Think back to your last in-store experience. What sections of the store did you go to? What items drew your attention? Did you find what you were looking for—or something more?

Retailers often organize their stores in specific ways to facilitate the buying journey. That means keeping top sellers at eye level on shelves, leading products in aisles closer to checkout, and easy add-on buys near the cash register. These are strategic decisions businesses use to increase orders and incentivize sales with minimal effort. Similarly, you should design your landing page with the same mindset.

Place your primary selling points or products where they’ll naturally catch visitors’ eyes. Display your priority content upfront, and save the less vital information for the back. And just like a retail store, you need to update your layout—add new products and content, reorganize based on customer data, and create new flows for purchase.

At the end of the day, organizing a retail store and designing a landing page share two common goals: taking advantage of interest to drive conversions.

So let’s dive into some key takeaways all marketers can glean from these retail strategies.
Match customers’ expectations—then expand their interests

Whether you’re designing a storefront or a landing page, you need to consider how your audience found your business. For websites and landing pages, this usually means a Google search, digital ad, or social media post. Customers come to your business with specific intent, and it’s crucial to match that motive.

Consider the initial curiosity that drew in your audience. In a retail store, this might be because of interest in the selling category, or promotional advertisements posted on the exterior of the building. The first thing a store does is place signs and promotional materials throughout to confirm ongoing specials and the categories of products they offer.

Think of a “buy-one-get-one-free” offer—also known as a BOGO. When these specials are in effect, the store will strategically place advertisements for all products that qualify for the offer.

The image depicts a product with a special offer. Offers are places in retail stores and can also be added to landing pages to highlight special offers

Your landing page should quickly establish what your offer is and how to apply it.

The first thing customers see should connect to their interests and the products you placed in your ad. If you focused on high-quality, ultra-soft pima cotton sweaters in the ad, those sweaters should be front and center on your landing page. This strategy is how you keep interest alive and capitalize on impulse decisions. It should be easy for consumers to take action before they lose interest in your offer.
Focus on bestsellers

Successful retailers have internalized the motto “Eye level is buy level.” This philosophy stems from the idea that you want to place your bestselling products on the middle shelf, which is at most adults’ eye level.

Customers pay a lot of attention to the products they find at eye level rather than those tucked away at the bottom or top shelves. For this reason, items for children might be lower than typical top sellers, and products for men might be a bit higher. Either way, the placement of products or content is equally vital to your landing page strategies.

Customers shouldn’t struggle to find your top offers or value points—especially when the window of opportunity is slim. Consider where the customer’s eye naturally goes on a landing page. You don’t want vital details about your offer hidden too far to the bottom or off to the side of the page where people may overlook it. Try comparing your landing page layout to the flow of a Z-pattern or F-pattern design. These techniques take advantage of the eye’s natural reading pattern to display content in a flow that suits their viewing habits.

Not sure what content is drawing the eye of customers on your page? Tools like Heatmaps give you a visual representation of your customers’ behavior on your landing page to help you optimize your layout.

Image depicts a landing page that is using a heatmap tool to give a visual representation of your customers’ behavior on your landing page to help you optimize your layout.
Create a cohesive flow

Item placement is a significant decision in the retail business—not just with shelf placement, but also with UX and UI.

Consider a shoe store. Shoe shoppers’ goals can vary greatly, so a third-party shoe retailer must cover a lot of product types. But they can’t merely scatter products anywhere in the store and expect to get sales.

The image shows a large aisle of products highlighting the similarity between endless options offered in store and online

For example, placing running shoes directly next to formal wear might not be the most profitable idea. Instead, the running shoes might be somewhere near hiking boots or basketball shoes. With this strategy, a shoe retailer can encourage athletic customers to browse for multiple aspects of their interests in one area of the store. If the store manager realizes most of their customers are athletes, they may put performance shoes in the front, with dress shoes along the back wall.

Think of your landing page flow in the same way.

A customer who clicks your ad has signified a specific interest. When they arrive at your landing page, build on that curiosity and provide new content the further they explore. If you advertise rainproof jackets, start with details about how your jackets perform in the rain. Then, you can build on the windbreaker features and, toward the end, pitch additional features or complementary products like rainproof boots.
Build bundles of value

Content flow goes beyond presenting products in an order of interest. Item placement in retail stores is about creating opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell. However, these tactics must be strategic, and applied in a way that makes the customer feel like they’re making a discovery about an additional product and not being pressured. On your landing page, you can increase purchase orders and the value of your clicks.

Imagine yourself at the grocery store. You finish adding all your groceries to your cart and head to the checkout. As you wait in line, your eye falls on the selection of candy and gum. You realize a quick snack sounds tasty, so you grab a chocolate bar, but then you worry about bad breath, so you also pick up some minty gum just in case.

Intentionally designed Instapage branded image that features gum to highlight the similarity between adding small items to add to your cart in a physical store and how that tactic can be used on a product landing page

In the shoe store, this portion of the checkout process might look different. Someone buying those new all-white sneakers they’ve been saving up for might be interested in shoe cleaner or waterproofing products in the selection by the register. Or, the cashier might offer a free pair of athletic socks for orders over a given amount.

You can do all this just as effectively on your landing page or checkout page.

When a customer adds an item to their cart, you have an opportunity to build a bundle or offer complementary products that might increase interest. For example, if someone decides they’re ready to buy your rainproof jacket, it might be an excellent opportunity to inform them of your waterproof boots as well.

You might consider presenting this information through a “Frequently Bought Together” section. Or, include a visualization like a lifestyle image of a customer using multiple items, an infographic of how a set of items work together, or an image of similar items bundled together.

Be sure not to force customers to choose between all or nothing. Put the focus on the primary offer and present the additional offers as suggestions, not need-to-haves. You want shoppers to feel as if they’re making a discovery and learning more about your brand, rather than having sales items pushed onto their feed.
Insight-driven updates

These strategies rely on insight-driven decisions. Retail stores use these practices based on valuable data and in-store insights. They depend on focus groups, customer questionnaires, and product sales to determine their strategy. More importantly, none of these strategies are static.

Is a new product in the back of the store garnering lots of interest? Try moving it to the front to see if it sells even more. Need to spread awareness about a new product type? Offer a BOGO in the section of the store to bundle it with popular products.

Retailers know they have to update their stores not just seasonally, but frequently, to keep up with consumer trends and changing product interest. They use data and customer experiences to refine these decisions, the same way you should with your landing page.

As an e-commerce seller, you have a significant advantage when making data-driven decisions. Your analytics should tell you what is or isn’t converting, when customers are losing interest, and what part of your sales funnel is falling behind. Even more, you can do focused testing to increase these insights and make firm decisions.

landing page builder dashboard

You should continually adjust your landing pages according to new insights. From design to narrative, every aspect of your landing page is adaptable and needs to be ready to change. If you don’t refresh your content frequently, you risk losing repeat customers, limiting new customer reach, and falling behind industry standards.
Instapage helps you run your landing page

A landing page is a considerable reflection of your business and something you want to shine in all aspects. It doesn’t take a huge team of designers or experts to craft landing pages that reflect your business goals. Just like a store owner who takes pride in an efficiently run retail business, Instapage lets you reinvent your landing page as an extension of your business.

Find out how Instapage helps you create optimized, easily adaptable, customer-centric landing pages for every offer by signing up for an Instapage demo today.

