Three-step, three-minute exercise for writing better landing pages

“Our AI-powered software engages users across multiple touchpoints in their customer journey to enhance satisfaction, boost retention, and find their moment of magic.”

... it’s a chatbot, Barry.

Thankfully, most landing pages aren’t that bad, but wordy, jargon-filled landing pages are a pretty common problem.

It’s understandable. You know your product better than anyone and you spend every day in the darkest depths of its inner-workings.

But your customers don’t.

They’ve (hopefully) got a passing interest in what you can do for them, but when you force them to choke down a word salad like that, they’re not going to come back for seconds. And don't even think about asking for a Yelp review.

So, how can you step out of your tunnel-visioned, expert-level understanding of your product and find the words to explain it in a way your average Joe will understand?

Try this little trick and see where you end up. It’ll only take three minutes of your time, but it might make the process of writing your landing page infinitely easier.

A couple of notes before we get started

This works best if you don’t think too much about it before starting. It’s meant to be intuitive - because when you talk intuitively, you talk like a human.

Try not to agonise about doing it perfectly, either. What’s important is that you come up with a few different versions of the same thing and take what you need from all of them.

I reckon this works best if you speak it out loud but, if you’re really not up for a chat with yourself, writing down your answers should still produce some helpful results.

Shall we get into it?

1) Explain it to your tech-free friend

You know the one... They’ve been off Facebook since before you’d even heard of it. They love soil. They probably own a yurt. Honestly? You’re pretty jealous of how they live their life.

Imagine you’re catching up with that friend. You haven’t seen them for a while and they want to know what you’ve been up to. They’re so flippin’ nice.

You sit down, share a cup of homegrown herbal tea, and they say “so you started a business! What’s it all about?”

But you might as well speak in a foreign language if you're going to mention “AI-powered” or "customer journey" and they’ll cock a suspicious eyebrow if you start talking about “touchpoints”.

Take 30 seconds now to record a voice note or type out what you’d tell your tech-free friend.

2) Explain it to a friend of a friend in the pub

Remember pubs? Wonderful, funny old places - especially when you’re there for someone’s birthday and there’s a mix of people from their various walks of life.

Your pal pops out to take a call and you’re left sitting with Alex, a dear friend from their amateur erotic ceramics club.

Alex is lovely and always good for a chat. In classic Alex style, they ask:

“So,” *hic*, “whatta you doing for work now?”

You know that Alex loves erotic ceramics and you’re pretty sure they work in accounting… or was it teaching? Sommelier?

It’s nothing to do with your business, that much is certain.

Take another 30 seconds and explain what you do to this earnest, kind-hearted semi-stranger who’s on their third drink of the evening.

3) Explain it to a bricks and mortar business owner

You know each other through networking events. (That’s right, another throwback.) You’ve always got on, you’ve got a lot of respect for each other, and - let’s be honest - it’d feel nice to get some validation from them.

While they know a lot more about stock control or in-store experience than website optimisation, they get how it all comes together.

Perhaps more importantly, they don’t want to be talked to like they’re out of touch. They’re an established business owner and know their onions.

So, listening intently, they ask you to explain what your business is about: “it’s all algorithms and AI, isn’t it?”

You know the drill by now. 30 seconds. Tell them all about your business.

Was that weird?

It probably felt a bit weird.

But it’s essential.

It's designed to take you out of your bubble and get you talking about what you do in simple, relatable, empathetic language. The kind of language that… humans use.

Now what?

Listen to your recordings and transcribe them (or read your written responses back).

Are there some words that pop up a lot?

What do you tell one person that you don’t tell another?

Do you reckon you did a good job of it?

(No harm in giving it another go if you reckon you could do it better.)

What you should have in front of you, though, is a set of real-world, plain English descriptions of what you do.

How’s Barry getting on?

If Barry tried this exercise, he’d hopefully have gone from:

“Our AI-powered software engages users across multiple touchpoints in their customer journey to enhance satisfaction, boost retention, and find their moment of magic.”

To…

1) Tech-free friend

“If someone’s looking at a company’s website and has a question, we let them have a quick chat with someone from customer service there and then. It means they get help when they need it, which means they’re more likely to buy something or stick around for longer.”

2) Friend of a friend

“We make chatbots for people’s websites, so customers can get immediate answers about the little problems they might run into, rather than trying to work it out themselves, struggling, and giving up. It’s really useful because it stops people from just quitting when they run into trouble, which usually leads to more sales and happier customers!”

3) Business owner

“We use artificial intelligence to train chatbots on people’s websites. When companies use our chatbots, their customers can essentially open a support ticket and sort their problem in real-time, rather than having to wait for an email reply or read through FAQs. It works wonders for retention, conversion, and overall customer happiness.”

Making sense of Barry’s beautiful conversations

Those three conversations have three key points in common: speed, ease, and problem-solving.

So, if Barry wants to retract his entry to the Jargon Oscars and give it another go with copy that's a bit more human and effective, he could take those three common points and create some hero copy along the lines of:

“Solve customer problems quickly and easily”

or

“Get happier customers and fewer support tickets”

or

“The answers your customers need, delivered faster than you can type”

If you do give this a go, I'd love to know how you found it.

Let me know on Twitter or get in touch via my website.