Transcription
In this video, I'll be breaking down every single thing you need to do to make your landing page feel so premium, you'll practically have people begging to buy what you sell, no matter if you sell services, physical products, or software.
Because after building over 400 landing pages in over 80 plus niches and counting, I've noticed a specific pattern with the landing pages that attract high-quality, high-intent customers who are ready to buy right now. So by the end of this, you'll know exactly what to look out for and why each of these things matter so you can use them on your own landing page and see an overall lift in conversion rate.
So first and foremost, I want to be very clear on what I define as a premium landing page because there is a lot of misconceptions and bad advice out there. When most people think of premium, they think of landing pages with these fancy animations, the scrolling text all over, and these crazy layouts that look out of the box or these minimalistic and trendy websites with these big text, big images, and lots of empty white space. And as an expert in conversion rate optimization, I have seen time and time again that these things actually lead to less people buying. All they do is simply just distract people and break common design patterns that people are already used to when browsing landing pages.
What I define as premium comes down to one main thing, which is trust. If people trust your brand, they are far more likely to buy and beg you to buy for that matter. More specifically, to me, a premium landing page means a design that's well organized. It's clean. It's easy to digest. It's well structured. It flows logically and has great navigation and just a design that actually looks professional, right? It looks like the company actually invested time and money into their brand with things like consistent spacing, typography, fonts, colors, etc.
The most common issues that I see with bad or cheap landing pages are massive blocks of text that no one ends up reading through. Way too much clutter that causes confusion and results in people immediately exiting the page. No clear distinction between elements leading to confusion on where your eyes should gravitate to first and what action you should take. Outdated designs that look like they were made in the 1950s. When people see pages like this, they immediately think that it's a scam and they don't trust you with their information. Pages that have no consistent branding in terms of spacing, colors, fonts, design, etc. And this leads to people having less trust with your brand and is backed by a ton of data and studies. Generic stock images that feel unauthentic, fake, and just unprofessional. And finally, vague copywriting that uses jargon and doesn't simply answer, "Why should I care?"
My team and I work with a lot of high-ticket services, right? Like cosmetic dentists and plastic surgeons, even businesses that are selling to enterprise customers. And I can tell you from experience that in today's competitive market where people are getting bombarded by ads every single day, there is zero chance that somebody is going to buy from you if your page looks like the examples that I just shared. Even for lower-ticket products like courses or an e-commerce store, I cannot tell you how many pages we've redesigned that just by making it look more premium and upscale, it resulted in substantially more buyers. Everyone should care about having a premium page, even if your product or service is not actually premium, because it all comes back to trust and perception. And when you establish this, it not only results in more buyers, but it also results in higher-quality buyers that tend to close much faster and end up buying from you in the future.
So, the first factor of a premium landing page is imagery. We've all heard the classic saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. It's actually true because the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. So, images are absolutely critical for a premium page. Now, there are several different ways to implement premium images. Let's break it down.
The first aspect are images that elicit emotion. As humans, we buy things with emotion first, not logic. And so images can be used to play into that human psychology. The most practical advice I have to do this is to show people. There's just something about humans in that when we see other people smiling and having a great time, it just instantly builds an emotional connection and makes you visualize yourself in that same position. Here's an example for our reverse vasectomy client where we show an image of a man holding up a baby in the very top of the page which helps other men coming to this page visualize that for themselves. We also use a unique tactic where the baby is looking directly at the form which kind of subtly gravitates your eyes towards that direction as well. For our cosmetic dentistry client, we show a happy person smiling with a bright white smile and again they're looking towards the text. For one of my favorite examples for our education client, we showed images of their actual students that are all happy and smiling that have enrolled in the program to help other people build that emotional connection and visualize themselves in their shoes. Pro tip for my e-commerce friends is to use images in your navigation menu. We've seen massive lists and conversions just by doing this.
Another way to use images is to have your images do the selling and complement whatever your dream outcome actually is. For our luxury closet client, we show an image of a clean and organized closet to complement the dream outcome of upgrading your space with a custom closet. For our fitness client, the dream outcome is having a lean, sexy body. And so throughout the entire page, we have these high-end photography and imagery of attractive women that have taken the classes and have the dream physique and body that many other women who are browsing on the page would aspire to have. For our ecom client who sells horse supplements, we chose an image that actually complements the dream outcome of having happier and safer rides. For our client selling a videography course, we show an actual image of the set from one of the courses members filming Brian Shaw, who's a famous celebrity, to complement the messaging and the dream outcome of being able to work on global movie sets. And we often use custom illustrations like these that work really well and we've gotten great results from it.
