Landing pages are like YouTube Shorts
You watch for 2-3 seconds, if you like it, you stay and watch till the end,
else you move to the next one
Today, I will share with you my learnings from my research on: ‘How to build a landing page that explains and converts’
Before that, a bit of backstory: I am currently building a product for developers,
It’ll be a combination of a code boilerplate, a resource sheet, notion template & ai prompts to help devs build and launch instantly
Now, the problem: While the product was still under work, I built the website in the meantime,
And sent it to some friends, as well posted it on a few subreddits for reviews
And everyone had the same response - What are you selling? We’re confused
I couldn’t even explain what the product was, how could I sell?
In this age of information and opportunity, it would have been foolish to not look for a solution.
I studied, researched and observed for days to find the solution, the framework and the words!
Sorry for boring you, here it begins:
The landing page has 2 parts: above the fold and below the fold.
Above the fold: This is the part where the viewers will glance without scrolling
Below the fold: Everything after the first section and visible via scroll is covered here
With the average attention span nowadays, an average viewer will spend 2-3 seconds on your ‘above the fold’ section before considering to scroll or moving away
Hence, the above fold section should be created carefully as it will make or break your business
You can have the best product, the best copywriting, the best design under the fold, but if the customer goes back after looking at the above fold section, you lose
During my research, I found that the above fold section must contain 5 elements:
- Title
- Subtitle
- Visual ( optional )
- Proof
- CTA
Visual is optional here because majority of traffic is mobile based, and to fit 5 elements above fold would create chaos
➝ Writing a Title that explains
This is the first thing your users will read, so you better put some time into writing it. Make sure you make it simple to explain clearly.
If your product is unique, your title can be simply what you do such as ‘Energy bars for horses’ and if its not unique, well write hooks, here’s how:
Combine the customer’s problem with the value ( feature ) that you provide
In my case, the problem of the customer is that they think that building and launching must be a ton of work that takes weeks
My value is that I can help them launch their product instantly
The title becomes: Launch your SaaS in the next 30 minutes ( countdown timer )
Another example:
Value: Ace the SAT
Objection: Sounds like a lot of time commitment daily
Title: Ace the SAT with just 10 minutes of studying per day
➝ Writing a Subtitle that explains, more
Introduce the product here. Explain in context with the title.
Pro tip: Do not care about how it looks or if it seems too long, its fine till 20 words, it should clearly explain what you offer
my subtitle: Code Boilerplate, resource sheet and templates to turn developers into founders and help them launch instantly
➝ Visual
Time to show your product, visuals are super powerful, and if you’re able to show the product in action, you’ll be winning son
Visual can be shown beside the text on a laptop screen and below the text on a mobile screen, but that’s optional
➝ Social Proof
A small testimonial above fold can help establishing trust in your product. My social proof is a small ribbon with a person’s picture his testimonial - “Turns projects into products”
➝ CTA
This is just a button text that tells the viewer to take some action. You can even battle out any doubts that you feel a user might have before scrolling
My CTA is “Launch your idea”
You can battle doubts with “Start Free! No CC required”
Well, that is everything above fold!
That should be enough to make the customer stay, but to make them buy, would demand a lot more effort
I will soon be posting the below fold guide too, with 2 more guides on landing page copywriting
You can check my profile to see what I’m building
In case you wish to see how my above fold looks like, you can check it here
Hope I can help you turn your side project into a product. Cheers.
Great topic. Good article. To make it even better, consider adding screenshots of effective and not effective landing pages. Or even start with some good looking landing page as an example and step by step improve it with explanation until it becomes “perfect”. It will be very interesting to compare the screenshots before and after.
Get rid of the timer.
Make a video testimonial of how some developer created his SaaS in 30 minutes with your product. Get some good looking guy from fiverr to make the video.
Make it real… make me feel like I can do it too.
Gonna do this Thanks for the input
A video of a dev actually launching In 30 mins could be considered
It’s ironic that you say that “Landing pages are like YouTube Shorts You watch for 2-3 seconds, if you like it, you stay and watch till the end, else you move to the next one”
And then proceed to write a wall of text.
In regards your landing page screenshot that you shared, I have a few small problems with that.
Firstly, that “Press 1 anytime to buy” is just so weird. The common way to achieve this is just to have the Buy button on the top navbar and have it always show at the top of the current browser viewport.
Imagine you want to add a newsletter subscription option and someone wants to enter their email address containing “1” and they get redirected to the buy page.
Among a ton of other potential issue. Just have a buy button, it’s simple and it works.
I also find your main pitch a bit odd. Launch my SaaS in 29 minutes and 57 seconds? What is that? A random number that you just came up, or a countdown timer? Either case, I don’t like that idea at all. People are not dumb, if that’s a countdown timer, literally everyone knows that after the 29 minutes are up, your website is still offering to sell your product, probably at the same price, too. Fake countdown timers are so 2004.
Also not a big fan on gray on gray on gray coloring of those 29 minutes and 57 seconds boxes.
First things first, how does writing a wall of text work with my point that if you like it you stay. It was about the hook and capturing attention
You read till the end, so it seems it worked fine
Valid point for the press 1 to buy, its a hotkey component I offer, will remove it, thanks for noting that one
as for the countdown, it seems it created a bit of confusion here, what I meant to say was: you can launch a SaaS in the next 30 mins, and the countdown begins
It’s not for the price
color scheme for the boxes seems like a you problem, so I won’t change that for now
Because you use YouTube Shorts as a metaphor but it doesn’t take 2-3s to read your wall of text. It’s an inappropriate metaphor and the deception discourages from reading til the end.
This varies a lot, it’s not an exact science like you make it look in this post. Depending on the product and your audience you need to adjust the design of the landing page accordingly.