A lot of marketers deny their brand more sales and conversion by using very short copy on their landing pages. Some people believe that too many words will bore the users or that a few words will help the user make up his mind more quickly. This is another reason why using a copywriting service is an excellent idea, as they will know the ideal content length for each landing page.
What many marketers don’t know is that a large percentage of people who visit their website choose not to take action or make a purchase because the content available was not convincing enough.
I have seen landing pages with less than 50 words – and some barely 30! – and you wonder how they intend to create leads. Think about it: your title/headline alone could be 15 words before you’ve written a single word of body copy for the page.
There are landing pages with not many words that are doing pretty well because of the availability of right keywords, but these pages would still perform better if the content was longer.
I will explain to you in this post not only why using our content writing service is a good idea, but also if there is an ideal length for landing pages and how they should be structured.
Your landing pages have a single objective – to attract conversions or sales. They are different from your home page and should contain plenty of content. Content is what converts, so your landing pages should contain enough information to convince potential customers to move to the next stage of the sales funnel.
The absolute minimum number of words for your landing page should be 500. As the head of a professional copywriting agency, I can attest to this. There are a lot of advantages when your landing page has more content.
Persuasion
Users are persuaded by the more words you write. A snappy headline and the cool intro are fine, but it won’t be enough to convert customers. Hence, people are more likely to act, the more words you have on your landing pages. The more content you have, the greater the chance you have to persuade the buyer, because the more content you have, the higher your chances of making a sale.
Information
Your landing page is where the user gets all the information about your brand and the product available for sale. The user needs to know if the product is fine for them, and they’ll also be keen to know what other people have said about your products and services.
If your landing pages aren’t good enough, it means you are not giving the user enough information for conversion. Some people argue that less than 16% of users read landing pages with more than 500 words. It is, however, better to have more words and get this 16% than lose all potential buyers, because of less information.
Benefits
Today’s buyers look for the benefits of a product or service before buying. It’s almost impossible, to sum up the important benefits for your user in just 100 words or less.
Benefits trigger emotions, and it is emotions that make people buy. Consumers today are persuaded by marketers who sell the best benefits to them on their landing pages. A lot of buyers already know the solution but you need to sell the benefits to them, and what they stand to miss if they don’t buy. It’s hard to portray the full picture in just a couple of hundred words.
Trust
If there is one thing that every visitor is looking for on a landing page, it’s trust. Persuasive copy is essential because the user must believe what you say and put their faith in you that what you’re saying is true, honest and believable. If a user doesn’t trust you, they will not bother reading your content.
More content gives the user more assurance, increases trust in the brand and persuades them to click on your CTAs (Calls To Action). Once a user trusts you or the product, then they will keep coming back to buy.
There are a lot of things to consider when writing a landing page but length is the key factor. You will need long landing pages if you want to achieve success with your content marketing strategy – and long-form copy is the way to landing-page success.
The length of your landing page determines the kind of action you want users to take. If you want them just to join a mailing list or be aware of your brand, you can risk short-form content. But if you want them to make a big purchase, you need to write enough content to convince them and appear authoritative.
Be mindful of the amount of content on your landing pages and understand why it’s so important you get it right. In the end, it’s all about conversion rates, and you’re much more likely to achieve that when your landing pages hit 500-600 words – or preferably much more!
If your website’s landing pages need work, we will be glad to help improve them. Please get in touch with us today – we’d be happy to help.