The final way to use images is by creating custom graphics for your products or services. They just make your brand feel elevated. It stands out and it creates this perception that people can instantly trust you. These are several examples, many of which that we've done at our agency. And the good thing is in today's day and age, you can also use AI to create next-level images like this one that we did for our e-commerce client.
You might be wondering how this applies to your own page and what exactly you should fix. That's why I offer a paid landing page audit where I'll show you exactly what's missing, exactly how to fix it, and all of the specific changes that will move your conversion rate up. Link in the description below.
Now, for the next item, premium pages have something that cheap pages don't, and that is proof. But more specifically, proof that is natural, relevant, and impactful. The key word there being natural. It just doesn't feel forced and it blends seamlessly and naturally onto the page and supports whatever the dream outcome or offer actually is.
The first common mistake I often see with social proof is having no verifiable details. For example, here there's no source of where the review was left, nor is there an actual photo of the person who left the review. And so, for all I know, this could be completely fabricated and it erodes all sense of trust with the brand. Not to mention that text-based reviews are super overdone in today's day and age and literally everyone does it, right? So, people have become super desensitized to text reviews and it doesn't build the same level of trust that it once used to.
Instead, the best reviews in my experience are the ones that feel natural and authentic. Here's an example for our lawn care client where we show an actual image of the customer's lawn in conjunction with the review. This actually makes the review feel 10 times more premium and legitimate. On top of that, we have the source of where the review was left and a photo of the person leaving the review, so it's actually verifiable and trustworthy. We've done this across so many different niches and it's always worked really, really well. We've easily seen 60 to 80% lifts in conversions just from this one change alone. So this is really a game-changer if you can implement this for your brand properly.
Now the next level is video reviews in which you can capture a lot more emotion. You want to specifically combine this with one of my favorite formats that I call the wall of love. It's where you basically shower people with so much proof up front with videos and text reviews and images and they're just inundated with so many reviews that it just instantly builds this feeling of trust and credibility up front. It also doesn't hurt if you have a famous actor as one of your customers like our laser eye surgery client. Even on mobile, right, we keep everything open up front. Nothing is hidden in a carousel or a slider because statistically those have very, very low engagement rates and people just don't interact with it.
Another big mistake I see is people put the classic featured on logos. What I recommend instead is taking those same featured on logos, but simply just adding a one-liner and a quote from the actual publication itself. That adds that extra layer of trust and credibility and makes it feel a lot more premium.
The final big mistake is people force their proof. For example, this company's offer is stopping hair loss, but the testimonial that they have here has literally nothing to do with that. Compare that to this premium landing page example where all of the reviews that they use are extremely impactful and directly relevant to the dream outcome or offer that they're promoting on their page.
My last pro tip is for your headline, you never want to use any headlines like this. I see this mistake all the time and it's a big waste of your headline. People already know they're looking at your testimonials, right? So instead of just saying "what our customers say," actually say the benefit and what your customers say in the headline itself.
Now for the next item, whenever you land on any page, your eyes will naturally gravitate towards somewhere first, then somewhere else, and then somewhere else. This concept is called visual hierarchy, where you can basically prioritize the most important elements that you want people to see, like your call to action button, and then deprioritize elements that are less important. I always like to use this example here when explaining it to clients where you can see how your eyes naturally gravitate towards different things based on things like font size, font weight, color, boldness, etc.
Here's an extreme example of a cheap page, right? Where there's no clear visual hierarchy at all. Everything is kind of screaming at you at once. And the irony is in that trying to emphasize everything, they've ended up emphasizing nothing at all. Compare that to this example for our HVAC client where your eyes just naturally gravitate towards the image and then they gradually move towards the headline that's bold. It's blue. It's a different color. It stands out on the page. It's nice and large. Followed by then the body text which is subdued. It's a different color. It's smaller in size. And finally followed by the CTA button that's again blue. It stands out on the page. It's nice and big. Nice and large.