Effective direct-to-consumer advertising caters to the customer’s journey. The experience should support a continuous narrative from ad to page. Central elements of the landing page, such as headline, hero image, and CTAs, must resonate with that specific audience segment. Furthermore, designing the landing page with conversions in mind provides a seamless advertising experience. The entire process should engage the visitor, build a relationship, and convert them into a customer.

Here are 8 examples of effective direct-to-consumer advertising journeys.

1. The Farmer’s Dog

This search ad highlights the fresh quality of dog food from The Farmer’s Dog. It calls out how U.S. regulations don’t require pet food producers to uphold high safety and quality standards. And it includes a 50% off offer.

The ad directs visitors to this post-click experience, where the headline “Dog Food Should Be Food” reflects the concerns highlighted in the search ad. The CTA button is prominent on the page and in the color orange, which makes the button stand out. The button’s copy reflects the offer from the ad, so visitors don’t have to go searching for the discount or remember a special code. Together, the page elements communicate to the visitor that they have arrived at a place relevant to the ad they clicked.

In order to establish trust, The Farmer’s Dog has includes customer testimonials at the bottom of the page. Finally, the page is using a 1:1 conversion ratio—since there is only one conversion goal, there is only one link included on the page. This approach ensures visitors who click on the CTA accomplish the conversion goal.

This ad is an effective example because the entire journey emphasizes the narrative of switching to fresh pet food while highlighting a discount that inspires visitors to convert. The page design itself enables the visitor to convert easily once they decide to move forward with the purchase.

2. Rory

Rory’s Facebook ad promotes a 3-month supply of custom-blended skincare for $5. The post-click landing page then highlights the offer above the fold. There is a sticky banner so that as the visitor scrolls down, the deal is easy to access. The CTA button also revolves around claiming the discount.

The page makes use of visual hierarchy to guide the visitor in a way that will educate them about the product and persuade them to act. Both the ad and landing page include images of the product to support a shared experience. The “How It Works” section uses a highly contrasting green color to draw the visitor’s attention so they can easily understand how simple the process is. As they scroll further, there is a breakdown of the dermatologist-selected ingredients included in their treatments. Near the bottom, FAQs educate consumers on prescription skincare, and customer testimonials help establish credibility.

This post-click landing page educates and persuades the visitor, while centering the offer from the ad to present a relevant experience.

3. Eargo

Eargo’s Facebook ad narrative focuses on how federal employee health benefits cover the cost of hearing aids and they tailored the post-click landing page experience toward federal employees for consistency. The headline reinforces that there is no cost to the hearing aid recipient, while the subheading calls out federal employee health benefits.

A visitor clicking on this ad is likely interested in learning more about how federal health benefits can cover the cost of hearing aids. Their journey from ad to page should support a continuous narrative so that they will be more likely to engage and convert.

Also catering to this narrative is the page’s visual hierarchy. As you scroll down, the page provides information about what plans are available. Below the fold is a step-by-step breakdown of how it works. By introducing more relevant information first, the page engages the visitor and holds their attention. Then, they provide additional details once a visitor is engaged and wants to learn more.

Finally, Eargo uses a frictionless form to increase the likelihood of a conversion. They keep the form short by capturing only the most essential information, and include a drop-down for insurance types to limit keyboard usage, thereby speeding up the completion process.

4. Cozy Earth

Cozy Earth’s Facebook ad highlights Oprah’s endorsement of their bamboo sheets and includes a discount offer.

The ad sends visitors to this post-click experience. The headline reinforces Oprah’s endorsement, reassuring shoppers that this experience is relevant to the ad they just clicked. The 20 to 35% discount offer displays on a sticky banner, and is easy to find no matter how far people scroll down.

Below the fold, the page includes an “Oprah’s Favorite Things” badge, as well as a quote with Oprah’s signature. As the visitor scrolls further down, they can see the benefits of Cozy Earth’s sheets. Lastly, to further establish trust, the customer testimonials and an FAQ section are at the bottom.

This ad-to-page experience is effective because it offers a frictionless journey to learn more about these Oprah-endorsed sheets. The design elements and copy on the landing page continuously communicate that this is a relevant experience and support the message established in the ad.

5. Caraway

Caraway’s Facebook ad highlights how their pans are “non-toxic for healthy eating” and the post-click experience presents copy that supports this narrative. Both the headline and the quote emphasize the lack of chemicals, so the visitor knows immediately they are on a relevant page.

Below the fold, Caraway provides a bulleted list of reasons the visitor should choose their product. Presenting “non-toxic” as the first reason helps to tailor the narrative to the ad and drive home one of the key selling points.

Images and dimensions of the pans and storage accessories are in the breakdown of what comes with the cookware set. Each product shot is accompanied by a brief description, with examples of the kinds of meals home chefs can prepare with that pan. Providing specific examples is particularly helpful here, since it enables the visitor to imagine the benefits they could enjoy with this set.

There is also a section describing the non-toxic coating and eco-friendly materials used to make this high-quality cookware, followed by a comparison chart showing the benefits of the brand over other types of pans. This level of detail makes it easier for the visitor to decide to buy, since they are provided with answers to many of the common questions that may stop them from purchasing.

This ad-to-page journey is highly effective because it maintains a consistent narrative that is well-tailored to a visitor who cares about non-toxic cookware.

6. Nectar

Nectar runs competitive search ads bidding on their competitors’ keywords. In this example, the ad states “Don’t Buy That Other Mattress.”

The post-click landing page is written for a very specific target audience and the entire page focuses on comparing the Nectar and Purple brands. The brand knows visitors to this post-click landing page were searching for a competitor so they make it easy to see how Nectar differs. Below the fold, Nectar highlights their more affordable options with a side-by-side comparison to show that their mattresses are less expensive and that they include free accessories like pillows as a bonus.

Below the CTA, there are links allowing visitors to skip to information that they’re most interested in and waste less time. Since visitors are already shopping for a specific brand of mattress, they likely already know what some of the most important features are in their decision making process. Nectar makes it easy for them to see the benefits and convert (away from the brand they initially thought they wanted).

This strategy is effective because a person who searches for Purple and lands on a Nectar page may not know of Nectar and their affordable options. This page aims to convince them why they should pick Nectar based on their specific needs and offers lots of value adds to encourage them to convert.

7. Ritual

Ritual’s Facebook video ad prompts potential customers with a question: “Do you know what nutrients you need from a prenatal vitamin?”

The corresponding post-click experience caters to visitors looking to learn more about prenatal vitamin nutrients. The headline matches the ad copy, so the experience is immediately relevant. The page structure is straight-forward and easy to read, with formatting similar to an educational blog post. This lends credibility as it feels more educational than promotional.

Reading through the list of nutrients, visitors see: “You can find all 12 of these nutrients in our Essential Prenatal vitamin. Start your Ritual today.” Providing educational content about the nutrients and their different benefits, Ritual presents their vitamin as a simple one-stop solution.

This ad-to-page journey is highly effective because it offers helpful, easy to understand content to the visitor. Since the information is so engaging, visitors are more likely to click the CTA and read more about Ritual’s prenatal vitamin.

8. Warby Parker

Warby Parker’s Facebook ad promotes their free home try-on and the corresponding post-click landing page speaks directly to an audience interested in this offer. The hero image reflects the try-on process by including a box and glasses and the headline reinforces that you can try frames on at home. Since the ad targets someone who wants to learn more about the try-on process, the page supports that narrative.

