Harness AI for Landing Page Perfection

When we chat about AI, getting lost in a sea of buzzwords and futuristic predictions is easy. We’ve all heard the debates – will AI revolutionize our world or make our jobs obsolete?

So, let’s look beyond the hype and instead look at how AI can help with the subject of my course on creating high-converting websites. Can AI help us produce more compelling landing pages and websites while saving us time?

And no, we’re not delving into those AI startups promising to whip up the perfect landing page at the click of a button. Instead, we’ll explore how AI-powered tools can inform and enhance the design process I have shared with you before.

Empowering Your User Research with AI

As I say in my course on creating high-converting websites, user research is fundamental to success. It’s a crucial step to understand who your audience is, what they want, and why they might not follow through with your call to action. For instance, I suggest in my course that you employ exit intent surveys to gather insights on user behavior. These surveys pop up when a user is about to leave the webpage without completing the intended action, asking questions like, “Why didn’t you make a purchase today?” or “What information was missing that prevented you from signing up?” The answers serve as a treasure trove of insights to refine and optimize your landing page.

Exit intent surveys are a great way to identify why someone hasn’t taken action on an existing landing page or website.

However, sifting through these survey results can be daunting and time-consuming, particularly when you’re dealing with a mountain of data. This is where AI steps in as a game-changer. AI algorithms, particularly Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, can speedily analyze survey results, spot patterns, and highlight recurring themes. These tools can process volumes of data far beyond human capability, accomplishing in seconds what might take us hours or even days.

Sentiment analysis, for example, gauges the emotional tone behind words, helping you discern whether users leave your site in frustration or confusion. Topic modeling identifies common themes that keep surfacing in the responses, allowing you to target specific areas of your landing page for improvement.

Best of all, you don’t need an expensive tool to perform this kind of analysis. A free account with Chat GPT is sufficient to get started.

Imagine you’ve conducted an exit intent survey and want AI to help analyze the results. You can export your results into a CSV file and use the following prompt within Chat GPT.

I am going to provide you with data containing the results of an exit intent survey on a landing page. Once you receive the data, identify the main reasons users did not complete the call to action, highlight any recurring themes, and determine the overall sentiment of the responses. Are you ready for the data?

With prompts like this, the AI takes on the heavy lifting of data analysis, freeing you to focus on using these insights to craft an irresistible landing page. This process begins with a well-articulated value proposition.

Articulating Your Value Proposition with AI

In my workshop, I introduce the importance of having a clear value proposition. It is vital in creating any high-converting website or landing page. The unique blend of elements sets your product or service apart from the competition, compelling visitors to stay, learn more, and ultimately convert. A captivating value proposition usually consists of a headline (or strapline), a series of benefits tailored to your target audience, and unique features your product or service offers.

While the features of your offering may be clear, articulating the benefits and crafting a compelling strapline can be challenging. With its knack for generating creative and targeted content, this is where AI can lend a hand. AI can suggest straplines and propose benefits. Let’s delve into how this works.

The Frontend Masters homepage features a strapline emphasizing the benefits of signing up for their service.

Straplines

A compelling strapline should be concise, clear, and impactful. It’s your chance to communicate your product’s unique value quickly. AI can assist in this process by generating a variety of options for you to pick or refine.

Consider using a prompt like this:

Create a strapline for a cloud-based project management tool designed for remote teams.

AI might whip up something like “Empower Team Collaboration from Anywhere” or “Elevate Your Projects to the Cloud.”

I often ask AI to conjure up a dozen or more options, giving me the freedom to select the one that resonates most with the brand and audience.

Benefits

Identifying the key benefits your product or service offers to your target audience is crucial. AI can aid in brainstorming these benefits, considering various facets of your product or service.

For instance, you could ask:

What are the key benefits of a cloud-based project management tool designed for remote teams?

AI might suggest benefits like “Synchronize Collaboration Across Time Zones” or “Integrate Tasks, Schedules, and Communication Seamlessly.”

