In today’s day and age, where the attention span of an average human being is around eight seconds and is steadily declining, it is becoming increasingly important to capture the immediate attention of your audience. It is essential that you do so in a way that is both unique and professional enough to continue to drive online traffic and grow your business. If you are just getting started with your business or you are hoping to create a successful online presence for your business, one of the most popular tools that the average consumer and business owner alike use to create their own professional website is Shopify.
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What is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that helps people grow their businesses both online and offline with their own personalized website. It also works for brick and mortar businesses with Shopify POS.
Unlike WordPress and other website building services that typically require users to purchase a theme for their respective website, Shopify loads in a free theme available for customization right out of the gate. This makes designing your website extremely easy, even for a beginner.
The platform also offers a wide range of reports and analytics regarding the performance of both your website and your business. This includes information such as the number of orders you have received on any given day and a real-time view of your website’s visitors and where they are on your page.
Additionally, unlike many server-based website building platforms, Shopify is cloud-based. This means that server issues that arise on the most popular online shipping days of the year, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, are significantly less likely to occur.
Although Shopify does offer a free theme for your website, the service itself is not free. Shopify’s service starts at $9 a month for its “Shopify Lite.” However, most business owners opt for the basic plan which starts at $29 a month.
How Does Shopify Work?
The first step in starting your Shopify business is to design your online store. You’ll also want to decide which products or services you will include and test your customized website for both desktop and mobile use.
The second step is to begin promoting and marketing your product and website as much as you can to drive traffic to your website. Once someone has arrived at your website, Shopify actually allows you to see where a customer is on your website and if they have a product or service in their cart to be purchased. Once a customer does purchase your product or service, Shopify will process the payment for you and you’ll get paid right there and then. It’s perfect for beginner business owners.
Now that you have more of an understanding of what exactly Shopify is and how it works, the question becomes how exactly can I use this platform to grow my business and become successful? One of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect of Shopify, is your business’ landing page.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page, also known in digital marketing as a “lead capture page”, is essentially the single web page that appears when someone clicks on a search engine result, marketing/email promotion, or online advertisement. This landing page is truly vital to the success of your page and thus, your business as a whole. The reason for this is that the first impression that a visitor has on your page almost immediately decides whether or not that visitor will stay on your page or move on to the next. Therefore, it is so important to make sure that the first impression will be good enough to keep the visitor intrigued.
How to Make a Landing Page on Shopify
You understand now the importance of your business’ landing page, but how exactly do you go about making a landing page on Shopify that is good enough to draw in large numbers of potential customers? Let’s break it down.
Understand Your Target Market
One of the primary things to keep in mind when designing your Shopify landing page is who exactly you are gearing your product or service towards in the first place. Consider the motivations, desires, and interests of your target audience and try to gear the experience towards them. Really try to step into the shoes of your customer. Maybe even create a persona of your ideal customer, including their demographics, goals, and problems in their life that could potentially be solved by your product. The best way to gauge your target market is to talk to your customers, get to know them, their personality, and the reasons why they decided to purchase your product or service. The more you know about your target audience, the better you will be able to design your landing page.
Use Strong Headlines
The first thing that visitors will see when they arrive at your landing page is the headline. In the same second it takes a visitor to read your headline, they will already have made a decision on whether or not they decide to stay on your page.
Your first thought when coming up with a headline for your landing page will most likely be a cool feature of your product or service. This is the mistake that many business owners make when they create this headline. Consumers are less worried about a feature of your product and more worried about how exactly that feature will benefit or improve their lives. Therefore, use strong words and adjectives to describe your product’s benefits to get visitors of your site interested enough to continue reading.
Create Relevant and Clear Content
Oftentimes, when someone searches something on Google, they are looking for an immediate answer. If a page does not immediately offer the information that they are looking for, odds are they will move on to a site that does. Therefore, it is very important to have clear and relevant content on your Shopify landing page. When someone clicks on your page looking for an answer to their question, they should be able to see it immediately.
An easy way to include this information is to once again, put yourself in the shoes of your consumers. If someone arrives on your website, what exactly do you think they might be looking for? What questions do they need answers for? How can your product be the solution to your problem? Once you can answer all of these questions, coming up with relevant and clear content to suit your audience’s needs will come easily.
Include a Call to Action Right from the Jump
The whole point of a landing page is to get your visitor to take action from the few things that they see right off the bat. Therefore, including a call to action is necessary if you want visitors to actually become customers. The mistake that many business owners make when designing their landing pages is overcrowding it with multiple calls to action and features about their product or service. These end up distracting the visitor from actually understanding what the business is trying to market. Instead, including a singular call to action, that is prominent enough to intrigue users to click further into your site, is more effective.
Another thing to consider about this call to action is its actual design within your site. A good way to try to drive a visitor’s undivided attention to your call to action is to use a color that contrasts and stands out enough to be noticed right away. Searching for Shopify landing page examples is a great way to gain inspiration for your landing page’s design. You can see what other businesses are doing and analyze what is working or not working for them.
Make Sure your Aesthetic is Eye-Catching Yet Clean
If the first thing that a visitor notices isn’t your headline or call to action, I can guarantee that it is going to be the look and feel of your landing page. In fact, 94% of a user’s first impression is related to design elements. Make sure that your landing page is well put together in terms of your branding, color scheme, and text placement. An important thing to note is that one of the biggest turn-offs for visitors, when they arrive at a site, are pop-up advertisements or videos that the user did not expect to receive or click-on. Try to avoid using any of these at all costs. Again, check out Shopify landing page examples. How do you feel when you visit one that has a pop-up ad versus one that doesn’t?
Landing Page Optimization Might Be Just What You Need
In a society as fast-paced as the one that we live in today, first impressions really are everything. Whether you are a brand new business or a business looking to improve their online presence, the Shopify platform, and its landing page optimization tools might be just what you need. They’ll help you to make that first impression an unforgettable one and allow you to achieve heights that you never thought possible.
FAQs about Shopify Landing Pages:
- What is Shopify?
- What should be on a landing page?
- How much does Shopify cost?
- What is a landing page?
- How do I get high conversion rates on my landing page?
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