Beneath the fold, the page describes the benefits of their glasses and service. Since the page is primarily about having multiple options to try on at home on, this section is helpful for reminding the visitor of the benefits of using Warby Parker. Customer testimonial quotes instill trust in the visitor and emphasize how easy the home try-on process is.

Effective advertising caters to the customer

Highly relevant and engaging ad experiences are most effective because they capture the visitor’s attention and inspire them to act. To be effective, the landing page should reinforce specific callouts from the ad. A more relevant experience will engage your visitor. A more engaged visitor is more likely to convert into a customer. It’s critical to design your post-click experiences with a conversion-centered focus. After all, your goal is to motivate visitors to purchase. As you increase your advertising’s effectiveness, you’ll see conversion rates.

Create fully optimized landing pages

We know how challenging it can be to identify gaps in your ad-to-page narrative. We’re ready to help. Instapage offers three different plans to help take the stress out of building, optimizing, and converting. Schedule an Instapage demo here.

What do Tencel Cooling Covers, Gel Memory Foam, and Real-Time Optimization have in common?

As you’ll see, they’re all features of a product. But do these features want to make you buy the product?
Probably not, because you don’t know why they make the product worth buying.

If you want to convince people to claim your offer, you have to stress your product’s benefits over its features on your landing pages.

Benefits vs. features: Which is better for advertising conversion?

Nobody buys a product because of its new and improved, high-tech or cutting-edge feature. They buy it for what that feature enables them to do.

But in advertising, it’s not uncommon to see brands touting their newest updates and additions to the product. This is always a mistake, especially on post-click landing pages, which are explicitly designed to persuade a visitor to claim your offer. If someone isn’t clear about how a product will change their life for the better, they’re not going to buy it. You have to spell it out for them.

Good copywriting takes product-focused features and turns them into customer-focused benefits. In a blog post for “Building a Story Brand,” Donald Miller explains the concept of making the customer the hero:

The customer is the hero of our brand’s story, not us.
When we position our customer as the hero and ourselves as their guide, we will be recognized as a sought-after character to help them along their journey.

In other words, your audience is Luke Skywalker. You get to be Yoda.
It’s a small but powerful shift. This honors the journey and struggles of our audience, and it allows us to provide the product or service they need to succeed.

Translated to features vs. benefits, this means you want to talk less about your product features and capabilities and more about how those features and capabilities impact the customer.

For example, a workout program will want to focus less on the actual advertising of the workouts, and more about how those workouts will improve the fitness level of its customers. A mattress company will want to focus less on the material its product is made of, and more on how that material helps people sleep better or maintain spinal health.

Teasing out these benefits isn’t always easy to do, but it’s necessary. So, to help you along, we’ve put together six real-life examples of ecommerce brands that use benefits and features on their post-click landing pages.

Brands that use benefits vs. features on their post-click landing pages

The best ecommerce brands use benefits to explain features. Here’s how they do it on post-click landing pages to boost conversions.

Trifecta Nutrition

This page from Trifecta Nutrition is a particularly good example of features vs. benefits on post-click landing pages. On it, the first icon shown below highlights a feature: “Touchless delivery.”

In the world’s current state, touchless delivery is an incredibly valuable feature. But its value would be better highlighted in bold the way that the second and third icons are.

“Time-saving” and “fresher food” are benefits of pre-cooked meals and a streamlined farm-to-table supply chain, respectively. The benefit of touchless delivery is health and safety. So, “safe delivery” might be a better way to describe the feature here, with an explanation of why the delivery is safe (because it’s touchless) in the copy. Benefits over features.

Instacart

This page from Instacart does an excellent job of helping its visitors visualize what they can have by using the service. Here’s a section of three icons you’ll see after scrolling down the page:

In two of them, the benefit is obvious. First, “Products you love,” tells the visitor that they’re able to choose from the products they already use and enjoy. If someone is thinking, “I may be limited to ordering from a select few stores and products by using Instacart,” this bold text counters that objection.

Secondly, “Save time & money” is a very clear benefit to the user. Instead of highlighting the feature “Exclusive deals on popular products,” it takes that feature one step further and teases the benefit from it.

Lastly, while it’s easy for the user to understand the benefit of same-day delivery, this is only a feature. What’s the benefit? Rephrased, it may say, “Products brought to your door in hours.”

HelloFresh

This page from HelloFresh makes it easy for potential customers to see the benefits of using the service. Here’s their section on benefits and features:

Clearly highlighted in bold, green text are the benefits of becoming a customer:

• Healthy, tasty meals (the benefit of having your meals approved by dieticians and assembled by food professionals)
• Less prep work (the benefit of having your meal pre-assembled)
• More choices, less boredom (the benefit of having 20 recipes to choose from)

In each case, the copywriter could’ve highlighted the features of HelloFresh. Instead, they chose to take those features a step further to explain why they’re worth spending money on.

Jenny Craig

Here’s a page from Jenny Craig that users reach after clicking a search ad for “diet plans.” When they scroll down, they see this section of the page:

The first two here are great examples of benefits vs. features. “Your personalized menu plan” is the benefit of having a diet plan. A diet plan is just a feature of the program, but this copywriter knew to tease out the benefit of having one: personalization. Meals tailored to your body type and goal.

The same is true of “Your very own dedicated coach.” This is the benefit of having hundreds or thousands of personal fitness coaches. Written as a feature, this bolded text might say “Hundreds of fitness coaches.” Again, though, this copywriter knew that benefits speak louder than features. Your own dedicated coach means personalized support and attention.

The last example, however, is more of a feature. Whereas the previous two elements clearly speak to the user with the word “you,” this one leaves it out, saying, “Backed by the latest research.” But the program’s research-backed method is only a feature. What does that feature allow the user to do? Rephrased to convey a benefit, it might say, “Proven to help you lose weight.”

Nectar

A PPC campaign from Nectar drives visitors to this post-click page. On it, you’ll see a section that highlights some benefits and features.

These are a great example of the difference between benefits and features because this page uses both. The first two are clearly features: A “Tencel Cooling Cover” and “Gel Memory Foam” are both aspects of the product. Looking at the third—“Wake Up Rested”—it’s easy to see why benefits are more powerful than features. It spells out for the reader why the product is valuable.

As for the others, ask yourself: What do you get from a Tencel Cooling Cover? What does a moisture-wicking, breathable comforter do for its user?

And why is memory foam better than the average spring mattress? What does evenly distributing weight do for a sleeper? Keep their spine aligned? In this bolded text, it’s unclear.

Mirror

Here’s a page from Mirror that directs visitors clicking a paid search ad. Though it explains the product’s features throughout the page, it does so in the context of the benefits they provide the user. Take a look.

First, there’s this section:

The header here clearly spells out a benefit to the user: A personalized fitness routine. And how is it personalized? With expert instruction, real-time optimization, and customized playlists. These are all features. “Personalized for you” would be a bit stronger if it elaborated on why personalization is valuable in fitness, but either way, personalization is a benefit.

And secondly, there’s this section:

The result of heart-rate measuring and results tracking is that you can push yourself further by competing against your previous self. But, while this isn’t a feature, it’s not a clear benefit either. It almost is. What’s the benefit of being able to push yourself further? You get results faster.

Start creating benefit-oriented pages with Instapage

No matter who you are or what you’re selling, benefits are always stronger than features. Your new-and-improved formula or design is only as powerful as the benefits it provides. On post-click landing pages designed to convince visitors to claim your offer, you can’t afford not to fully explain the benefits of your product or service.

