Your e-commerce site is arguably the most important tool you have in attracting customers and selling products. Because of that, you need to ensure that every element of your landing page is performing to its full capacity. If just one part of your page lets you down, then you could be saying goodbye to converting customers. Luckily, optimizing your landing page isn’t hard: these seven tips are easy to implement — but can make a big difference.

1. Alleviate hesitations

Hesitation is a hugely-powerful factor that can turn a strong lead into an abandoned cart. You need to ensure your landing page eliminates the chance for a potential customer to become hesitant. Doubt is caused by several elements including necessity, price, regret and trust. If you can alleviate these concerns, your leads will likely turn into customers.

To do so, you should include information about how this purchase will make life easier, provide a one-off or limited-time-only deal or discount, make it easy to find your return policy, and show your social media channels and customer testimonials. These additions are only small, but can go a long way in helping to stop customer hesitation.

2. Create great content

Great content can be the difference between a successful transaction and a confused visitor. While customers won’t want to read pages and pages of copy, you need to ensure the relevant information is there. And it’s not good enough just to dash out some words to tick this box: you need compelling, effective and persuasive copy.

Using an active tone with emotive words is just one way you can create better content. All copy must be short and sweet: dense paragraphs of long sentences won’t inspire people to read on. You should also think about who your audience is. If you’re selling expensive products to a high-end market, they may want more information than anyone would for a simple, inexpensive item.

Videos are important to consider too: you can increase the likelihood of purchase by 64-85% by using product videos.

3. Build trust with your customers

Regardless of how good your content is, how slick your design is, and how well orchestrated your buyer journey is, there’s one element that trumps everything: trust. People will buy or ignore a product depending on feedback from other customers. In fact, people are 71% more likely to purchase something based on social media referrals.

Use use this to your advantage. Certain additions can improve the credibility of your brand and your products, and thus increase conversion rates. These techniques are worth trying:

• Add testimonials and reviews.
• Reply to positive customer feedback asking to use it in your marketing.
• Show your social media pages where you share images and reviews from people who love your products.
• Display any awards or partnerships.

4. Improve your site’s visuals

The overall design of your ecommerce landing page is a big factor in whether people stay or go. Keep it clean and simple, without any huge blocks of text or crowded images.

Be clever in how you display product information: link to more detailed descriptions rather than including them on the landing page, or make use of videos and product images.

The images you use are highly influential in whether someone buys your products. Learn how to take high-quality product shots, or consider hiring a professional photographer. Think about what images to include too. Pictures of real people using a product in real life will always create more trust than overly-staged shots: people are six times more likely to buy a product if the page includes pictures from social media.

Use plenty of white space on your landing page too. It cleans up your layout and draws attention to focal points on the page. The Oculus Rift landing page is a perfect example of how white space can emphasise products and call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

5. Use strong calls-to-action

A persuasive, creative call-to-action is essential. Whether you’re trying to make a sale or collect email addresses, it’s a pivotal part of turning site visitors into customers.

Ensure that your CTA button is repeated often. Position it above the fold as well as throughout the landing page. Place it after product descriptions, images, reviews and features, as well as at the bottom of the page. Likewise, you could use different CTAs too: direct customers to pages with more information, to your blog, or to testimonials.

When it comes to the wording of your CTA, avoid bland copy like “click here”. Browse through lists of power words and use these, as well as creating urgency with phrases like “limited time”, “don’t miss” and “now”.

6. Optimise for mobile

Mobile should be at the front of your mind: more people use their phones to browse online than desktop computers, so a mobile-optimised site is crucial to long-term success (it’s also vital for search rankings).

You have to get user experience on mobiles right if you’re going to tap into this market. People won’t wait for websites to load, they don’t want to use fiddly navigation, and they certainly won’t spend time on a site that hasn’t been made mobile-responsive.

Though most web development platforms these days include mobile optimisation defaults, sticking with defaults won’t get you very far. Given the current UX standards, many opt for buying businesses with designs already completed, but the easiest option is generally going to be working with a good developer.

They’ll be able to help you with all the important things you wouldn’t think to do (or know how to do), such as increasing the size of your CTA buttons so visitors can instantly see where to buy, altering unnecessary fancy design elements or long videos that could increase loading time, and formatting content to minimise the need for scrolling.

7. Test frequently

Once you’ve used the tips above to optimise your landing page, get into a routine of testing. To get those high conversion rates and click-throughs, you need to constantly test, change and experiment. Changing your landing page once isn’t going to be enough: you’ll need to test it frequently and make updates to stay in sync with what your audience wants.

Nothing stays the same: your market will change, your products and your competition too. And your landing pages need to mirror this. A/B testing is one of the easiest methods of doing this, so apply it to your CTA buttons, design, content and offers.

Optimising your ecommerce landing page may seem like a big job, but it doesn’t need to be. Simply follow the seven steps above and you’ll soon see your customer base grow and your conversions increase. While you can do most it yourself, it’s sometimes worth bringing in professionals to ensure that you’re getting the most from your site.