The perfect landing page

You may have heard it called ‘landing page’ or ‘sales page’ or even ‘squeeze page’ (that one is a little weird) but essentially it comes down to the same thing: getting the site visitor to exchange something of value in return for your product.

It’s the art of selling on your website and you need to learn how to do it!

Here’s a few things to bear in mind when you design a landing page for your website:

Eliminate all links and distractions that don’t lead to whatever path you want your visitor to take. That means no suggested products, no alternative buttons, hell, even no menu at the top or bottom of the page. Image your site visitor is completely drunk at the time of visiting your website. You need to take them by the hand and take them to the exit without getting lost in a blind alley somewhere.

Make the top 20% of the page a sales pitch in itself. About 60% of your site visitors will never see anything that follows after it. Whatever is above the fold (before you have to scroll down) has to attract attention, explain what the product is and what problem it solves.

Don’t put text in columns. No one reads two columns online. They read one or the other and keep scrolling down.

Use headers to make sure the text is scannable. Again, most people don’t really read online, they just scan the text. Make it easy for them.

Include social proof like testimonials, press mentions or reviews. Humans need to know others also want this thing they’re about to buy and they enjoyed it.

FAQs is often what closes the deal on a sales page. If your visitor scrolled to the bottom of the page, is still engaged and interested, but has a niggling worry about your product they may decide to avoid the risk and simply leave. Make sure you pre-answer any questions they may have. Bonus points if you also make it easy for them to ask more questions without navigating away (that’s why you want a chat on your site).

Do you have any more questions about landing pages? Leave me a comment below and I’ll happily answer all of them!

Is Wix good for online store?

First of all, full disclosure: I have never been a fan of Wix as a content management system. What I dislike about it is the false promises it makes to people wanting to start their online business. Its adverts (which are EVERYWHERE) will lead you to believe that you can start a website for next to nothing, without the help of a designer and make money from it right away.

Well, 2 of those things are nearly true.

First of all, Wix is by far not the cheapest option to build a website. 100% of the people I spoke to who were planning to build their website on Wix believed that it was free. Is that true? Well, kinda… It’s free if you don’t plan on using it as a business website. If you want to use your own domain name (e.g. www.yourname.com), have your logo on the site or to be able to do pretty much anything with your website – you do have to pay.

Wix hidden charges

And here’s where Wix really annoys me. Their pricing structure is intentionally complex and misleading. Firstly, their advertised prices relate to annual plans. If you want to pay for your website monthly (you know, to keep your cost down or to see if this business is worth committing to for a year) – it will cost you at least 30% more. Secondly, they offer nine different plans and tiers, making it really hard to work out what level of service you actually need.

And thirdly – what I find grossly unfair about Wix – is the number of hidden charges and extra payments you really need, if you want to run a proper business website, makes it probably one of the most expensive website builders in the market.

To compare, extra features, which on Wix are only available with additional apps (mostly paid ones) – are included for free with WordPress, Squarespace or Shopify. We’re talking decent form builders, SEO optimisation and most of the standard ecommerce features, which are pretty basic things for any website worth the binary code it’s written on.

​Wix is not a DIY tool

And on to my second reason why I hate Wix – their promise of a stunning website which anyone can create without the help of a web designer. I know what you’re thinking – I’m a designer so of course I’d say you have to hire a designer to have a good website.

But that’s not where I’m coming from at all.

I have spoken to many people who couldn’t afford my services and I always recommend Squarespace over Wix if they wanted to design their own website.

And I have had many clients coming to me and asking me to improve their Wix websites – and I politely declined.

And I can tell you with complete certainty – I have never seen a good Wix website which was DIY-ed. I have seen countless horrible Wix sites which were beyond saving and I have seen some really pretty Wix sites, which were professionally designed (like the ones by my friend from Fresh Leaf Creative).

So – can you have a well designed Wix site? Probably, but you will have to hire someone to do it for you.

Is Wix good for an online store?

It’s hard to imagine what makes a truly successful ecommerce store if you’ve never set one up before. A store is a store, right? You just need to make your product pictures look pretty and have the ability to charge people money… If this is the way you look at ecommerce, Wix can indeed look like a decent option.

But there is so much more to a good online store than that.

Let me tell you about an online fashion boutique I worked with, set up on – you guessed it – Wix!

The owner built the site herself and was very pleased with it. She had a good eye for design, having designed her entire clothesline and the site was really quite attractive.

But it wasn’t making any money.

She didn’t understand where she was going wrong. The brand was doing really well on Instagram, the photos of her clothes were being shared, followers were in their thousands and everyone was saying they loved the product.

The worst part? She was already deep in debt and paying hefty Wix fees for a website which wasn’t bringing her any money.