Want to create benefit-oriented pages for all your products and segments? Find out how you can with the industry’s leading landing page provider. Sign up for an Instapage Enterprise Demo today.

In the ecommerce world, shopping cart abandonment is all too common. Sometimes people see the total price in their cart and they get cold feet. Other times they get distracted and forget they even filled up a cart. This phenomenon is unlike the brick and mortar shopping experience.

In physical retailers, people don’t usually fill up their carts and then simply walk out of the store. The problem of shopping cart abandonment is directly tied to ecommerce, and as more businesses open online stores, the issue isn’t going away.

Shopping cart abandonment statistics

Based on data collected from 41 different studies on abandoned shopping carts, 69.57% of shoppers leave without purchasing. This abandonment adds up. Ecommerce stores lose over $18 billion in yearly revenue.

Here are some other shopping cart abandonment statistics to give you an idea why this problem can’t be ignored:

• Extra costs like shipping and being forced to make an account are the two main reasons shoppers abandon their carts (Source)
• Mobile users have the highest rate of abandonment at 85.6% (Source)
• Airlines and travel have the highest shopping cart abandonment rates (Source)
• With better site optimization, 35.26% of lost sales can be recovered (Source)

Here are some foolproof ways to look at the customer journey and lower the rate of cart abandonment.

How to reduce shopping cart abandonment

With shopping cart abandonment rates so high, there are many strategies to reduce this issue. Using a combination of the following tactics is a surefire way to decrease the number of people leaving without purchasing.

1. Provide seamless payment processing

Payment processing is complicated behind the scenes, but to customers, it should only take a fraction of a second. The goal of reducing abandonments here is to have the least amount of work in the shortest amount of time.

First, make sure you have trustworthy payment gateway software. People still don’t trust giving their personal information online, so choose software that makes security their number one priority.

Also, give your shoppers more than one payment option. Let them connect to Paypal, Apple Pay, or Amazon Pay so that they don’t have to enter their credit card information.

If they elect to pay by credit card, allow them to save their payment information so they don’t have to re-enter it the next time. Additionally, you can offer payment plans that allow shoppers to make monthly payments on their purchase. Things like allowing shoppers to click, “same as shipping address” saves time. The fewer hurdles for paying, the better. Check out the Revolve example to see how they simplify the payment processing.

2. Exit-intent pop-ups

Pop-ups are a simple way to give shoppers an extra second to think before X-ing out for good. Most, if not all, exit intent pop-ups feature an offer to incentivize the shopper to stay on the page and purchase what’s in their cart.

3. Improve CTAs

Improving user experience is crucial to lowering shopping cart abandonment rates. Keep the language on your ecommerce website simple and clear. Don’t be clever with your CTA buttons, instead use an action verb that tells people precisely what action to take.

In Wild One’s example, the language is abundantly clear. It tells the shopper how much they need to add until free shipping is given, and then suggests “popular stuff.” It also makes removing items very simple with one click. Lastly, the checkout button is the largest on the page:

4. Offer free shipping

People hate paying shipping costs. With companies like Amazon Prime offering free two-day shipping, people will abandon their carts if they see there’s no free shipping. If you can’t afford free shipping on all products, set a minimum price that shoppers must match to receive free shipping. Most of the time, shoppers will pick the cheapest shipping option regardless of how long they have to wait.

Do everything you can to offer free shipping, as this is one of the biggest reasons for shopping cart abandonment like Mejuri does in the example below:

5. Retarget with display ads

After someone closes out of your ecommerce site, remind them of their cart with retargeting display ads. Below is an advertisement that appeared on Facebook after $577.00 of merchandise was abandoned. This is an effective way to get people back and complete their purchase. Revolve is very good at following you around after abandoning a shopping cart:

6. Follow up via email

Another way to entice people back onto your website is by following up via email, like Wayfair, after they exit your online store. Either present an intriguing offer or remind them of what they’re missing out on.

You can either be direct and say something like, “We already miss you!” Or you can be indirect like the email below that promotes product categories. In the Wayfair email, the word sale and savings are in the subject line, the item I was about to buy is mentioned, and free shipping is offered. All of these combined incentivize people to complete the purchase.

7. Allow cart saving

Have you ever filled up your cart, walked away for a minute, and your entire shopping cart disappeared? This is an extremely frustrating experience and often leads to a customer abandoning that purchase entirely.

Even if the shopper doesn’t have an account, save their cart as a courtesy. Once the items are lost, the chances of the shopper re-filling the cart are slim to none.

8. Enable guest checkout

Guest checkout is a must. When consumers see that they must have an account, they automatically think it will take longer to create a profile and receive promotional emails from your online store.

Allow your shoppers the choice to sign in to an existing account, create an account, or check out as a guest, like Yeti.

9. Add a progress indicator

Remember that your shoppers might not be tech-savvy. They may not know how many more steps are required until their purchase is complete.

Create a progress indicator that shows shoppers where they are in the checkout process. Doing this allows them to analyze if the steps remaining are worth the purchase. So it’s in your best interest to keep these steps to a minimum.

10. Include scarcity details

If consumers see limited quantities remain, they’ll be more inclined to act instead of delaying a purchase or abandoning altogether and thinking before purchasing. In the Free People example below, the product page says “only a few left.” This detail highlights that it is a popular item and may not be available if they don’t act fast:

11. Use social proof

Social proof like customer reviews is great for limiting cart abandonment. So, offering a product review section allows other shoppers to read testimonials before purchasing. This functionality reassures buyers to check out more quickly.

If your product generally receives positive reviews, people will speed up their decision-making and purchase in confidence. Consider using social media advertising to spread your positive reviews and target new customers or retarget old ones.

12. Reduce page load time

If your page loads too slow, you’ll lose customers. It’s unfortunately common that the largest slowdown occurs when customers are checking out, and when this happens, shoppers abandon their carts.

Don’t only focus on the desktop experience. Many people use their mobile devices to shop, and if the page isn’t optimized for mobile, you’ll leave money on the table.

Conclusion

The 12 tips above will limit your cart abandonment rate, but neglecting to personalize the shopper’s journey can lower your ecommerce sales, too. Create the same post-click landing page that you establish at the pre-click level, and your customers will reward you in turn. To learn how to create personalized post-click landing pages at scale, request an Instapage Enterprise demo.

Pinterest may have started as a network where users went for creative ideas and look at the beautiful image boards. However, over the years, the platform has evolved into a whole lot more — especially advertising possibilities.

Pinterest has refined its ad targeting capabilities to ensure that ecommerce advertisers can effectively reach the millions of people who come to Pinterest to shop for products and services.

Out of 93% of users who plan purchases with Pinterest, 87% of them ultimately buy, making Pinterest a lucrative advertising platform for ecommerce businesses.

So, what ad targeting options do Pinterest ads offer advertisers? Let’s find out.

What are the main Pinterest ad targeting options?

Pinterest offers advertisers multiple ad targeting options depending on who their audience is and how they want to reach them. For each ad group you set up, you can target ads to reach the right people at the right time. You can also combine targeting criteria to create an audience as narrow or as broad as you like.

Currently, there are three main ad targeting options: interest targeting, keyword targeting, and audience targeting.

Interest targeting

Interest targeting allows you to take advantage of Pinterest’s unique understanding of people’s interests, tastes, and life stages. Select interests related to your ad to reach people while they browse Pinterest for similar interests.

