on your LP.
Enable buy now, pay later on your site. More stores are using it than ever before. If you’re on Shopify, you can simply enable ShopPay Installments. Going into Q4, you’ll see a higher usage of these. If you sell any sort of wellness product, you should look into adding TrueMed as a payment option, too.
Use different text sizes on your page (headline 1, headline 2, headline 3, paragraph font size, etc.). The variations in both font sizes and styles create a visual hierarchy for eyes to follow. It should be easy for someone to know where to look and in what order they see everything.
Add quotes that call out the benefits, not features. For example, a good quote about the features of a product like a Simple Modern water bottle would say, “I love the teal color and that the bottles are machine washable.” A great quote would say something like “Upgrading to the 64oz tumbler changed my life. I drink more water today than I ever have before. I feel much healthier and have more energy and sleep better due to being properly hydrated from this bottle.” A great quote speaks to lifestyle change, not just the features.
Use Heatmap.com! Study the heat maps to see where users are bouncing and falling off. Change or remove that section to boost CVR. Clarity also lets you watch user sessions on your site, so you can see where people scroll, what they read, where their mouse goes, etc. Study dead clicks and “rage clicks,” i.e, where users click multiple times on a site expecting to go somewhere, but they aren’t redirected. Where are they trying to go? Why isn’t this section clickable? How can you fix it?
Organize your product page like you would organize your physical storefront. What items do you want customers to see first? What is the associated photo and sign? How would you merchandize this product in a physical store? You should be thinking the exact same way on your site.
Whenever possible, reduce the amount of text. How can you say the same thing with fewer words?
If it’s genuinely a limited-time offer, highlight that! But don’t lie, that is against the FTC rules.
If a third grader or your grandma can’t understand your product and offer, and how to buy on your landing page, your site is too complicated! Go back to the drawing board and simplify it!
Never forget an FAQ section. It’s one of the best ways to answer questions and ensure confidence right before a purchase. It’s typically the last section I check before I hit “Buy.”
Make your page load in under 1 second. I saw multiple pages in my LP teardown that took 2-3 seconds to load. This is not fast enough! Consumers will bounce.
Test variations! The single easiest thing that you can do is to make duplicates of your page and split test copy, images, offers, etc, on the same traffic source to see which converts better. The only way to dramatically boost CVR over time is to test and iterate at scale.
That's all for this week
I hope today’s newsletter was a fun read, and at least one tactic will improve your conversion rate. As the shopping madness of Q4 nears, NOW is the time to test everything and make sure you’re locked for Q4. You don’t want to be adding new test code to your website or relying on funnels/ads/messaging/UX that isn’t proven to work.
It’s Sunday night, so I wish you an amazing 9 hours of sleep before starting the new week off. We are in August already — time to ramp up the intensity for the rest of the year! If you have any additional questions about landing pages or even want me to roast your landing page in a Loom recording, just email me the link.
