How to Build a High-Converting Landing Page with AI (Without Losing Your Soul)
Yo! Grab yourself some coffee (or that suspicious green smoothie you’ve been calling a drink lately) and take a sec to read this.
Building a landing page used to be like assembling IKEA furniture while blindfolded and in your sleep. You used to stare at that blinking cursor until it stared back, wondering why the whole ‘click on the giant button’ thing didn’t work. I know I did. Three weeks of my life went into that first landing page back in 2018. Three weeks! And you know what it did? Converted one person. My mum. And she only clicked that button because she felt bad for me. But we live in the future now – the future where Artificial Intelligence is our intern who knows everything about copywriting and never asks for a raise. But how do you use this tool without turning your landing page into a Frankenstein’s monster of keywords spliced together in a confusing attempt to convince someone they need your product?
Trust me when I say I’ve been there, done that and used AI to turn my landing page into a soulless machine several times over. Let me show you my process.
1. Don’t Ask – Chat
You wouldn’t go to a restaurant, point at the menu and say “Make me something”. So why do it when you have an AI copywriting tool at your disposal? The most common mistake I see people make is using an AI tool as a vending machine. They throw in a prompt, get an uninspiring piece of text out. Not good enough, so they try another prompt and another. And another. This is not the way to use an AI tool in copywriting!
In fact, treat it as a brainstorming buddy. Yes, that’s right, you can have a conversation with an AI tool! My little quirk when using these things is to write my thoughts in a note app first. Stream of consciousness stuff. Then, I ask the AI tool to generate five options for a headline based on what I wrote. The most important part of this whole process, in my opinion, is the tweaking. Tell the AI tool that the tone is too serious, that you want the word ‘synergy’ replaced with ‘teamwork’, that the text is too boring. Let them help you find the perfect tone for your landing page.
2. Grandma Test
Yes, sometimes the AI tool forgets that it’s not human. Sometimes its text is too flowery or full of words grandma would never use in her life. That’s why, after an AI tool has generated a piece of text for you, you should subject it to The Grandma Test. I know, it’s weird, but hear me out. After generating some text, read it out loud to yourself. Because yes, I am sure that the AI tool knows what grandma would say if she were to talk to her grandkids about your product. If the answer is no, you can always ask the AI to explain the value proposition in simpler terms. A good piece of text for a high-converting landing page needs to be easily understood by your target audience.
3. Images: AI Does That Strange Stuff
AI image generators make weird stuff sometimes. Like that one time I asked an image generator for “a happy person using a laptop,” and it gave me a picture of a woman with seven fingers and a laptop that was melting on her lap. But the good news is that these tools have gotten really good at doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. My tip for using AI tools in your image generation is to let the AI do the weird stuff. Use it to generate images that have nothing to do with your product but look really neat in the background of your landing page or have unique colors that fit your brand image. Do not let the AI tool generate the whole image for you, especially if it has people in it. Always check for fingers (AI tools often give people extra fingers) and teeth (don’t ask). Recently, I’ve used an AI image generator to create images for a client that sell dog treats. We wanted something unique, something that didn’t exist on stock photo websites. So we used an AI tool to generate images of “golden retrievers in sunglasses eating cookies”. The results were adorable and weird and perfect for our landing page.
4. The Human Sprinkle (Most Important!)
This is actually where most people go wrong. An AI tool can do so much for you in the copywriting and image generating department, but it can’t add that special something that makes you, well, human. Once the AI tool has done its part, it’s time for you to add your personality. After the AI has written your landing page copy, go through it and add some of your own spice. Insert a joke in parentheses, maybe a short and sweet story about a time that you failed in your business or a funny slang word for a particular industry term. Break some grammar rules for good measure. People are more likely to trust you as a real person than an AI-generated chatbot. If you want a high-converting landing page, make sure to add some personality to it!
5. Test, Test and Test Some More (Ugh, It’s Boring)
Nope, sorry, this is boring stuff. The one good thing about Artificial Intelligence in copywriting is that it can help you with A/B testing. It can generate multiple variations of your landing page elements for you to test. You can ask your AI tool to generate three different calls to action and then run tests to see which one converts the highest. This saves you time and energy and the dreaded feeling of putting everything into one call to action and waiting for the results to come in. Which is all really important when it comes to building a high-converting landing page.
There you have it! The art of landing page creation as we know it, revolutionized by Artificial Intelligence and weird animal faces generated by image tools. Now go forth and build those high-converting landing pages! Oh and in the comments below, let me know when your AI tool tried to give your customer an extra finger. We’ve all been there. (Even my mum knows that by now.)
Happy building, friends!