What's the Minimum to Make My Landing Page Communicate I Understand the Struggle?
You’ve got a benefits and features page. It communicates the product’s proposition: what it offers, how much it costs. To cover all angles, it lists its features and even some options or variants to pick from.
But it doesn’t work for you. It’s indistinguishable from other similar products, people aren’t buying as much as you’d hoped, and visitors coming to the page seem to browse around and leave. “Meh.”
It’s a safe page, but it’s not a sharp page.
A sharp page, on the other hand, communicates that you understand the visitor’s main struggle, what they’re ready to leave behind, and paves a new way forward using your product, adressing each of their objections (anxieties) and offers other ways to help them make progress anyway. A sharp page aims to be helpful, not merely to sell.
So what’s the minimum you should do to change your page to a sharp, struggle-based landing-page?
In past articles, we’ve covered some of the ways you can get to a sharper landing page. So let’s go through them one-by-one, starting from the minimum change to more involved changes.
1. Rewrite the Main Headline
Rewrite the main headline to communicate your product helps address their struggle.
Instead of a headline that describes what the product is, describe what the visitor is going through.
- “Three Times You’ve Tried Doing X on Your Own.”
If you’ve got more time…
2. Describe in Vivid Details What They’re Going Through
Beyond the first headline, add more proof that you understand what they must be going through. Write in paragraphs to describe in vivid details their situation. Use words that they likely have in their minds when they come to your site for a solution. Use those words in the first lines of your paragraphs to help the visitor skim and dig, which they will do anyway.
If you think they’re coming to your site because they’re describing multiple different struggles, use “maybe” statements to cover additional struggles in your text.
Then showcase your product as a solution to that struggle.
If you can change even more…
3. Downplay Features That Don’t Support The Struggle
You might have showcased more of your product’s features in the hopes of covering every angle. But your list of features might be introducing anxieties.
So try downplaying features and just highlight the ones that are there to support the kind of progress your visitor wants to get make, faced with the struggle your product aims to address.
And if you’ve done all that and you’re ready to really help your visitors get progress on your struggle…
4. Help Your Visitor Figure It out Themselves
Whether it’s a product you sell or a service you offer, your number one competitor is universal to all products: you’re competing against non-consumption. “I’ll just continue with whatever methods I’m currently using to solve my problem”. “I’ll just continue doing it myself”.
So help them do it themselves. Showcase some articles you wrote. Point to a low-cost guide you’re selling.
This will help them get progress, sow trust, and it will make your product compete against the other offerings you have (a newsletter or a guide), instead of competing against other products in your category.
To recap, your new page will start with a headline describing their struggle. It’ll then have a few paragraphs showing you understand your visitor’s struggle, using the visitor’s own words to relate in vivid details what they’re ready to leave behind. You’ll downplay your features and will instead help your visitor do it themselves, helping your product compete with your other offerings, rather than the other products in your category.
Stay Sharp!
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Pascal Laliberté
@pascallaliberte