How to Create Emotion on Your Landing Page

The Wall Street Journal recently reported a study that showed emotion, more than logic, drives the decision-making process. In Internet marketing, your landing page is the place where your website elicits emotion and converts visitors into customers. How do you design a landing page that provokes an emotional response that drives conversions? Here are four tips to help you create actionable emotions on your landing page.

Understand Your Buyer

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Before you can design a landing page that appeals to your customers’ emotions, you need to know exactly who they are. Look at the demographics of the people who buy your products and services. To drill down, consider using tools like WebEngage.com to conduct surveys about your visitors. Use the demographic and survey data to create one or more buyer personas for your products, and become intimate with them. Understanding who visits your site and who buys your products is an essential first step to creating a landing page that engages visitors and leads to conversions.

Determine the Mood of Your Landing Page

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Before you can employ elements like font, color, text, and graphics, you must decide what emotions you want to elicit in your website visitors. Knowing your buyer persona, which emotion is the best hook? Will joy and pleasure appeal to your visitors, or is shock and surprise the best way to engage them? Once you’ve determined the mood and tone, you can organize all the landing page elements to reinforce the feelings that will drive conversions in your visitors.

Design for the Three Levels of Engagement

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Visitors who arrive on your landing page experience three levels of engagement. On the visceral, or most basic level, they absorb and respond to stimuli based on color, font, and visual hierarchy. The second, or behavioral level, addresses the functionality of your landing page. Is the page arranged so that the desired action is obvious and simple for visitors to complete? Does the text clearly explain the value proposition, and encourage action? Finally, visitors are engaged on a reflective level. Does the call to action make sense? Can a visitor logically appreciate the benefit expressed on the page?

Use Visual Components to Reinforce Value Propositions

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Color and typography subconsciously drive the message of your landing page. Women typically respond positively to blue, purple, and orange, while men usually respond to green, black and brown. Colors that incite strong emotions, and should be used sparingly, include red (passion, danger, action), and yellow (cheerfulness, optimism, caution). Typography also reinforces the message. If the text is too small or hard to read, or is in a font that doesn’t support visual hierarchy, the emotional connection to your landing page is lost.

Your website is the vehicle that lets you interact with your customers and potential customers. When visitors reach your landing page, you have a very small window of time to connect with them emotionally and nudge them to take action. Creating an emotional connection on your landing page that results in conversions is an essential building block in your marketing campaign.

By Jon Correll