Here's an example of a before and after for our e-commerce client where the before version had multiple competing elements and no visual hierarchy. And in the after redesign version, right, there was a lot clearer flow of information with a nice big headline. The CTA button stands out on the page compared to before. And there's just overall a more seamless flow of information that feels more premium. And that premiumness actually led to a 64% lift in their conversion rate and a 72% lift in their revenue per visitor.
So to implement visual hierarchy, you want to use headings, subheadings, and white space to organize your content. You want to break complex information into smaller, scannable chunks. And you want to prioritize the most important information visually. So for headings, we typically do 48 to 64 pixels in size. Ideally, it's one color. The body text is going to range between 16 to 20 pixels in another color. And then your CTA button is going to really stand out on the page with nice and big padding.
The next aspect of a premium page is copywriting. Now, with cheap landing pages, the copy focuses purely on, you know, who the business is or what they do. It uses jargon that nobody understands and it just doesn't speak in layman terms. I can literally pull up hundreds of examples like this. And if you're doing this, it's absolutely killing your conversions.
Now, the copywriting on a premium landing page comparatively makes the person on the other side of the screen feel understood. It feels like a conversation between two people who understand each other, right? It's not a sales pitch. This copy often uses their own customers' language and words that they're already using, thoughts that they're already thinking, and calling out pain points and frustrations that they're already dealing with.
For our fitness client, we highlighted how they will feel amazing in their clothes, right? It's visceral and it's very descriptive. Same thing for our dentistry client. The feeling of finally being able to show off your smile confidently and not being self-conscious anymore is articulated in 5 seconds or less. This was a common pain point that we discovered in the research and strategy phase.
Another way to have emotional copy is to have a pain point section on your page. We use the problem-agitate-solve framework. So, this is where you're going to first highlight all of the things that people have tried and failed at. You want to constantly use the word "you," right? "Do you feel this? Do you feel that?" We then agitate the problem. We talk about all of the things that that person is missing out on as a result of those pain points. Finally, we show them a solution and a way out of their problem. Now, when I talk about begging people to buy, this is the section here that often does it. I've literally seen user recordings of people through tools like Microsoft Clarity where they convert right there and then, right after seeing the section, and they become super qualified and pre-sold.
Also, copy on a premium landing page will always constantly answer one key question, which is "Why should I care?" Is it to save time? Is it to make more money? Is it to get in shape? In other words, how does your product or service actually benefit me in my day-to-day life? Premium pages answer this in just the headline itself because that is what most people end up reading. More often than not, the average person browsing a web page is going to completely skip by the body text. I like to operate under the mindset that somebody will only read the headlines on your page alone and just imagine they don't even read any of the body text at all. Just by reading the headlines, they should already be sold.
The final thing is premium landing pages position their copy from the derived benefit rather than the feature. So when you read this headline, for example, right? This part here is the feature, but no one cares about the feature on its own. What they actually care about is the derived benefit from that feature, which is a thing over here, and that is what creates a sense of authority and premiumness.
The final item of a premium page is branding. Now, because every brand is different, there is no one-size-fits-all, but here are my general rules of thumb when it comes to branding. So, for color, you typically want to aim for three to four colors. You'll have one primary brand color, one secondary color for your text, and one lighter neutral color for your background. For fonts, you want to use a maximum of two fonts, right? One for your header and one for your body text. For luxury brands, you typically want to use a thinner, lighter font. And for more bolder brands, you want to use something more, you know, bold and aggressive. For spacing, we always recommend to use the rule of eights. So, you want to space things in increments of 8, right? 8, 16, 24, 32, etc. For elements more closely related to one another, you want to keep those more close in proximity, right? So the spacing would be tighter. For example, heading and body text. But then your CTA button would have a larger distance because it's not as closely related.
My advanced tip for branding is to create a unique visual identity that really makes your brand stand out and actually attracts people to your brand and attracts them to buy. For our TRT client, we used these hexagons throughout the page to kind of mimic a hormone molecule. And we did the same thing for their icons. For our luxury closet client, we took their pre-existing logo and actually applied that same shape to several of their images to give it a custom look and feel. For our laser eye surgery client, we added in these little circles throughout multiple parts of the page to kind of mimic and resemble an eye. And the list goes on and on.
Now, in this video, we looked at more of these specific qualities in a premium landing page. But in reality, there's always more to learn. Which is why in this video, I go over exactly what I have learned after analyzing hundreds and hundreds of landing pages and also designing over 400 of them to find what actually works. I'll see you over there.