For example, if you’re selling baby clothes, target pinners interested in “children’s fashion” and “baby clothing,” or even “parenting:”

You can select broader terms to increase the ad reach, or you can select relevant sub-categories that target more specific options more relevant to your promoted products/services.

Keyword targeting

Similar to Google and Bing paid search ads, keyword targeting lets you include or exclude specific words to reach out to prospects as they search Pinterest for similar ideas. Advertisers can add keywords related to the ad they’re promoting, for instance, with patio furniture, you can target users searching for “patio decor” or “home decor ideas.”

The key to succeeding with keyword targeting is to make sure any keywords you add are relevant to your pin.

Also, similar to search engines, Pinterest offers multiple keyword match types such as broad, phrase, and exact, along with negative keywords. Each match type, combined with negative keywords enables you to target pinners’ search terms and be more precise with ads:

• Phrase and exact matches — to narrow in on specific searches
• Broad match to reach the widest audience
• Negative keywords allow you to exclude certain search terms from triggering ads and can be set at the ad group or campaign level.

When adding keywords in the Ads Manager, write a keyword as is for broad match, use quotations around the keywords for phrase match, and include brackets around keywords for exact match:

Audience targeting

With audience targeting, you show ads to Pinterest users who are most likely to click and engage with the ads.

This option is best in practice with retargeting ads because you can target the ads to website visitor list, customers from your CRM, or people who have already engaged with your brand on Pinterest. Once you’ve identified your most valuable customers, you can use actalike audiences (similar to Facebook lookalike audiences) to find other people with similar interests and behaviors.

The option also allows you to boost traffic by sending pinners/prospects to your Pinterest post-click page, website, or online store.

With audience targeting you can create four types of audiences:

• Customer lists: Upload existing customers’ emails or mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) through a single column CSV file. Once you compile at least 100 matches, Pinterest will begin targeting those people with your promoted pins.
• Website visitors: The audience list includes people who have already visited your site or Pinterest content. To create visitor audiences, you need to set up the Pinterest tag, add the base code across every page on your site, and add the event code to pages you want to track the actions important to your conversion goal. To track events, you can retarget people who added a specific type of product to their cart but didn’t ultimately purchase.
• Engagement audience: You can target people who’ve previously engaged with pins from your website. This includes saves, closeups, comments, link clicks, and carousel card swipes. Add filters to your engagement audience to target or exclude people who take specific actions, such as saving your pin.
• Actalike audience: Pinterest builds actalike audiences using information you give them about people on Pinterest and their behavior. Choose one of your existing audience lists as the source audience to build your actalike. You have the option to target people in a specific country based on the source audience and choose a target size percentage. Actalike audiences are used to find new customers, new people who are likely to engage with your pins, or new people who are likely to visit your website based on the source audience.

Additional targeting

In addition to those three methods, you can also choose who to target based on gender, age, locations, languages, and devices:

The key is to select the targeting options based on your offer and which prospects might be interested in it. For example, select people in the correct locations that speak the language your ads are written, also determine which device your prospects are likely to be using on the platform.

Harness the power of Pinterest targeting to reach potential customers

Pinterest’s ad targeting options help you locate the right audience on the platform and ensure your ads are targeted to users that will likely click through.

To increase the likelihood of ad clicks turning into conversions, always connect your ads with personalized post-click landing pages. To create personalized experiences for all your ads, get an Instapage Enterprise Personalization demo today.

Ecommerce offers are everywhere and your target customer base is likely barraged by emails each day. Your job is to capture their attention immediately while they scan their inbox. Personalized ecommerce recommendation quizzes may be the strategy you consider to do just that.

eConsultancy research shows that 44% of customers are likely to become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience. What’s more, is that 40% might give in to upselling due to personalization.

So, what’s better than shopping when you know exactly what to buy? Having a quiz select the most appropriate product for you.
What are ecommerce recommendation quizzes?

Ecommerce recommendation quizzes are interactive content used to suggest products that are best suited for your prospect/user. The quiz maps different questions to specific outcomes, which can recommend products directly from the business’ inventory or direct them towards the product purchase page.

Take a look at this quiz from Headphone Zone:

ecommerce lead gen recommendation quiz

This quiz asks respondents simple questions and recommends headphone products that fit their requirements. Easy, right?

Just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s worth it, though. It’s worth it because interactive quizzes have a 2x higher conversion rate than passive content. Moreover, they are 40x more likely to be shared by users.

But why do interactive quizzes, product recommendation quizzes, in particular, result in such a sales boost?
Why product recommendation quizzes boost sales
1. Increased engagement

Consider the following statistics and you will understand why quizzes are intriguing for brands to boost their email engagement:

Approximately 269 billion emails are sent every day
Your target customer sees approximately 5,000 ads daily

So, how can your brand stand out in a busy inbox and engage your target audience?

With interactive content.

81% of marketers believe that interactive content grabs readers’ attention and engages the audience by providing real value. Quizzes obtain the product best suited for prospects without going through every product in the category, ultimately saving the person time and effort.

Let’s assume you are a prospect interested in buying a makeup set. You have a choice between searching through every product and finding the one that suits you. Or, you have a product recommendation quiz do the work for you. Which one would you prefer?

ecommerce lead gen recommendation quiz makeup

The ecommerce landscape is incredibly competitive with new ways to sell products online continually becoming available. Businesses everywhere must actively seek out new methods to find customers and cut through the noise.

While it’s not new, Facebook provides an excellent opportunity for ecommerce stores and businesses to do this. With 2.41 billion monthly active users, the largest number of ecommerce orders from a social media platform, and a typical ROI from Facebook Ads at 152%, ecommerce Facebook advertising is a goldmine for businesses.

If you’re looking to build or reinvent your ecommerce advertising strategy on Facebook, these 10 tips will get you started.

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10 Tips to level up your ecommerce Facebook advertising campaigns

1. Create the perfect image

Your ad’s image is the very first thing users see, so it’s essential that it’s both attention-grabbing and aesthetically appealing. Some components to keep in mind when designing your ad creative include:

• High-quality — Ecommerce Facebook ads should be scroll-stopping images that stand out in the newsfeed. Instead of stock imagery that often get overlooked, use professionally-shot, beautiful representations of your product in real-life situations:

• Faces — Humans connect best with other humans, so welcoming, personal, emotive faces are ideal for catching attention and allowing individuals to visualize themselves using your product:

• Simplicity — Overly complex images with distracting elements take attention away from your product, while simple images with empty space can draw more focus to your product:

2. Use Carousel or multi-product ads

Multi-product or Carousel Ads give advertisers the ability to show several products (or different features and benefits of one product) in a single ad — each with its own image, description, and final URL:

Since these ads give users more options to choose from, there’s a higher chance a product will be relevant to them, and a greater chance of you earning a conversion.

Studies have proven that multi-product ads can be more effective and efficient than single-image ads. Adobe, for instance, found that this ad type generated:

• Up to 300% increase in CTR
• 35% reduction in CPC as a result of higher engagement
• More efficient CPA

3. Install conversion tracking pixel

A common frustration among business owners is knowing whether or not their ads actually performed well. You can boost a Facebook post, or even set up an entire ad campaign, but without installing the Meta Pixel you won’t know if it drove any sales.

Facebook’s conversion tracking pixel — a small snippet of code that tracks visitors’ behavior on your site — is the connection point between your Facebook ads and website:

It shows every action taken by visitors on your site, who arrived there through your Facebook ads. Essentially, it tells you not only if your ads drove results, but also which audiences and ads those conversions came from. Another reason to install the pixel is because the platform uses it to improve Facebook ad campaigns.

