Landing Pages and the Importance of Selling a Lifestyle

Ian Lurie over at Conversation Marketing put up a great post yesterday about optimising landing pages to improve conversions. In his post he talks about the "hero shot" or an image on your page that captures the visitor's attention and defines your product or brand.

This got me thinking about not just how important the quality of the images on a website are but how important it is to match the text to the images to convey an overall tone that helps drive the visitor to make a purchase.

Over and over again we see websites that focus entirely on talking about a company's history or some vague service pledge without really selling what the company can do for the visitor. Your website isn't about you, however, it's about selling a lifestyle to your visitor. The main goal of your site should be to make visitors who land on your pages want your product or service so badly that they place an order on the spot.

For example, the Godiva Chocolates page for their pecan truffles has the following image:

The image, which shows tantalising pictures of these chocolates uses the accompanying text of:

"Get sentimental this season with the home-baked, nostalgia-infused flavors of pecan pie. Savor the rich, smooth milk chocolate shell, and inside, the luscious filling of roasted pecans and caramelized brown sugar - guaranteed to evoke sweet memories."

Between the lush image and the text the product page evokes both the tastes and smells of home cooking and the indulgence of really high quality chocolate. This leads the visitor not only to see the chocolates but also to imagine the taste and the smell. I don't like nuts and I certainly wouldn't normally spend £22 on a box of chocolates, but I'm currently salivating and looking for my credit card!

This really highlights the importance of how the images you choose for every product on your site need to capture the tone you want to set for your brand and how the text you use to describe them needs to be not just original, but also to sell the lifestyle conveyed by those products.