Swipefiles! — How I learned everything about successful Landing Pages.
Guess what! All landing pages follow the same fundamentals!
I have a little swipefile that I have been passionately collecting for the last year that has taught me everything I need to know about Landing Pages and Brochure-Websites. I am here to share with you.
The Patterns are everywhere!
Recently I had a conversation with my wife, talking about Netflix movies, Music genres and generally things that people consume. The idea was that, if you look closely enough, all successful movies are but some variation of another movie. And if you looked closely enough, maybe there are just a few plots ever made. Maybe just about 7 plot lines max.
It was then interesting to note, that if you loved some genre so much and watched those types of movies solely, you’d find that you are watching the same movie. Like a progressive repetitive RnB mix. The same song, sounding slightly different every new time.
There are patterns in everything. Especially in successful things. I think it’s human nature to repeat what works, until it becomes industry standard. And if what works, works! Why reinvent the wheel?
Training your mind to see patterns, co-relations or models is a top skill in any field. All you have to do is look.
It’s all about Sales & Marketing!
As a personal bias, I used to think that websites are all about technology. They are about the HTML, the CSS, and the functionality. Then when I got started on design, I thought it was all about the fancy graphics or hot typography!
I don’t blame myself for thinking this way. Now I get it, and I wouldn’t laugh at someone who thought of websites the same way. It’s easy to see it as a technology or a design tool, but really it’s a marketing tool. Most of the time.
Once you understand websites as a marketing tool, everything changes. How you study the copy — the language they use in the website; the different calls to action across the page; the different pages across the website; how information is structured etc. It’s all to serve one function — to sell.
All modern brochure type websites fit in this category. And not a single one colors outside the lines. They work in harmony as a part of a well executed marketing strategy that can be extended in other marketing touch points, such as different social media channels & physical.
All Good Marketing Websites sound like a short-witty Pitch!
That said, to understand all modern brochure type websites, you should understand Marketing, Sales & Copy writing.
Let’s define a few words in simple terms
Marketing — the effort by a business to communicate it’s benefits to potential customers( who are called prospects)
Sales — the business function that convert these prospects into paying customers.
Copy Writing — the marketing function to write compelling words that will delight the prospects and convert them into your customers.
All landing pages have the following parts
- A headline
- A sales proposition
- Benefits of your offering
- Images and videos showing usage
- Social Proof — Testimonials etc
- A reinforcing statement
- A closing argument
- A call to action.
This sounds like something that could easily be written down, or even a power-point presentation and less like an actual technical tool. This is how we should see and understand websites, landing pages and how to sell on the internet.
Design & functionality is added benefit but not the core feature
Even the most simplest websites with the simplest design but with the copy and call to action does an amazingly better job than a website with cool graphics and fancy web functionality.
However modern web designers approach it from a technical point of view. Looking to solve for design and functionality instead of sales, marketing and what the user wants.
Engineers & Designers should study Marketing & Copy-writing.
I know this is important, because, this was never my thinking model. I used to come from a technical perspective, thinking of how I can implement the cooler feature, instead of how I can solve a business problem.
We can all gain much from diving deep into this field of sales copy writing and digital marketing. Understanding the strategies and the thinking behind these products is a better approach, than just knowing good design.
Hubspot
Recently, I dove into this world of sales & marketing and boy oh boy! did I discover a ton of free resources on the Hubspot blog. 10/10 I absolutely recommend this as the first place to get you started on getting a grasp on what digital marketing looks like.
I hope this article would be beneficial to you. And get you started in seeing how all digital channels can be tools to further your business.
