We have talked before about attracting the right people to your membership site, but the truth is that there’s a big leap from just getting them there and convincing them to sign up. More than any other type, a membership landing page lives and dies by its ability to make a convincing argument.
You may find that even when you bring a lot of traffic on your platform, only a fraction of those visitors become members.
The whole marketing funnel could run smoothly but fail where it matters most: convincing a prospect to trust you and your brand and join your membership site. This could be easily solved by having a well-designed and impactful membership landing page. Yet, in our experience helping clients improve their membership landing pages, we find that more often than not they are just filled with copy that’s been recycled from other advertising material.
Today we will run through a few essential tips to know so you can increase trust and get more conversions for your membership landing page. Let’s get right into it!
Clean and Purposeful design
Keep your copy clean. Resist the urge to put up a wall of text explaining all the nitty-gritty details of your business. Make all the relevant information available in an easy-to-follow and elegant style, highlighting key features and using the layout to your advantage. Whether they are cold leads coming to the page through ads, organic traffic from search engines, or nurtured leads sent over from email campaigns, this is your last chance, the place where you will make your final stand.
After reading the contents of this page, people decide if they will join or not, and you have the power to design this experience for them, so make it memorable!
You can offer a discount or a bonus mini-course, basically anything to make a person think “This is a special offer. I should seriously consider it since tomorrow it might not be there.”
Countdown timers also work great for this. Put them at the beginning and the end of your membership landing page so people are aware of the offer as they scroll through and get a reminder when they finish to solidify the decision they’ve come to.
Remove navigation bars and menus – you don’t want people wandering around your site and away from the landing page, so take away that option right from the start to remove any distractions and keep the focus on the message. Those menus can take up almost a third of the screen with some site designs, potentially shifting attention from your pitch at the most crucial moment.
The general layout should look something like this, starting from the top of the page:
- Express Your Unique Selling Proposition & Add a CTA
- Follow with pain points, helping readers match their issue with one from your list, making them invested in what you have to say next
- Show them how becoming members can be the solution to their problem.
This is the core layout, but the rest of the page can (and should!) be further filled out with a combination of extra CTAs, testimonials, potential benefits of signing up, price tables, videos, etc. Let’s get a little more in-depth on some of these elements since they can leave a great impression when used correctly!
Membership Landing Page Testimonials
Think how much sway the reviews of others hold on your decision to buy a book or watch a movie. Perhaps you have, at one point, thought something along the lines of “This person says this book reminds them of Stephen King’s novels? Well, that’s exactly what I was looking for. Let’s give it a shot!” They can also offer social proof and increase the perceived value of your products.
If written properly, they can be yet another place to highlight your company’s strengths and the benefits it can bring to others. Display them one at a time and let people scroll through them to discover more, so you don’t clutter the page by showing all of them at the same time. Testimonials will also strengthen SEO efforts since they are usually written the same way people search online for solutions to their problems.
Sign-up Buttons and CTAs
Keep all calls to action short, relevant, impactful, and try to mention a pain point if possible (e.g. if you offer a yoga course, you might write “Get your flexibility back!”)
Everything on a membership landing page should be meant to urge people to do one thing – click that button and sign-up. As such, make sure it is prominently displayed and clear to see. Sometimes, a person may not need to reach the end of the page to be convinced to join, so consider the possibility of having multiple buttons throughout.
Use pictures & videos
A photograph is worth a thousand words, and for our aim of getting people to understand (as quickly and efficiently as possible) the value of signing up to your site, you should take advantage of well-placed and relevant pictures to get important points across in a clear manner.
In much the same way, videos are not only an alternative for visual learners to gather information on your offer but a way to get in front of the potential subscribers, letting them see you and establishing yourself as a part of the brand, and educating them yourself on your products in a distilled and easy-to-consume format.
Final words on Creating a Great Membership Landing Page
The most important takeaway here can be summed up with the classic line “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish”. All the excitement and trust you’ve built with a prospect won’t mean a thing if your membership landing page isn’t able to finish the job and convince them to become a member, so take the time to make sure it doesn’t diminish what the rest of the sales funnel accomplished. Instead, build upon it and grow your membership community!
If you don’t already have a membership site, but want to get started on the right foot, we highly recommend MemberMouse!
And don’t worry, we know that implementing all of the tips above can seem daunting and easy to put off, especially when you don’t have the time or technical know-how, which is why we would be more than happy to have a chat with you about taking care of all of your landing page needs!
