When you’re a start-up or an enterprise company that has an affiliate program or is looking to develop one, you’ll have one common goal with your affiliate partners: creating revenue.
Sales only happen when your partner can send you quality traffic, you’ve got an enticing offer, and your creative materials convert. Once you’ve got them to your landing page, it’s got to be strong enough to get them to take that final step.
How to Set up an e-Commerce Landing Page
Your landing page is the bridge between an affiliate’s site and making a sale. The more effective it is at making a sale, the happier everyone will be. Here are the top affiliate marketing tips for creating and managing your landing pages.
1. Clear Alignment With Ads or Links
When people click on a link from an affiliate or an ad, make sure the content is clearly aligned with the source. You shouldn’t be sending people to your home page or elsewhere on your site. You want them to go directly to the landing page you’ve crafted to get them to act.
If your ad or affiliate is sending you traffic to buy red women’s shoes, don’t send them to the catalog of your products. Send them to the page featuring red women’s shoes. Use similar language, imagery, and design so when they arrive on your landing page, they know they are in the right place instantly and have a visual representation of your product or service.
This consistency helps with establishing trust — part of our next affiliate marketing strategy.
2. Be Transparent and Trustworthy
People can be wary of navigating away from another website. Make sure you give prominence to your name and brand. Visitors need to know who you are, what you offer, and what you’ll provide.
Transparency builds trust — especially if you’re an established brand.
Displaying the logos of payment gateways such as Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal also creates a feeling of security. Including third-party trust, seals can also help, such as BBB Accredited Business or transaction security seals.
Another way to make visitors feel confident buying is to include links to privacy policies on how you handle customer data or terms and conditions. While few will click on them, it shows that you’re being transparent.
3. Keep It Simple
One common mistake that marketers make is to fold landing pages into their website as if it were any other page. It’s not. Your landing page has one goal: Get that conversion!
Keep things simple. You don’t want to confuse people or make them work to find the information you want them to see. You want them focused on your offer.
Here are some things to avoid:
- Huge blocks of text
- Multiple offers on one page
- Navigation that may encourage them to click elsewhere
- Outbound links
While fewer than one in five landing pages is free of navigation, studies have shown that removing hamburger menus and other navigation bars can lift conversion rates of between 2% and 28%.
When it comes to filling out forms, less is better. Only ask for the information you need. The more forms someone has to fill out, the less likely they will be to complete it. People tend to skim the page, so make sure everything you include has a purpose. This is not the place to add long product descriptions or fluff. Designs should support the central theme — your single purpose. You want people to focus on the message first and foremost.
Next, let’s explore the right format for landing pages.
4. Format for Conversions
While there’s no one-size-fits-all formula, some things do tend to work better than others. When it comes to formatting, there are several key things you need:
- A CTA that tells them what to do. Example: Buy Now
- A headline that tells people exactly what they’ll get. Example: Designer Fashions at Discount Prices
- An offer that’s easy to understand. Example: 25% off your first purchase
Briefly highlight benefits and features and add social proof, such as:
- Customer reviews
- Endorsements
- Testimonials
For example, 500 five-star reviews send a powerful message. Others have made the decision, and it worked out just fine. This helps mitigate risk for potential buyers. Consumers will think: “There’s safety in numbers, right?”
5. Make Your Call to Action Stand Out
Ask for the sale! Make it easy for them to find your “Buy It Now” button. If they have to hunt for your call-to-action (CTA) or find a link buried in a sea of text, they’re less likely to convert. Make sure your CTA is near the top of the page — above the “digital fold.”
Use active voice for buttons and CTAs, like so:
- Add to Cart
- Buy Now
- Grab Your 10% Discount
- Order Today
- Sign Up Today
Create urgency or scarcity when appropriate. You might not get another chance to make the sale once they leave the page. Letting people know there are only a few left in stock can trigger people’s Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). The same applies to time-based scarcity. If there’s a deadline on an offer, make sure you point it out.
Whether you’re asking them to buy now, or take some other action, make it clear what you want from them and how to do it. Grab a colleague and have them look at any landing page you create.
If someone can’t point to the CTA in 2–3 seconds, you probably need to rethink how you create your e-commerce landing pages as part of your affiliate marketing strategy. You’ll also want to make sure you check how it looks on mobile.
6. Create for Mobile
Landing pages need to be formatted, so it shows up correctly on mobile. While this sounds so basic, as many as half of all landing pages aren’t created for mobile display. You can use responsive pages, but a better practice is to design mobile-first. Long headlines and text can push your CTA off the screen. Don’t make people have to scroll to make a purchase. Make it easy.
For example: If people have to make product selections, choices, or fill out forms, make it as easy as possible. Use checkboxes or radio buttons rather than forcing someone to type. Limit customer information to the bare minimum.
Your landing pages also must load quickly. 53% of visitors will leave a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Even a one-second delay from a slow loading page can decrease conversions by as much as 7%.
How important is mobile today? Two-third of clicks for search ads and 61% of clicks on organic search results are now coming from mobile. If someone’s coming from one of your affiliate sites to your landing page, there’s a pretty good likelihood they’re using a mobile device. When designing landing pages today, they must always be optimized for mobile traffic.
7. Measure and Optimize
While e-commerce and SaaS platform sellers dream of creating a steady flow of customers from their affiliate marketing programs by putting them on automatic pilot, the best performing landing pages are always being optimized.
You should always be A/B testing images, headlines, and offers to find the optimal combination that works. There’s virtually no limit to what you can test. You’d want to know:
- Do you know which combination of text, pictures, and offers performs best?
- Does a picture of a happy customer holding your product with their first name and a one-line quote lead to more conversions?
- Does a red CTA button perform better than a blue one?
The answers to these questions can make a big difference in your affiliate marketing strategy. For example: If you knew that an 18% discount performed better than 20% off, you could increase conversions and save money. If you knew that “Only 3 Remaining” converted better than “Buy Now,” you’d want to make the change.
With the right marketing automation tools, this is easy to do and will improve your conversion rates by serving the best-performing landing pages to the right customer.
Manage performance carefully. Conversation rates are a combination of the traffic, your creative materials, and the effectiveness of your landing page. If you see a landing page that gets a lot of activity but low conversion rates, it’s time to take another look.
The better you measure and optimize, the better your conversions will be. It will also improve the quality of your relationship with your affiliate partners.
8. Building Strong Relationships with Partners
Building great relationships with affiliates can help you hit your goals faster. The best way to do that is to convert referrals so you can both profit. A landing page that converts is one of the best ways to strengthen that relationship.
Now that you know how to set up an e-commerce landing page consider creating several custom landing pages with special offers that are only available for a certain affiliate’s audience. An exclusive offer tailored to the visitors is more likely to get shared more often.
How to Make Affiliate Programs Easy to Manage
For SaaS companies and e-commerce sellers, creating an affiliate program is easy and can pay long-term dividends.
LeadDyno has everything you need to launch and grow your affiliate program. Get your affiliate program up and running in just a few minutes, track performance, and automate and grow your sales. Selling through affiliates can generate incremental revenue and reduce your cost of customer acquisition.
