5 Types of Headlines to Test on Your Landing Page

Your headline just may be the single most important element on your landing page. Time and time again we’ve seen the headline prove to have a huge impact on conversions. Headline writing, however, is an art and one that takes time, practice & patience.

To help inspire your headline testing, we’ve outlined 5 types of headlines to test on your landing pages.

1. Benefit-driven

One of the first techniques you should explore is transforming your major benefit into a headline. To write a successful benefit headline, you must know your target audience well, so you can offer them a powerful, compelling “reason to believe.” You must do your homework though in order to know what benefits will motivate your prospect(s) to take action. Then test and test to find the one that resonates the best. 

 

2. Offer-specific

Think: Save 25% Off, Try for Free, Free White Paper, 30-Day Free Trail. Try testing your offer in your headline. One of my favorites is Phanfare’s secondary headline — “Try Phanfare free for 2 weeks. We know you’ll love it.” Simple. Direct. And personal.

 

3. Question

I tend to feel that question headlines work best for segmentation experiences. You must ask a question that gets your visitor involved and leads them into the conversion funnel. This examples from iomega asks “Which Network Storage solution is right for you?” — office or home? 

4. Direct

The direct headline should be used far more often than it is. No cleverness. No jokes. No wordplay. The direct headline gets right to the point. An example from SlideDeck tells us they are “hands-down, the best content slider on the web.” Its not dull, but it is direct.

5. Attention-grabbing

Attention-grabbing headlines can be one or more of the above types — they can be provocative and shocking or use a play on words. Testing clever, attention-grabbing headlines can be risky, especially if “provocative” is not your typical brand voice. Be careful not to offend your visitors.

 

In order to grab the attention of your visitors and keep them on your page you need a strong, capitivating headline. Have you experimented with the one or more of the five types above?

We’d love to hear your headline testing stories!

Increase conversions by changing clever headlines to relevant ones

It may seem like making your web visitors chuckle with a clever headline will only help increase conversion rates. After all, if you put them in a good mood, they’ll likely see your call-to-action in a positive light, right? 

The problem is, not everyone in your audience is as clever as you are. While some may immediately get the reference, some may miss your point completely.  When the latter happens, your conversion rate takes a hit, while your bounce rate balloons up.

While clever headlines may help win some people over, relevant headlines come with additional benefits:

SEO

Some landing pages are perfectly suited for being indexed by search engines. These include pages that don’t have time sensitive data, or group-specific offers.  SEO’d landing pages can help you increase brand awareness and increase leads/sales.  Writing headlines that include relevant keywords help the search engines properly index you.

Clarity

A clear headline is one that can be understood immediately by everyone who reaches your landing page. This is important since you have mere seconds to capture the attention of visitors. A clear, benefits-driven headline will work well to capture the attention of your visitors.

Concise

Having a concise headline is important because visitors will only skim your page before deciding if they should stay and learn more. Capturing them with a short, sweet headline keeps them longer and increases your chances for winning the conversion.

Call-to-action

A relevant headline is the start of the path towards your call-to-action. 

No doubt, headline writing can seem like an art. It has to include relevant keywords without being too wordy. And within those few words it has to capture the attention of your visitors and draw them towards your call-to-action. The good news is, online testing allows you to try a variety of different headlines on portions of your traffic to see which one works the best to increase your conversion rates. 

Effective web page headline writing is part art, part science, and all about relevance. 

Post-click copywriting tips for higher conversions

Writing ad copy is an art and a science, right? 

First you get creative and figure out how to distinguish yourself and persuade searchers to click on your ad, all in 95 characters. Then you get scientific and start testing your ad copy to see which gets you the best click-through-rate.

It’s by no means easy to fit all you want to say in a headline + two lines, which is why you just have to create the perfect teaser to get the searcher to click-thru to your landing page.

Once there, you have a lot more room to get persuasive, get creative, and get optimized for conversions. 

9 Post-click copywriting tips for higher conversions

1. Be sure your landing page headline matches the original ad:
   
   
   
2. Provide one clear call-to-action per page (“download,” “call now,” “buy,” “learn more”)
   
   
   
3. Write in second person - use “you” and “your” to keep the focus on the visitor
   
4. Write to deliver a clear and persuasive message, not show off how witty you are.
   
5. Keep your most important points at the beginning of paragraphs and bulleted lists
   
6. Keep your copy very scannable. Use short bullets and vary sentence length. Also keep paragraphs between 2-4 sentences.
   