This AI-powered brainstorming can be a lifesaver, particularly when you’re missing guidance from colleagues or clients on what should appear on the landing page.

Too often, we resort to creating mockups with lorem ipsum text when we could be using a tool like Chat GPT to produce meaningful content for stakeholders to review and refine.

The benefits of a tool like Chat GPT extend beyond your value proposition. It can also be a valuable ally in creating compelling, on-brand copy, which can enhance the conversion potential of your landing page.

Leverage AI to Produce Engaging, Brand-Aligned Copy

When writing or managing stakeholder-provided copy, AI can prove to be an invaluable ally. Often, the copy we receive is verbose – it’s lengthy, dense, and challenging to decipher, especially when written by stakeholders who aren’t professional writers.

On the other hand, effective landing page copy should be brief, easily skimmed, and written at a lower reading level to ensure comprehension and retention.

Ideally, we would hire a professional copywriter to help us create relevant copy. However, this often doesn’t happen due to various constraints.

As a result, we may end up resorting to using lorem ipsum. However, this can negatively impact the conversion rate because the copy and final design won’t work together. Fortunately, AI can help us in this regard too.

In my conversion workshop, I explain that the best strategy for landing page copy is to compartmentalize our copy into distinct content blocks, each comprising a heading, a brief description, and an optional link for more information.

Content blocks help users scan, comprehend, and retain information on your landing pages.

If you’re dealing with copy provided by stakeholders, AI can assist in identifying the essential themes, which can then be converted into these content blocks. You may use a prompt like this:

Summarize the key themes or talking points found in the following copy, and create a 2-4 word headline for each. The objective is to encapsulate the theme and spur the reader to explore further.

Subsequently, we can employ AI to expand on those talking points with a description, referring to the original copy when necessary:

Now, for each identified talking point, compose a concise description no longer than 165 characters. When possible, reference the original copy provided. Restrict the reading level to 9th grade or below.

If you’re starting with a blank canvas, without stakeholder copy, you can use a similar strategy to enhance the value proposition initially created by AI.

If you provide an AI tool like Chat GPT with a list of benefits or features, you can instruct it to generate headings and descriptions for each. After feeding Chat GPT your list of benefits and features, utilize this prompt:

For each of the provided benefits and features, write a concise headline (2-4 words) encapsulating the benefit or feature. Also, compose a brief description of no more than 165 characters. Restrict the reading level to 9th grade or below. Ensure the copy is as persuasive as possible, while sidestepping marketing clichés. The objective is to motivate users to take action.

Once your list of content blocks is assembled, complete with their headings and descriptions, we can then use AI to create relevant images for each.

Enhance Your Visuals Using AI

In my workshop on conversion optimization, I explain how the wrong image can cause users to focus in the wrong place, missing critical messaging that would improve conversion.

However, finding the perfect images can often feel like a daunting task. You need to identify the type of imagery that best encapsulates your talking points and then see the exact image that embodies this concept and guides the user’s attention.

Sifting through an endless array of pictures to find the right subject, color scheme, and focal point can be a draining process.

Fortunately, AI tools such as Midjourney or Leonardo.Ai can offer immense relief in this regard. These tools have the capability to generate images based on your exact requirements, greatly reducing the time and effort you’d otherwise spend.

While Midjourney may produce better images, Leonardo offers greater control and a better user interface.

But let’s begin with Chat GPT, which can help suggest prompts to generate ideas for potential images. An example prompt could be:

For each of the headings and descriptions you created earlier, suggest a prompt for an image that represents the theme of the copy. This prompt will be used with a tool like Midjourney.

Following this instruction, Chat GPT will provide a variety of image concepts that can be used as starting points for Midjourney or Leonardo.ai.

What’s more, you can infuse these prompts with your own artistic direction. Suppose Chat GPT suggested an image prompt of “A portrait of an adorable puppy gazing at the camera.” If your goal is to direct the reader’s attention towards copy to the left, you could alter the prompt to “A portrait of an adorable puppy looking left.”