4. Communicate your brand story

Since Facebook is first and foremost a social network, and not necessarily an online store, most people are there to connect rather than shop. This makes it extremely important to connect and build relationships with prospects before rushing a sale.

You can do this by communicating your brand’s story and identity, or how you want your brand, business, and products to be perceived by customers. Use Facebook ads to show your target audience what you’re all about, and once you’ve built a solid identity for your brand, people will instantly recognize it and be more likely to purchase.

One case study that supports this idea is Adaptly, who ran two Facebook campaigns side by side and saw drastic differences. One campaign focused strictly on generating subscriptions right from the beginning, while the other told the brand story first, then provided product information, and finally inviting people to sign up:

Adaptly’s research had three major findings:

• An 87% increase in post-click landing page traffic when people were exposed to the sequenced ads.
• Subscription rates increased by 56% among people exposed to the sequenced ads.
• People exposed to all three of the sequenced ads converted at higher rates than those who had seen just one or two of the ads.

These results indicate that telling your brand story before asking people to purchase can help build trust, establish a reputation, and therefore, increase people’s receptiveness to different ads.

Telling your brand story can be done in many ways, some of which include:

• Showing how/where the product is made
• Discussing how the product idea was discovered
• Interviewing people who make the product

For example, Pela Case uses the ad below to tell prospects why they make these specific phone cases, instead of immediately pushing for a sale:

5. Use dynamic product ads

One study shows that nearly 76% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts without completing a purchase. It’s slightly worse on mobile, with abandonment rates reaching almost 78% for mobile users. With retargeting, though, sites can bring back about 26% of abandoners, and increase their conversion rates by 70%.

This is why dynamic product ads are vital for Facebook ecommerce advertising.

They are one of the most common Facebook ad formats in the ecommerce landscape — and one of the highest ROI strategies ecommerce sites can use — because they serve as a chance to bring back that 76-78% of hesitant customers that left without purchasing.

Dynamic product ads pair your Meta pixel data and product catalog to retarget potential customers and show them tailored ads based on their site activity.

Take Jamie Kay, for example, who showed me this ad after spending quite a bit of time on their website and putting too much in my shopping cart:

These types of ads don’t require advertisers to create ads for each catalog product either, because Facebook templates will pull images, product names, pricing and other information from your catalog based on product details you upload to Facebook.

6. Create Custom Audiences

Custom Audiences are another way to tap into the data captured by your Meta pixel and retarget the right people — those who have already shown interest in your brand. When creating a Custom Audience, the three main sources for ecommerce brands include:

• Customer file — This allows you to upload a list of email addresses, phone numbers, and any other contact information collected from customers or leads. Facebook then matches this information to its own users so you can target them directly. Creating an audience this way is ideal for re-engaging past customers with new products or reaching email subscribers who haven’t purchased yet.
• Website traffic — This allows you to create retargeting lists of previous website visitors, based on actions taken or website pages visited. Retargeting lists that generally convert best in this case are those who visited your website in the past 30 days or added something to their cart in the past 7 days.
• Engagement — This provides you with a list of various engagement types by which you can retarget. Whether you have a video on your Facebook Page collecting thousands of views or an event with a ton of attendees, any positive engagement indicates that someone might be interested in your product, and are therefore worth retargeting.

7. Lookalike Audiences

This is a great feature to use because it helps you find new customers based on previous customers’ characteristics. So you’re advertising to people who are similar to your existing customers, and more likely to be interested in your products as well.

In fact, Lookalike Audiences are usually one of the highest performing target groups for many advertisers.

The feature uses data from Custom Audiences to create a new audience, ranging in size and likeness from 1% to 10% of a selected population:

A 1% Lookalike Audience contains people who most closely resemble the Custom Audience source. As you expand your targeting and increase your ad spend– eventually moving to a 10% Lookalike Audience — you get more scale while still remaining close to a user profile that matches your existing customers.

Naturally, the larger and more detailed your customer list, the more accurate your Lookalike Audience will be.

Using the Lookalike Audience feature allows advertisers to personalize their content. Since you already know what your audience responds well to, you can provide them with experiences they’ll appreciate more and be likely to convert on. In fact, 80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences, so brands should be tailoring experiences as much as possible.

8. Get creative with offers

Discounts
People love discounts so much that someone who is not actively looking for a product might end up purchasing it just because it’s on sale. So it’s worth testing advertisements that highlight a discount as part of your ecommerce Facebook advertising strategy. Similar to QVC here:

Facebook even has an app to offer your followers coupons for exclusive discounts or even free items:

These Facebook coupons help:

• Drive traffic and conversions
• Encourage more people to sign up as fans
• Build loyalty with existing followers

Offers
The Offers feature within Facebook ads allows you to minimize the gap between the discount offer and the actual sale where you can lose customers, because they don’t even have to leave Facebook to redeem your offer. They get a code as soon as they click the Offer ad.

Another advantage is that you can show the number of people who have taken advantage of the offer. This serves as social proof — “If others are enjoying the benefits of the offer, then why shouldn’t I?”

Contests & giveaways
Contests and giveaways may seem counterproductive to driving sales, but they can be quite powerful in the long run if you use them strategically.

First, they help build brand credibility and loyalty. If prospects know you’re not all about the sale — but also willing to appease them (with contests and giveaways) — they’ll likely keep you on their radar and be back to purchase down the road.

Not only that, but it’s a great way to draw people in. Take this ad, for example:

The winner of that $300 would likely end up spending more than $300 on the shopping spree. And if someone saw this ad and didn’t win, the visually appealing image may have still been enough to make them want to shop here.

9. Create urgency

No matter what type of ad you decide to create, always include powerful words and phrases that encourage action now.

For instance, people are highly susceptible to language that incorporates a sense of urgency. So if you already know your prospect is interested, push them towards a purchase with copy such as:

• Flash sale
• Limited time only
• While supplies last
• Hurry
• Don’t wait
• Buy now
• Don’t miss out
• Offer expires
• Act now
• Clearance
• One day only
• Last chance
• Deadline

Here are a few great examples:

10. Create a funnel

When it comes to ecommerce Facebook advertising, the confusion can start at the very beginning, because many people look at the objectives offered on Facebook and immediately go for the conversion.

While sales are the ultimate goal, the vast majority of people aren’t ready to buy your product the first time they see it. High-value conversions typically occur after a user has interacted with your brand over multiple touchpoints.

A three-step funnel-based approach to advertising is recommended to tailor your ads to users’ familiarity with your brand and intent to purchase. The three sales funnel stages are:

Brand awareness

If users don’t know who, they’re not likely to buy from you. By starting with a brand awareness campaign, you’re casting a wide net on the platform, getting your brand and product in front of as many Facebook users as possible.

In these campaigns, start with a low-commitment offer used merely to inform your audience of how you can help them, not necessarily aiming for a sale yet.

Once they know who you are and what you offer, then proceed with more engagement.

Engagement

The more positive engagement from an ad, the more likely other viewers are to stop and interact with it, too. That’s why engagement campaigns come immediately after brand awareness campaigns.