Fortunately, I was able to convince her to ditch Wix and start a high end fashion online store on Shopify. I transferred her domain (so she kept her web address) and redirected all site visitors to her new fully optimised online fashion boutique.

What happened next was pure ecommerce magic.

Her online conversion rates went up immediately. Not only that, but her new email integration, which I created from scratch, started generating 40% of her revenue – that’s money which simply didn’t exist before in her business as she wasn’t using email other than for her monthly newsletter.

Both her old online store and the new one were using the same images, her advertising didn’t change – but the results were like night and day.

Was the move worth it? You betcha!

So, are you thinking of starting an online store with Wix?

Essentially, Wix is a website builder, with the ecommerce function added to it. It wasn’t created for selling online and will never be as good as the other systems out there which were created specifically with ecommerce in mind.

Having said that, there may be cases where a online store on Wix is in fact all you need – if you’re not planning to grow for example, or just want to sell a digital product on your existing Wix site. It can work well and the drag and drop builder is as easy as it gets.

But – if you are serious about selling online and want this thing to actually make you money – start as you mean to go on and get yourself a good ecommerce store on WordPress or Shopify.

I created a free eBook to let you quickly check if you’re ready to open your online store.

Drop your email here and I’ll send it to you!

Have you enjoyed this post? Don’t forget to pin it to your Instagram Ecommerce board!

If you’re making a jump into the world of ecommerce for the first time, your head must be spinning from all the options out there. It’s brave enough moving away from Etsy or Ebay or wherever else you might have sold your products up till now – now it’s time to make some decisions!

The first choice you’ll have to face before opening the doors to your online store is which ecommerce platform to go with.

There are many factors you’ll want to consider:

• Ease of use
• Price
• SEO
• Customisation options
• Whether you have a blog or not
• Scalability
• And others, that will be particular to your business

In my work at Speedbird Media I help entrepreneurs start and grow their ecommerce businesses – from building their websites to growing their traffic and sales. I have helped them deal with the issues which are common with any new store and have seen how the choice of ecommerce platform makes or breaks them.

So I’m here to help you avoid some costly mistakes!

Let me start with the ecommerce platforms I definitely do NOT recommend.. I won’t go into detail because I know both of them have many fans but please, save yourself some time and don’t build your product-based business on Squarespace or Wix.

Neither of those platfoms was designed for ecommerce, and although it might be tempting to go with the cheap and seemingly easy option, resist. Narrow down your choice to platforms which are actually created for selling online. That leaves you with three main runners:

• Woocommerce
• Shopify
• Big Commerce

Woocommerce

If you already have an existing WordPress website or blog running, and now want to be able to sell straight from your site – Woocommerce is your best bet.

I love working with Woocommerce because – like WordPress itself – it has literally no limits. Any functionality or design can be achieved with either a plugin or some tweaks and sky is the limit in terms what the store should look like or what it should do. The downside is – you will probably need a developer to set it all up if you’re not particularly techy.

To make Woocommerce work you will need to connect it with a payment gateway like Paypal or Stripe and they will take a cut out of your every transaction. On the plus side, though – Woocommerce itself is completely free.

Shopify

You can – and many people do – set up a Shopify store and have it up and running in one weekend. It is very easy to operate and you definitely don’t need a degree in IT to do it. Shopify was created for selling online and is currently the market leader for all ecommerce.

Shopify handles everything for you – hosting, SSL certificate, payment gateway and it’s super easy to set it all up. What it doesn’t do out of the box can usually be achieved with an additional app. But this is what really annoys me about Shopify – if you want it to do anything other than the absolute basics (and you’re going to want to, if you’re in the ecommerce business to actually make money) – you will have to get some apps. And those cost extra.

When the basic Shopify monthly subscription costs $29, if you add several apps which are all needed, your cost will could easily go up to closer to $60 a month.

There are about 50 templates to choose from and most of them are nice looking and with good UX. But if you want to make the design look a little more unique (and not like a template), then you’ll have to play with code. And not just any code, it’s Shopify’s unique Liquid code and it’s not for the faint hearted.

Big Commerce

Shopify and Big Commerce are actually very similar in all of their capabilities and they also have very similar pricing. So, if you’re choosing between these two, the decision definitely shouldn’t be based on cost. Big Commerce has better SEO and offers a lot of the functions which Shopify can only do with an app, straight out of the box.

But – it is much more complex to set up and run because it is created for – as the name suggests – BIG shops. If you have a store with a lot of SKU’s, Big Commerce might be your best option. If you’re only starting out or planning to operate via dropshipping, I would recommend you stick with Shopify.

Which one is the best out of those three? My favourite is Shopify and I would recommend it to most business owners wanting to open a product-based online store.

Do you already run an ecommerce business? Which ecommerce platform have you gone with and would you recommend it?