How to Create Landing Pages that Fit the 4 Stages of the Buying Journey

Landing pages can break your business.

Even the best paid ads and organic content can’t help buyers who find themselves on a poorly strategized landing page. If you’re seeing a high customer acquisition rate and a low conversion rate—your landing page isn’t aligned with how people buy.‍

Buyers move linearly through 4 stages of the buying process.

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First, people need awareness. For a customer to buy something, they either have a need or know they need something.

Second, they need solution awareness. At this stage, customers find the available solutions (a.k.a products!) that fit their needs.

Third, people consider differing products. Prospects have different brands in mind. They’re figuring out what they need to know to make their final decision. 

Lastly, the purchase! Buyers are confident your product is their best option. They're inspired to hit the buy button.

In this article, you’ll learn how to increase your landing page conversion rate by building your page around the stage of the buying journey your prospect is currently in.

Stage 1: Need Awareness

Stage 2: Solution Awareness

Stage 3: Considerations

Stage 4: Purchase

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Stage 1: Need Awareness

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What problem does your customer avatar have?

The reason is far from all the bells and whistles they get from becoming customers. In the Need Awareness stage, you’re helping prospects realize they’re missing something or doing something wrong.

Your goal is to create a pattern interruption that turns a website visitor into a prospect. At this stage, you want to:

• Focus on outcome
• Capture attention and draw curiosity
• Emphasize why the user should care by showing why it’s an important need or problem

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Before you hit publish on your landing page, make sure you’re not talking about features, brands, or products right away. When people are in the Need Awareness stage, they don’t care about your brand or product (yet!). They’re focused on figuring out what their needs are. Then, they can move to the next stage of the buying journey and figure out viable solutions.

Moon Pod sells antigravity bean bag chairs. They’re not convincing you that a bean bag would look great in your living room on their landing page. They’re highlighting a problem you may have—the need to relax and de-stress. This makes you reflect: are you stressed? If you realize you are, then Moon Pod just moved you to the next stage of the buying journey. In the Solution Awareness stage, you’re now looking for solutions for your stress. 

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To keep you interested, Moon Pod also uses a pattern interruption. They call their beanbag “anti-gravity.” Website visitors interested in decreasing stress levels are curious about what that means. They also want to know how it impacts stress levels.

It’s the perfect setup to turn website visitors into prospects.

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Stage 2: Solution Awareness

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Why should prospects care about your products?

In the Solution Awareness stage, you’re looking to retarget prospects, drive email traffic, and show up for specific search terms. Your focus is no longer on showing customers what problem they have. You’re showing them that your product is the solution.

Your goal is to show prospects why they should keep learning about your products. This leads them to compare your products to other brands in the next stage of the buying journey, Consideration. Here’s what you want to do:

• Capture attention, draw fast
• Explain how and why it works
• Focus on why this is the best solution to solve their need/problem
• Explain how this product’s features will help solve the need/problem
• Explain why the features are important

At this stage, you’re still not listing the features of your products. Even though your prospects know they have a problem and there are solutions, they still don’t want to know every detail about your product. They’re looking to see if your product will solve their problem the way they want it solved.

Hero Cosmetics takes this approach on its landing page. They don’t list out the ingredients of their Mighty Patches or explain how they work. They focus on:

• Drawing prospect’s attention to the alternative (another example of pattern interruption!)
• Highlighting what their product does
• Explaining that their product solves the customer’s problem
• Talking about the advantages of alternative nose strips

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Their landing page is for prospects who know they want to get rid of their blackheads to have clearer skin. But, they don’t know all the solutions available. They’re familiar with nose strips, but a nose patch is a brand new product. Through your copywriting, they need to know why this alternative is better. They also need reassurance that it still has the same results as the nose strips they’re familiar with. 

This is the information they need to consider nose patches as they decide which product they’ll buy.

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Stage 3: Consideration

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Why should people choose your products over other solutions?

Prospects in the third stage of the buying journey, Consideration, are retargeted, clicked a link in your email list, or are late-stage buyers (from Google search ads or traffic from long-tailed keywords). They know your product promises the solution they’re looking for at this stage. 

Your goal is to get them to choose your product over your competitors. You want them to move into the final stage of the buying journey, the Purchase. In the Consideration stage, you want to:

Your goal is to get them to choose your product over your competitors, so they move into the final stage of the buying journey, the Purchase. In the Consideration stage, you want to:

• Capture attention
• Explain why your product is better than the alternatives
• Provide reassurance, convince people it will work and show it’s the right option
• Highlight how this solves the initial need/problem better than competitors
• Target customers’ objections, answer their most important questions

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This is the time to tackle customer doubts and objections head-on. Landing pages mentioning doubts and objectives increase conversion rates by 80%. Leads are looking for reassurance that this is the right solution for them.

‍Ergatta’s landing page is designed specifically for the Consideration stage. People actively shopping for rowing machines are looking for a comparison between Ergatta and the competition. Strategically, Ergatta built its landing page around product comparisons to show who they’re best for. 

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At SplitBase, we’d take this landing page up a notch. A feature-driven comparison chart can drive more purchases (the next stage of the buying journey) by voicing the benefits of those features compared to competing products instead of focusing on the technical jargon.

People want to feel confident making a purchase. This information is what takes them to the final stage of the buying journey.

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Stage 4: Purchase

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How can buying your products be as easy as possible?

In the final stage of the buying journey, your leads turn into customers. They come from your retargeting ads, cart abandoners, and returning customers. They’ve figured out their problem, researched solutions, and compared which is best for them. They’re ready to hit the shiny BUY button.

Your goal is to make buying your product easy. People can't second guess the purchase by meeting friction, like filling out one too many questions on your checkout form. In the Purchase stage, you want to:

• Make it frictionless
• Make shipping and return policy extra clear

Even though it's exciting for your lead to make this purchase, they can easily get distracted or overwhelmed at this stage. Landing pages for purchases should solely focus on the purchase. Avoid introducing anything new or offering links for the customer to browse elsewhere.

‍Saatva knows their purchase-focused landing pages have one job. Turn leads into customers. Their landing page lists their mattresses with brief descriptions, the price, a single link to learn more (just a link to the product page), and a call to action button to see the product page. This creates a frictionless experience for leads to buy. 

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This landing page shows the simplicity of pages focused on purchasing. Unlike the first 3 stages of the buying journey, this stage doesn’t need to detail the problem, the solution, or why your product is the best option. It needs the necessities—and as little distraction as possible.

Because that’s what turns leads into customers.

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How to Pick the Right Type of Landing page

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Every high-performing landing page strategizes for the buying journey. It’s focused on moving buyers from one stage to the next in a series of nudges making them realize your products are exactly what they’re looking for.

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SplitBase clients see a 30% decrease in customer acquisition costs by using landing pages built for the buying journey. High customer acquisition costs, and low landing page conversion rates, tell you that you’re on the wrong track.

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• Are you trying to make prospects in the Need Awareness stage hit buy?
• Are you comparing your products to the competition without realizing your prospects are in Solution Awareness?
• Are you talking about the problem when your prospects are in the Consideration stage, figuring out if your product offers the right solution?
• Are you sabotaging your purchases by making hot leads rethink their options through Consideration content?

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Compare your landing page to other DTC eCommerce pages by downloading accessing our DTC Swipe File. 

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