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Guideline on creating an effective sales landing page for your app

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Building a landing page that drives a successful buying transaction

Microsoft will drive qualified traffic to AppSource. Though, once a prospect becomes aware of your app, it will be your job to guide them through to a successful buying transaction. Deliberately mapping and architecting the buying journey is critical to ensure a high level of engagement and conversion. Only presenting your app’s features and functionality, or just providing a free trial, won't ensure prospects will become buyers. For this you need to have a good landing page that is built to help you capture attention, accelerate your customer acquisition process, and drive buying behavior. The recommendations on this page will help you do so.

Examples of how other partners have implemented our best practices

To inspire you in creating a good landing page for your app, two of our valued partners, LS Retail and Industry Built, have offered to provide a sample of what a best practice landing page for a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central partner could look like.

Have a look at their app landing pages and use them as inspiration to build your own landing page:

In the following checklist, we have “broken down” the elements, on their landing pages in order to showcase best practices on design and messaging. More specifically, we're looking into layout and structure elements, content elements, visual elements, anxiety reducing elements and support elements.

Additionally, we have provided specific recommendations on how to apply these elements to help you increase conversion and maximize the effectiveness of your product’s sales landing page.

We urge you to review and implement these best practices on your landing page – in so doing you'll contribute in providing the Microsoft community of customers with a consistent buying experience across publishers.

Layout and structure elements

Element Description Example
Company Include the company logo on the page
App name & app logo Include a visual logo of your product name and a one sentence positioning statement.
Top menu choices Use clean, straightforward and descriptive menu options.
Search box Include a search box so visitors can quickly find what they're looking for.
Emotional tribal anchor photos Visuals create an emotional Add-onion. The brain skims over non-emotional photos.
Visual Make your page easy to scan, with lots of strong visual imagery.
  • The upper-left corner of the landing page is the most valuable section of the entire landing page.
  • Place your company logo in this location.

If you need help with formulating a positioning statement, try the value proposition generator located at here.

  • There should ideally be 5 or fewer choices; don't include more than seven options.
  • The menu text should state what the prospect gains if they select on the menu item
  • The text should be written from their perspective, not yours.

Recommended menu items:

  • How to Buy, Benefits Gained, Why Us, and Contact.

The upper-right corner of the page is usually an ideal spot

  • Faces evoke more emotion than landscapes or machines, and so on.
  • Include a happy customer that looks similar to your prospect in terms of age, demographic, and industry, and which shows them dealing with the issues that your prospect can relate to.
  • Try not to use stock photos of people or objects.

Engagement

  • Too much text forces the brain to skim, skip, and exit. Text engages the logical, analytical brain, but not the emotional brain.
  • Keep it clean and straightforward in terms of design and layout. Use lots of pictures, graphs, and screenshots to enhance engagement.

Content elements: Text and messaging

Element Description Example
Include a headline question Get your prospects’ attention by asking them a compelling pain-based question that they can relate to. “Struggling to manage your ingredient inventory and fretting over allergens?”
You want the prospect to mentally say “YES” as often as possible and to peak their curiosity enough to read more.
Your questions should be intriguing and customer-centric.
In general, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 product description Somewhere on the landing page, make sure you include the standard Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central product description provided by Microsoft This is a requirement because your product is adding value to and building on this foundational solution. Insert this paragraph: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is a comprehensive business management solution for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that have outgrown their basic accounting software. From day one, this new application makes ordering, selling, invoicing, and reporting easier and faster. Dynamics 365 Business Central is deeply integrated with Microsoft 365 and includes built-in intelligence, so it's easy to use and helps users make better business decisions.
Messaging (Address their pains) Pain is a strong motivator of action.
- - Identify 1-3 key sources of the client’s most prominent pain early on the page.
- - Call out the fears that are likely to be holding them back.
- - Your landing page text and messaging should predominantly focus on the pain the prospect is experiencing, and NOT the features of your product or service.
Clearly demonstrate to your prospects that you genuinely understand their industry and unique business problems. - Describe the business challenges they're facing now and the ways their revenue growth, margins, productivity and so on, are being negatively impacted by not taking action now.
Element Description Example
Messaging (Product benefits) Paint a clear, visual and desirable picture of what is possible.
- Describe the most significant benefits and rewards that your prospect will realize after purchase. - For example, “Save time and money (benefits) by having a system that does all the tracking and calculations for you (features).”
- - Don’t only list features and app functionality, start with the benefit first, then you can follow with the features.
- - Paint a picture of a possible experience the prospect will immediately desire.
- Clearly articulate a compelling desired outcome - If possible, use industry-specific language and vocabulary to resonate with your prospect deeply.
- - Choose a particular persona to speak to directly.
- - Engage prospects by speaking directly to them using first person “you” language.
Element Description Example
Messaging (Prove your claims) Include specific calls-to-action on your app page. “Reduce how long it takes to set up your recipes in the morning from 1 hour to 10 minutes.”
- Don’t make general and abstract claims. -
- Use data as often as possible to support your statements.
- If you make specific claims, support your claims with proof, while Quantifying impacts and gains.
- The more specific and concrete your promise of value is, the better.
- Abstract concepts such as “more efficiency, more productivity, transform your business” aren't emotionally impactful or convincing and don't compel a prospect to act.

