On average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.
– David Ogilvy
Headlines have the ability to make or break the success of your landing pages. They are almost always the highest-read copy on the page. Effective headlines must perform three key actions: they must catch the reader’s attention, communicate the benefit of your offering, and encourage the reader to continue reading.
If you are able to achieve all of these with a brief headline then you are well on your way to building a successful landing page that converts.
While it isn’t possible to tell you exactly what headline you should write as there are too many variables in each market and for each prospect, most successful headlines share several common characteristics that should be used and must be included in your headline testing.
Most good headlines contain some combination of the following:
- Easy to understand
- Written for your visitor
- Reference specific benefits and value proposition
- Summarize one overarching benefit
