Your homepage is most likely the first page a visitor lands on when visiting your site unless they clicked on an ad that directed them to a specific landing page. It is on this page they make the decision to either buy what you are selling or go back to business as usual. Evidently you have your work cut out for you because it takes approximately 5 secs to convince them to stay on your page and keep scrolling to find out if your offering is relevant to them. In the context of these articles, I will be describing the homepage as the landing page.
Note: Your homepage and landing page are not necessarily synonymous. The ‘landing page’ in the context of marketing, is a stand-alone page (with no website navigation) a visitor lands on after clicking on an ad or link from an email. It persuasively guides the user towards a specific action.
There’s a lot of poorly done landing pages out there and it’s not about how they look even though that is important but how terrible they are in communicating the value of their offering. Your website copy should be specific, bring clarity, and be impactful. Take out the noise and make your message as simple as possible. You want to grab their attention from the jump and use your copy to guide them towards taking an action.
“pretty websites don’t sell things, words sell things.”
You’d think that companies will put a lot more effort into this page but that is rarely the case. What you end up seeing is a bunch of half baked statements about how great the product features are and how incredible the company or product is. It puts too much emphasis on the product and not enough on the user.
Which is ironic because it really shouldn’t be about you. You’re building for the user so why would you use one of the most important pages on your website to talk about you? It’s about them, so make it about them.
“The number one rule of a high converting landing page is that it answers your customer’s questions, addresses their concerns and tells their story.”
Tearing down Paystack’s landing page is a great place to start as I’ll be pointing out what they did right and why. Hopefully, you get some insights from this and start to look at your own landing page more critically.
This is what you see above the fold and it covers enough for you to understand what Paystack does and what they can do for you as a business owner. For those who need more convincing, scrolling down page takes you through the unique benefits Paystack can offer your business, answers your questions/objections, and hopefully finally convinces you to take action. This is the whole point. This entire page is a build-up towards the action you need the visitor to take.
A. The headline simply articulates what the product does and is clear about the context — for Africa.
B. This section answers the question, ‘who is this for’. It is specifically for businesses in Africa. To do what? Get paid by anyone, anywhere in the world. This is their promise to business owners. By stating the outcome of using their product, they immediately make it easy for visitors to self-qualify if this could potentially be a fit for them.
C. A call to action right under especially for those who don’t need more convincing and are ready to take the next step.
D. When you’re big like Paystack, you have the numbers to back up your claims and you should use it to your advantage. Being used by over 60,000 businesses is nothing short of amazing especially when it includes such big brands like the ones displayed. Social proof is an incredible weapon you should leverage whenever you’re supporting your claims.
You say you’re NUMBER 1? Prove it.
E. They subtly let you know that indeed you can receive payments from anywhere in the world e.g Cairo, Egypt. This is already staring up interest for the business owner who is interested in receiving payments from all over the world.
A. They remind customers of the pain of doing business and how their product eases this by making it easier to receive payments. Features are a dime a dozen. Do you know what actually moves the needle? Stories. Appeal to their emotions. Explain the benefits of these features in the context of the user. Let them know what this feature is solving for them rather than what the feature does. A business owner will read that statement and nod their head in agreement because they get it and see themselves in the narrative being created. They’ve experienced this pain and now, Paystack is here to solve this.
B. This section keeps the customer in focus. As a business owner, you’re in business for your customers and their satisfaction should always be your priority. In this case, it means giving them the experience of making payments for your services with ease. They are already opening their wallets, you should not make them ‘work’ for it. Again, they make it about the user by aligning themselves with the intention of every business owner which is to make their customers happy because they know how important that is for them to keep coming back.
C. To show you just how powerful Paystack is, they break down the different options available for customers to make payments using Paystack. They claim of allowing customers to pay however they want is clearly backed up by listing all the methods available.
D. Not every claim needs to be explained away on the landing page because you’ll end up with an incredibly long page and nobody has time for that. Put a link to the relevant web page so they make the choice to read that information if they feel it’s important to them.
A. If they had just the headline without the supporting text that will have been problematic. From the beginning, they made the promise of EASE and this also includes explaining their solution in a simple way. The headline states the feature, the supporting text gives more context to the value of this feature.
B. They go on to break down this feature to its benefits. Instantly the visitor is able to have a clear idea of why this feature is relevant.
A. Here they go addressing the first valid objection a visitor can have. When it comes to personal data and their hard-earned money, they need to be confident it’s in good hands. Paystack addresses this by explaining the systems they have in place to manage this.
B. They go again explaining not just the feature but what it can do for you and why you should care. Any business owner will see the underlined phrases and be intrigued by how robust the product is.
A. They have numbers to show off and rightfully so. No business owner wants to be a guinea pig for any product involving their money. They need to know that other people are already using it and finding success.
B. They do a fantastic job here of breaking down the different use cases for their product. An entrepreneur is not going to use Paystack the same way a corporation will. They have different needs. This section allows the visitor find out more information based on their business type. They could have put this section in the footer but they recognize the need to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to find the information they need. Besides, what’s the guarantee the visitor will make it all the way there.
“Landing pages convert when they answer the visitors questions and give evidence to support those answers.”
A. Again, clear headline.
B. I love this supporting text because it is aspirational for any business. I like to believe that this is also how their target audience describe themselves. They reinforce this by using logos of recognizable brands that are indeed innovative and forward-looking.
A. Like I mentioned earlier, getting people to entrust their money to you or in this case to trust that you’ll be a credible conveyor of their money is no small feat in a low trust environment like the African continent. Here, they showcase very credible organizations that partner with them. This gives business owners the comfort in knowing that Paystack can be trusted because the CEO of Stripe — one of the largest payment engines on the planet says so.
A. Using the word ‘now’ is a great way to create some form of urgency.
B. They make it clear what you can start doing with their product and even take it a step further by telling you how long it will take for you to set up your account and start receiving payments.
C. The call to action button is consistent with the previous ones above and also states the result of clicking on the button.
How did they do? HIT!
What did they do right
- Clear messaging on what the product offers and the problems it solves for business owners.
- Great images/GIFs that support the text in each section.
- The answered possible objections and backed up their claims with proof.
What could be better:
- Paystack is powering businesses, it’ll be nice to see a glimpse of this in action from the perspective of business owners. A section with a brief overview of a case study will go a long way in helping businesses see themselves more in these stories. They do have a ‘testimonial wall’ but a case study is a fantastic way to drive more conversions.
- Even with competition, Paystack is clearly in a league of their own, but I imagine that as competition increases, they may need to clearly differentiate themselves on why they are the better solution in the market.
Overall, this is one of the better landing pages in the Fintech space in Africa. When creating copy for your landing page, you want to not just make a logical appeal but also an emotional one. You should think of creating a flow that gives the visitor a clear idea of your value proposition, you then create a scenario of how they are currently solving this problem and how it falls short. Fuel their desire with the unique benefits of your offering then direct them to take action by signing up for your solution.
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Let me know in the comments, what company you’d like to see me do next.
