Do You REALLY Know What Your Customers Want?

When you’re creating a landing page, you know what you want to tell your visitors. When people come to your landing page, it is assumed that they are looking for your service, product, or message. However, are you sure that you’re offering exactly what they’re looking for?

It’s Not About You

Image via Flickr by Nana

You’re selling a product or service, but you need to realize that to do this, you can’t be thinking about yourself. Sure, you want sales, but these sales cannot be the only thing you focus on. Visitors to your landing page don’t care about you or the sales that you want. Instead, they are thinking about themselves. What do they need? How will the product on the page help them?

Because you’re trying to appeal to the customer, you need to be thinking about them as well. Don’t worry about what you want and need. Try to step into the customer’s shoes and figure out what they need. This will help give you a more succinct page that interests the visitor.

Find Out What They Need

Image via Flickr by Bright Planet

The best way to entice customers is to truly find out what they need. In many cases the visitor to your site has a problem that they think your product can fix. However, you need to show them that this is the case. What are their problems? How are you the solution? There are many ways you can find out from customers what they need and why:

• Conduct a survey
• Ask a focus group
• Request feedback after purchase
• Interact with customers through social media

Each of these gives you more insight into the problems your customer is facing. The more you understand these problems, the more you will be able to address them on your landing page.

Check Your Analytics

One way to find out what your customers are looking for is by checking your analytics. This helps you create a customer profile. However, it also helps you understand exactly what customers are looking for when they come to your site. You’re able to view the keywords that brought visitors to your landing page, allowing you to better understand them.

If someone is looking for “health information for candy” they may not be considering the purchase of candy. If you have a number of visitors coming to your landing page with that search, you may want to consider changing your landing page to reflect this. Offer the health information, then you can also include suggestions for the customer. If you simply offer the sale, without any of the information they’re looking for, people are likely to bounce off your site.

Differing Landing Pages

Image via Flickr by David F. Flanders

One thing you’ll want to consider, especially if you find that you have a number of problems to solve for visitors, is different landing pages. You can create landing pages that are targeted toward varying problems. This allows you to have the largest number of visitors who actually stay interested in what you’re offering them.

Someone who is interested in the health benefits or problems that candy offers is going to want different information than someone who is looking for Christmas candy for their children. However, you can easily serve both types of customers. You simply need to direct each of these to a different landing page.

Update Your Meta Information

Image via Flickr by dancetechtv

Another great way to ensure that you’re getting visitors that are actually interested in the solution you have to offer is to make sure that your meta information is up to date. There are many things that you should consider with this, including keywords, description, title, and even localization.

If you have a local store, you’ll be able to input this information in the localization. Are your customers looking for a quick fix? If so, they’re less likely to shop with you and have something delivered a few days later, if they can instead find someone local. However, if you have localization information, you’re able to get customers who need you now.

Test Varying Copy

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While you may have what you need to satisfy your visitors’ needs, you may simply be wording it wrong. When people browse websites, they skim the text. They’re looking for keywords that let them know what you offer and how it will fix their problem. Because of this, it’s important to test out a few different types of copy.

When testing, you may find that bullet points work best for your visitors. In other cases, strong heading and subheadings work best. The biggest thing here is that you need to find out what works for the audience you’re targeting. Each product or service is going to need something a little different, and the best way to find out is to test.

Get Feedback

Image via Flickr by US Embassy Canada

While your testing, and afterward, make sure you get feedback from your visitors. Ask them to fill out a quick survey or check in on social media. This will let you know if you’re moving in the right direction. When changing your website to better fit your customers’ needs, it’s crucial that you spend the time to make sure you’re actually doing that.

If you feel you’re helping customers by giving them a solution, but you’re moving in the wrong direction, it’s going to show with a lack of conversions. Making a sidestep, rather than moving backward, probably won’t change the number of conversions significantly. It will instead change the customer base. When you follow up, you’re able to get a better picture of whether or not you’re offering the right solution.

When you’re getting conversions on your landing page, it’s obvious that you’re helping someone. However, you can increase your conversions by ensuring that you’re offering the solution to a number of problems that your visitors are actually facing. Think about what your customers need, rather than what you need, and your conversions will increase.

By Jon Correll