   
   
   
7. People read beginnings and ends before the middle, so keep critical info in these sections.
   
8. Make your first paragraph short. It should be no more than 1-2 lines (not sentences).
   
   
    
9. Write to your screen environment. Keep important info (the call-to-action, the video, the image, the description) above the fold.
   
   

For even more advice on copywriting that converts, check out this webinar we co-hosted with Roberta Rosenberg, the copywriting maven!

Remember, landing page copy is part art and part science just like ad copy, so be sure to test & optimize your landing pages!

Why landing pages need an urgent call to action

I just finished reading The Art of Choosing by Dr. Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia University. In the book she says that humans have two routes for processing information, the automatic system and the reflective system.

The automatic system “operates quickly, effortlessly, and subconsciously. It’s a continuously running ‘stealth’ program that analyzes sensory data and triggers feelings and behaviors in rapid response,” says Iyengar. This system is driven by emotions or in-the-moment feelings. The next time you make an impulse purchase, you can thank the automatic system.

The reflective system, on the other hand, is “driven not by raw sensation but by logic and reason… Reflective processing allows us to handle highly complex choices.” You can thank the reflective system for your well thought out decisions.

Iyengar says “when the two systems generate matching answers, there’s no conflict. All too frequently, though, the answers are different, and in such a situation, one must prevail over the other. If there’s no time to be lost, we’ll probably go with the automatic response; if there’s no rush, we’re much more likely to rely on our reflective powers.”

So what does this mean for landing pages?

They must have a strong, urgent call to action.

Even if your solution is rationally the best fit, visitors won’t always come to that conclusion on their own (even if given all the time in the world to weigh their options). Instead you should remove the distractions that cause internal conflict and focus the visitor on a strong and urgent call to action.

Of course this only works to your benefit if the automatic response is favorable. This means making sure all the other elements of your landing page are optimized to set the right mood for the visitor.

It’s also important to remember that the automatic system is only triggered in response to emotion. This means your landing pages must elicit some kind of emotional response. A study conducted in 2009 on emotional vs. rational messages found that emotional messages beat rational ones almost every time:

What the data show us is that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones, with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure fall somewhere between the two.

 It turns out that emotional campaigns in general generate a wider range of desirable business effects, each of which plays its part in improving profitability. But they excel in one noteworthy area: reducing price sensitivity, and hence strengthening the ability of brands to secure a premium in the marketplace (or, in the current economic climate, to hold firm on pricing). For most brands, clearly the impact on the bottom line of a 1% increase in pricing is much greater than of a 1% increase in volume sold, so this is a particularly important strength.

Of course this data talks about “most brands,” which doesn’t necessarily mean you. 

You’ll want to test both emotional and rational approaches for your audiences. Perhaps one will work for one traffic segment, and the other will work for a different segment. Test it! And whichever approach you use, be sure to include a strong, urgent call to action!

How to be great at writing landing page copy that converts

On March 24th Roberta Rosenberg (the Copywriting Maven) joined us to co-host our Copywriting for Landing Pages webinar.  She shared with us her 10 great tips for writing landing page copy that converts clicks into customers:

1. Be sure your landing page headline matches the original ad.
2. Provide one clear call to action per page. The call to action should be visible to the user at all times. 
3. Write in second person - use “you” and “your” to keep the focus on the user.
4. Write to deliver a clear and persuasive message, not to show off how creative you are.
5. Be crystal clear in your goals. Be sure to keep your copy on point from the headline down.
6. Keep your most important points at the beginning of paragraphs and bulleted lists. Visitors often skim, and you don’t want them to miss vital information.
7. People read beginnings and ends before the middle, so keep your critical points in these sections.
8. Make your first paragraph short. It should be no more than 1 - 2 lines (lines not sentences). 
9. Write to your screen environment. Be mindful of different screen resolutions and different browser displays. 
10. Don’t ask for what you don’t need. Or better yet, only ask for what you need. Anything more and you may scare the user off.

Thanks again to Roberta Rosenberg for sharing these awesome tips with us. 

Is there anything else you would add to this list? Leave a comment below!