How to Write a Great Landing Page Headline

When it comes to designing landing pages, first impressions are everything. The use of imagery, color and interesting copy all help create a page that converts and draws viewers in from the second it loads on their screen.

In this article I’ll be going over helpful tips for writing convincing and persuasive headlines as well as mentioning tactics that may be actually hurting your conversions. If you’re interested in learning about how color affects your page or the importance of finding the right hero shot, check out those posts too!

Find the “Pain Points”

It’s easy to get into the habit of creating your headline copy after the initial design work is done on your page. However, more often than not, this leads to weaker writing and less focused than if it was done first.

When creating a new page, take the time to research the competition and see what they’re hitting hardest in their copy. Find the “pain points” for that particular industry and put yourself in the visitor’s shoes.

When they arrive at your landing page, what are they looking for? What issues are they hoping your company will solve? How is it better and different from the competition?

Answering questions like these are what you should be focusing on when writing headline copy. After you’ve come up with a few solid variants, allow yourself to begin designing the layout and adding images.

Make Your Headline Benefit-Driven

Another important aspect of great, persuasive headline is determining what benefit you are really offering to your visitors. You’re making a value exchange proposition, so you need to be clear about the terms of the exchange.

For example, if you are asking someone to sign up for a service or enter personal information, you want to make sure that they know what they get for cooperating. Describe your service or outline what will be in your free proposal!

You might not be asking for money at this point; but, make no mistake, you are selling something on your landing page—people want to know that they will get a fair return for their time or information.

Making your headlines highlight the benefits of your company will already give you a huge leg-up on the competition. For example, if you’re creating a landing page for an online computer support company, try using headlines such as “Reliable Tech Support Done in 15 Minutes or Less!”

This accomplishes two things: it tells the reader what they get from you and helps sell them on why you’re the one to do it.

When writing headlines, avoid summarization and add another element that makes your product or service more appealing. Simply stating what you do or how you do it usually isn’t enough—people need to know why you’re the one that should have their business.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Ever heard the acronym KISS? When it comes to landing pages, this is one to live and die by. As a general rule, I tend to keep my headlines under 8 words or less. Any longer than this and you run the risk of either confusing your viewer or making it more of an effort to get your point across.

Be smart with your word choice and make it relevant and interesting in regards to your industry.

With this in mind, remember to not make your headlines too simple. If your company is all about helping people start their own profitable blogs, making headlines that read “Get your blog up today” probably won’t entice anyone to use your service.

Be short, but also be informative. Managing your headline lengths will also help you in the long run when creating matching image ads, since you’re already working with limited space in that medium as it is.

Another thing to keep in mind is to always test your headlines. After you’ve launched a page, keep at least one other variant going that includes a completely different landing page headline. You may be surprised which one performs better, but make sure you give each page ample time so that you have reliable confidence to back up your findings. While it’s not always the case, sometimes changing headlines could be all a page needs to get those conversions up to a satisfactory level.

Conclusion

With this knowledge, go create some truly awesome headlines with new pages or review current ones that aren’t performing quite where you want them. Also, if you have an additional tip for high-converting headlines, let us know in the comments below!