Valentina Turchetti, Founder of YourDigitalWeb, explains:

In the second phase, Engagement, my goal is to establish a relationship with the fans of the page. The goal is to receive likes, comments, shares, and maybe questions about how to buy the product or the service. In an engagement campaign, I usually use a video ad that immediately highlights the benefits, the advantages and/or the main strengths of a product or a service.

Click/conversion

Following the previous two touchpoints, advertisers can solicit higher commitment engagement — clicks and/or conversions.

Brandon Thurgood of Disruptive Advertising takes this approach:

We can now take this audience of people who have engaged with our ad and put them into a traffic campaign that we can optimize for landing page views. At this point, our goal isn’t just to increase brand awareness -- we also want them to visit a page on our site.

What tips will you use in your ecommerce Facebook advertising?

Using these ten tips in your Facebook advertising will help give your ecommerce business a boost — improving your chances of more sales and generating more ROI.

See where else you could generate conversions by downloading the Marketer’s Guide to New Optimization Opportunities here.

Outside of radio shows and podcasts, the ads we consume are highly visual. For you, as an advertiser, it’s a double-edged sword:

You know people mostly consume visual ad campaigns, and this provides a great starting point.

At the same time, advertising is about standing out. With so much competition, how do you effectively use visuals in ads to earn click-throughs? And after that, how do you use them to convert on landing pages?

Visual advertising techniques and examples

use visuals in ads

Images, videos, text, and web design are part of the recipe for a great visual advertising campaign. But, there are times to use each, and places where one form may excel where another may fail. Here are some strategies and techniques, complete with examples, of how to use them in your visual ad campaigns.

Images

By far, images are the most used visuals in advertising. They’re easy to create, easy to consume, and with the right design and strategy, they can steal attention and communicate value propositions in a blink. Here are a few ways to use them in your visual ad campaign:

Show an after photo

When it comes to conveying the benefit of your offer, it’s almost always more powerful to show than tell. That’s when hero images come into play.

Hero images are a specific class of image that you might consider an “after” photo. As in, what does the visitor’s life look like after claiming your offer?

If your product saves time, a hero shot might show them out doing something enjoyable with all the time they saved. If it improves their appearance, maybe through clothing or grooming service, an ad might depict a well-dressed, well-groomed, popular person at a social gathering.

Hero images help the consumer envision themselves as the benefittor of your product or service. They are the hero in their own story. They are Popeye, you are spinach. They are Clark Kent, you are a phone booth.

Alternatively, the hero shot can position the product as the hero. In this case, you would see the product more directly involved in saving the day. For example, you sell retractable awnings. The benefit of these is you can enjoy yourself outdoors on a hot day without baking in direct sun. In a hero shot like this, you might show a family enjoying the outdoors on a bright day under an awning, smiling, sipping lemonade. The heroic deed of the product is saving the family from the searing sun.

Both hero shots are highly effective, and a version can be used for all products and services. Here is another example from Casper:

Show a before photo

While emphasizing the benefits if your offer is always a good idea, sometimes it can be even more powerful to push your prospects’ pain points. Take collaboration software, for instance.

It might be effective to emphasize the long, back-and-forth email chains, useless meetings, annoying games of phone tag, to remind your prospect why they are considering your offer.

Again, while this isn’t recommended for every brand and offer, sometimes conjuring the hassle of life without your product can drive your prospect to action.

Make it easier to understand your concept

As opposed to a written representation of a concept, icons are graphic. In advertising, icons are especially useful for two reasons. The first is that people don’t like to read lengthy marketing content. Icons can break up long blocks of text to make it easier to consume. Here’s an example from Nectar:

The second reason is that people can consume images more easily than text. I can describe a square to you, or I can show you one. I can write “Mobile Navigation Menu,” or I can show you a hamburger icon. I can write “Search Bar,” or I can offer a button with a magnifying glass to represent it.

In all cases, the image is easier to consume.

Show them everything they need to know

While most people do prefer browsing online, a large portion of consumers still prefer to purchase in-store. And there’s a pretty clear reason for this:

Shopping online, you don’t get to feel the product, try it on, test it out. And this puts digital advertisers at a great disadvantage. But product images can solve that problem.

Product images are actual images of the product that help viewers determine if it’s what they need. For furniture, this would mean images of all the angles of the piece, including people using them for points of reference.

Something similar works with clothing. Show people wearing the clothing from all angles. Show the clothing without someone in it. Show different colors.

This can even work for software, by showing an image of the interface to prove, say, robustness, or ease of use. Here, it works for Socket Shelf, a tool that charges electronics while maximizing counter space:

Give your statistics some context on the post-ad click page

Like benefits are better shown than told, the same goes for statistics. When you have powerful numbers on your side, infographics are great for displaying them.

Infographics take mundane statistics and put them in an easily digestible form, like a bar graph or a pie chart, for example, to make them easier to understand and more likely to be consumed.

They can also help frame your product or service in a way that proves how much more effective they are than the competition. Take this infographic from Five9:

Show them they can trust you

Many times, conversion has less to do with your product or service and much more to do with trust. Do your prospects trust you? With badges, you can increase the likelihood they do.

Badges are small, recognizable images that make the visitor more comfortable with converting. There are three different types:

• Security badges: Security badges are ones that convey your prospects’ site and money are safe. These can be as basic as small lock icons, conveying the site is secure, or they can be satisfaction guarantee badges, which let visitors know they can get their money back if they’re not satisfied with the product.
• Trust badges: Trust badges make a business seem more trustworthy through logos of recognizable brands like the Better Business Bureau, or Google’s Certified Partner program. These let visitors know that they have support from a reputable company.
• Authority badges: Authority badges are similar to trust badges, in that they can be logos from reputable companies. However, they’re less like certifications from the BBB, and more like logos of clients served. Many people can become Google ad partners, but not as many can say they have provided a service to Google. That’s the difference. These badges can also be ones that say “Award-Winner” or “As seen in the New York Times.” They can even be infographics that tout particular statistics, like an advertising agency might tout revenue earned for clients, or clients served, or the number of years in business. These all add authority, and in turn, make the conversion more likely. Here’s an example from Dock & Bay.

Video

While images are great for grabbing attention and conveying information quickly, videos can do that and then some. Motion is perhaps the best way to snap a user out of scrolling, and even a short video can convey much more in-depth information. Here are a few ways to use it.

Prove that your service is what you claim

When your company is new, and especially when it relies on a figurehead, you need to be able to prove it can do what you claim. Think a writing course from a “World-Class Copywriter” you might get an ad for in your inbox. So, what makes this writer “World-Class”?

This is what an introductory video can help prove.

An introductory video is often longer than your standard advertising video because it involves some in-depth information, like why the company was founded, why it’s trustworthy, what
authority it has, etc. It usually features a high-ranking company employee, who will cover these topics one by one. When done well, these videos leave prospects feeling as though they can trust the brand behind them, despite their lack of recognition.

Simplify your service

A major problem suffered by new companies or whose services are highly complicated is the barrier to understanding how it all works, and how it translates to a benefit to the prospect.

To solve these problems with text, it would take pages. To solve them with images would be impractical. This is why explainer videos are so valuable.

You’ll see this visual advertising technique very often now, especially in the startup sphere where there are lots of new faces every day, and increasingly complex services that are firsts-of-their-kind.

These videos are often less than two minutes and explained so simply that anyone can understand them. To add to their simplicity, they also often contain cartoonish animations that carry out the script of the video.

The most famous explainer video comes from Dropbox, which raised $48,000,000 for the company after it came out.