You can even incorporate specific style and color palette requirements to align with your brand identity. For instance: “A portrait of an adorable puppy looking left. Plain purple backdrop. Photo-realistic. Shallow depth of field.”

Perhaps the most impressive feature of these AI tools is the ability to apply what’s known as a ‘Seed parameter’ to your prompts. This ensures all your images share a similar aesthetic, a considerable advantage since finding a set of images that meet your criteria and maintain a consistent look and feel is virtually impossible with traditional stock libraries.

This process should yield a far more captivating visual design where you maintain a high level of control over where people focus. But, even with these AI-assisted visuals, it’s crucial to verify their effectiveness – and once again, AI can lend a hand.

Validate Your Design Through AI

Design validation typically involves answering two critical questions: Does the design evoke the desired emotions in users, and are users focusing on the content we want them to see?

Although extensive semantic differential surveys and eye-tracking studies are often desirable, time constraints may render these methods unfeasible. However, as I point out in my workshop, AI offers us a convenient alternative. While it might not be as comprehensive as in-depth testing, it can provide a helpful sanity check.

Our first step is to conduct a survey where we simply present the design to users and ask for their impressions. As we did with our user research survey, we can then use Chat GPT to identify themes and sentiments within the responses, assessing whether they align with our intended outcomes.

Secondly, we can use an AI tool called Attention Insights. This tool simulates an eye-tracking study, predicting where people will focus when viewing a page. While it may not be as accurate as a real eye-tracking study (with an accuracy of 90%-96%), it’s more than capable of providing insightful guidance.

Attention Insights can predict where people will look on a page with 90%-96% accuracy.

We can iterate on our design using the information garnered from these AI tools. And if you find yourself stuck on improving things, don’t hesitate to call Chat GPT for some creative inspiration! The AI’s ability to generate a wide array of ideas can be a precious resource when seeking fresh perspectives.

Embracing AI’s Untapped Potential

As we stand on the brink of a new era in AI-driven design, it is intriguing to ponder how technology might shape the future of landing page creation and conversion optimization more generally.

While the fundamentals discussed in my workshop on creating high-converting websites will never change, AI opens up possibilities to further enhance these techniques.

Personalization: AI can potentially offer an unprecedented level of personalization to landing pages. AI can customize the page in real-time to appeal to each unique visitor by analyzing a user’s past behaviors, preferences, and interactions. This could involve tailoring headlines, images, and calls to action to cater to the user’s specific needs and interests, resulting in a truly personalized experience that could lead to increased conversion rates.

Automated A/B Testing: Currently, A/B testing is a manual process where marketers create different versions of a landing page and then measure which one performs better. In the future, AI could automate this process. It could simultaneously create and test numerous page variations, analyzing the results in real-time to optimize the page for the highest conversion rate.

Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can offer immediate, personalized assistance to users visiting a landing page. They can answer queries, provide recommendations, or guide users through the conversion process, significantly enhancing the user experience and potentially boosting conversions. I am already trialing this on my personal website.

Predictive Analytics: AI can extend beyond analyzing past and present data to predict future user behavior. This could involve predicting what kind of content a user might be interested in or what kind of offer might prompt them to convert. These predictive insights could then be used to design landing pages that are reactive and proactive in guiding the user journey.

In conclusion, the potential of AI in landing page design is immense, and we’re only beginning to explore it. However, it’s essential to remember that AI is a tool—an aid in our quest to craft compelling, conversion-optimizing landing pages. It doesn’t replace human designers’ and marketers’ creativity, intuition, and understanding. Instead, it bolsters our abilities, helping us to work smarter and more efficiently.

The future of AI in design is exciting, and it’s not something to be afraid of. Instead, it’s a new resource in our toolkit. While some people may fear AI will take their jobs, it’s unlikely. However, someone with more experience using AI may have a competitive advantage.

Using AI can provide a competitive advantage to help advance your career or build a reputation if you’re a freelancer or agency.