Target market - If you support multiple countries/regions or languages, this is a key selling feature. • Find a way to show this visually.

Element Description Example
Messaging (Compelling call-to-action) Include specific calls-to-action on your app page
  • This can be your free trial; a time-limited special price; a scheduled walk-through demonstration; and so on.
  • The words "free” and “save” are highly emotional words in the English language, so they should be used.
  • Use bright colors, such as orange, yellow, or red, to call attention to your buttons.

Button text should use benefit language rather than descriptive language.

  • For example, instead of “Download” write “Click here to start saving money now.”
  • Try not to send prospects away from your page – always have an embedded next step in your call to action that brings them back to your landing page.
Element Description Example
Messaging (Create a sense of urgency by teaching the prospects) Help your prospect gain a sense of urgency to buy by teaching them one thing about how they can be more efficient or profitable now. Your bakery profitability will decrease over the next five years due to an increase of 3% in the cost of key inputs, such as wheat and sugar. Want to know five key strategies that can help you mitigate this challenge? Click here to find out how to preserve your profit margin
  • Show them how their performance in one key business area is below that of their competitors.
  • For an example you can provide a quick online self-assessment, a top-10 tips blog post, and much more. Visual elements
Element Description Example
Pictures (Differentiation comparison images) Show them, don’t tell them Show the before and after state.
  • This is a visual image of how your prospects do things now versus how they'll be able to do it in the future.
  • You aren't telling them but showing them using a visual.
Element Description Example
Compelling proof screenshots Visually demonstrate all the claims that you're making. Quickly and easily view inventory items.
  • Graphic dashboards are the most effective method.
  • Zoom in on the main benefit-related features.
  • Make sure it's readable, and the benefit is obvious.
  • Include a caption.
  • Data should be industry specific so that it resonates with the viewer.

You want prospects to see how their data/process would look in your system.

Element Description
Videos (Tell your story using videos not text) Include as many videos as possible.
  • Videos have a much higher level of engagement and viewing time and convey much more than you can ever say with words.

Include at least one customer testimonial video on your app landing page.

  • Your client should speak specifically about the pains they had before and the benefits they gained after, not product features. It should be all about your customers, not you.

Include one product demonstration video.

Elements that reduce anxiety and risk, while increasing trust

Element Description
Customer testimonials Don’t sell your product; let your customers do that for you.
  • Social proof is more credible and trustworthy to prospects. The purpose of testimonials is to reduce the buyer's anxiety and fear.

Your testimonials should answer the following questions:

  • “Will this work for my situation?”
  • “What benefit will I really get if I buy this?”
  • “Is this going to be too hard?”
  • “How long is this going to take?"
  • “Can I trust this company?”
Element Description Example
Reduce risk Prospects are afraid of being scammed and taken advantage of on the internet. They're naturally cautious and highly suspect. Source: Microsoft.com
  • You want to convert prospects to buyers.
  • Make it easy for them to buy, while reducing their anxiety. Transparency is the key to building trust.
  • Make sure that you include a link to a BUY NOW page, which includes full pricing details.
  • Give them a compelling offer they can't refuse. Offer a time-limited trial or special pricing discount if they buy in 30 days.
  • Use scarcity to compel action. Offer a 100% money-back guarantee.

We recommend providing three offerings, optimized for three different customer segments. For more recommendations on pricing, see the pricing guide located at https://mbspartner.microsoft.com/BFI/Topic/64

Element Description
Live chat Include live chat, with a photo of one of your team members smiling at an appropriate time to increase conversion, such as when a prospect selects the back button on your pricing page.
  • Include their name if possible to build trust.

Support elements: Interactivity and contact options

Element Description
SHORT lead capture form Include a lead capture form on your page.
  • Only ask for their name and email address, you can get the rest later.
  • Your forms shouldn't have more than four or five fields to fill out. You haven't yet earned the right or enough trust to ask for too much information at this point.

Most lead capture forms are way too long, demanding, and intimidating, and have low completion rates.

Note

Nobody has the time or is willing to fill out an annoying form, which is of no value to them, especially if it is purely self-serving from your standpoint.

Element Description
Contact Provide prospects with different contact options based on their readiness to interact with you.
  • Ideally, include a phone number and an email address with an employee photo.
  • This alone could double your conversion rate.
Element Description Example
AppSource app page link & social share Include a link back to your listing on AppSource, so the prospect can return when ready. Return to AppSource.
  • Also, enable visitors to share and forward your app with others!
Element Description
Close them! Add a get started button Include a specific call-to-action button with the option to buy or try.