Get your clients to advertise for you

As powerful as advertising can be, it’s not nearly as powerful as word of mouth. When it comes to making purchasing decisions, most people go to their friends and family. And that’s because they’re impartial in the matter. Every business will claim it’s the best for you, even if it’s not. Your friends and family, however, will tell you the truth.

This is the power video testimonials harness. These are short videos that focus on a particular customer and how you solved their problem, from the perspective of the customer, with an emphasis on results.

These are even more powerful than regular testimonials since they are much more believable than a simple stock-photo-looking image accompanied by a first name.

Offer examples of your success

Testimonials can work wonders, but many customers will want to know more than results. How did you accomplish what you did? What is your process like? What methods did you use to solve the problem?

This is what a video case study can solve. Video case studies are similar to video testimonials in that they focus on a particular customer and how you served them, but instead of a focus on results, this focuses on process. As such, these videos are usually longer because they go more in-depth, and involve more parties than just the customer — like teams from your business who worked with them.

Take your hero shot to another level

Hero shots can make the prospect or the product the hero, but they both suffer and benefit from their static nature. They can be more widely used in marketing collateral because they’re simple images. However, they are not as demonstrative as videos.

To take your hero shot to another level, you can create a product demo, which will show how your customers use your product, and how they benefit from it, too. These can be short for the pre-click stage, or longer for landing pages. Either way, they will show specific shots of your product in use. This can also double as a kind of explainer video coupled with a product shot that gives visitors all they need to know about using the product.

Text

When we think of visuals, we think of images and videos. However, the way text appears on a page greatly affects how we consume it. Here are a few ways to improve what you say with the way you say it.

Build brand recognition

It’s likely that when you see something written in red Spencerian script, you will always think Coca-Cola:

The same can be said of the typeface used in Nike’s logo, or the Got Milk campaigns:

These are examples of what happens when brand recognition is built over years of repetition. We’ve seen them so many times, in so many high-visibility places, that these fonts seem to belong to the businesses they represent.

This is a win for the advertiser, as recognition is a powerful driver of brand equity. Decorative fonts like these are great for expressing creative individuality in logos and campaign headlines. So if you’re looking to make a lasting impression, or to stand out from the crowd, decorative font is the perfect choice for shorter copy.

Make reading easy

While decorative fonts can grab attention and bolster recall and individuality, they’re awful to read in body copy.

Imagine trying to read an entire web page or email written in Coca-Cola’s font. Pretty difficult, isn’t it?

In the pre-click stage, decorative fonts can grab attention. In the post-click stage, they can reinforce brand identity. But when it comes to any heavy reading, like you’d do in an email or on a landing page, decorative fonts should be out.

Instead, opt for clean and simple fonts with high readability. Use short sentences. Break up long paragraphs into small chunks, and use bullets when they’re appropriate. Here’s an example of what high readability looks like:

Get personal

Now that we’re constantly bombarded with advertising messages, it’s the personal ones that stand out. Sometimes you can add that personal touch with a handwriting font.

Handwriting fonts are exactly what they sound like: They appear to be handwriting. Most are easier to read than actual handwriting, but you’re not going to be using them to write anything long-form.

Mostly, handwriting fonts can be good for signatures, so long as they look realistic. They’re valuable at the end of an email or direct mail, even landing page copy, to give the impression that the signer stands behind the message of the ad. This can boost trust when your typical consumer feels like they’re getting messages from bots and salesmen all the time.

Web design

Visual advertising isn’t just about visuals on ads and landing pages; it’s also about how those pages look together, visually, as a whole. Especially after a user clicks through an ad, the right colors and arrangement can guide them toward conversion.

Be strategic with color

Color is one of your most valuable allies when it comes to grabbing attention in the pre-click stage. Bright, bold colors that contrast surroundings can keep your prospects from scrolling.

When most pages are white, it’s easy to pick a dominant color, like yellow or red, that will likely pop on the publisher’s page. If you know where your ad will be running, like on Facebook, for example, then you can create an ad that will contrast a blue and white environment.

Unlike in the pre-click stage, however, in the post-click stage, bright and bold colors shouldn’t be used so liberally.

Studies have shown that simpler is better when it comes to picking a conversion-centered color scheme. Three hues are an ideal number for guiding visitors toward your call-to-action button. Use the 60-30-10 rule to pick those colors:

• Dedicate 10% of one color on your page to the accent. This is the color you want to grab people’s attention. This is what you’ll color your CTA buttons in.
• Dedicate 30% of another color to the base. The color of this base will be determined by your accent color. What color does your accent stand out on the best?
• Dedicate 60% of another color on your page to the background. This should be something soft that won’t clash with your brand colors. For many, the best choice is white.

Using your brand colors or accent color as a starting point, you can create all kinds of effective schemes with monochromatic, complementary, and analogous colors. Together, they will help draw your visitor to the CTA button. Here’s an example of an ad that uses a bright color very different from the rest of the ad, to make the CTA button stand out:

Subtly guide visitors to conversion on the landing page

Like text on a web page is visual, so are all the elements around that text. And how those elements are arranged have a big impact on the way the viewer consumes the page.

For example: What if you came across a web page that aligned its text center? Or, what if you came across a form button like this one:

Most likely, you’d enter your information and accidentally hit “Reset” at the bottom, because you’re used to there being a “Submit” button there on all other websites.

While “Reset” buttons were more common in the web’s infancy, we’ve outgrown them, realizing that the risk of using them outweigh the rewards (hardly anyone will need to reset all form fields).

Similarly, centered text works for headlines, but not body copy. Longer reading needs to start at the left margin.

We take these conventions for granted because they’re primarily followed by most web designers. Good design is hardly noticed, but it’s always easy to consume.

This brings us to maybe the most valuable (and often overlooked) visual advertising convention for designers of landing pages: the visual hierarchy.

Visual hierarchy refers to the arrangement of elements on a web page in such a way that it subtly directs attention, guiding your visitors toward the page’s goal. On a landing page, that goal is conversion.

To accomplish that goal, you have to get your visitors from your headline to the CTA button. Here are some design principles you should know to be able to do it.

• Size: Bigger = more important. Smaller = less important.
• Weight: Darker = more important. Lighter = less important.
• Color: More contrast = more important. Less contrast = less important.
• Density: Several elements packed together = more attention. Spread out elements = less attention. (This doesn’t mean you should pack all your elements into one small space).
• White space: Positive space = more important. White space = less important.

Together, you can use these to design a page that subtly guides your visitor to conversion. Here are a few examples:

• Size: Headlines should be bigger, forms should take up space, important images should also be bigger.
• Weight: Headlines and subheaders can be bold (do not have to be), important body copy, like benefits, should be darker than surrounding body copy.
• Color: Background should be lighter, secondary elements like forms and logos should be brighter or darker to create contrast, and there should be most contrast between the call-to-action button and the rest of the elements to make it the most attention-grabbing element.
• Density: Bullets can pull benefits out of densely packed body copy, CTA buttons should have no other content around them to draw attention to that one element.
• White space: Your page shouldn’t be all white space, but it should offer enough white space for visitors to read comfortably and consume each element independently of the others without confusion.

Get more about visual advertising

The prevalence of visual advertising is only growing, and that’s true of the platforms you can execute it on, too. Marketers have their hands full when it comes to running visual ad campaigns. With these techniques, create a more effective campaign faster. To speed things up even more, learn the ad specs of every platform’s formats with the Instapage Digital Advertising Reference Guide.