Landing Page Optimization: How to Create One That Converts
Landing pages are critical for businesses that rely on their website to generate leads.
A landing page’s primary purpose is to convert site visitors into leads.
From there, your leads will, hopefully, turn into customers.
It might sound relatively straightforward, but developing a landing page that converts is a little more complicated than just putting words on a webpage.
No matter what type of campaign you have created a landing page for, it’s important to follow landing page best practices.
This helpful guide will show you how to create a landing page that drives sales and reveal some page optimization hacks.
What Is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a page created with the specific purpose of generating leads.
It can be any type of webpage.
For example, a landing page can be a home page.
However, not every home page is a landing page.
That’s because the purpose of a landing page is different from a general home page.
Landing pages are designed to encourage visitors to convert.
Some businesses use their home page as a landing page because that’s where they want visitors to click on to become leads.
Other companies have separate pages on their website that they use as landing pages to drive conversions.
Still, others build one-off landing pages for specific ad campaigns to drive very particular types of conversions.
Another key difference between a landing page and a home page or any other page on your website is how it gets found.
Home pages are often found through word of mouth or social media advertising.
Landing pages are usually found through organic search, using keywords that help the page rank high in search results.
They can also be found through Google Adwords.
Companies can buy ads for their landing pages to show up high on the search results page for specific search queries.
Benefits of Effective Landing Pages
An effective landing page will increase conversion rates.
That’s why having your homepage as your landing page isn’t always the best strategy.
Standalone landing pages work well because they focus visitors on one thing only—converting.
When your homepage is your landing page, visitors can easily get distracted and start clicking on other pages or links on your website.
If you want to use your homepage as your landing page, it’s important to keep it streamlined and neat.
Eliminate distractions and make your call to action (CTA) very clear, so visitors know exactly what they are supposed to do.
You can create multiple landing pages for different purposes.
In fact, a recent HubSpot report notes that 48 percent of marketers build a new landing page for each campaign.
Each landing page will have a different call to action that is specific to the campaign’s purpose.
For example, a lead magnet landing page could feature gated content designed to encourage visitors to download an eBook or white paper in exchange for their contact information.
A landing page for a marketing campaign can encourage visitors to buy something specific.
Meanwhile, a landing page for an outreach campaign might encourage visitors to call your business for a quote.
If you’re still feeling lost, there are plenty of examples to look at to get a better idea of how companies use landing pages. These 110 landing page examples are useful to help you get more ideas and inspiration about what a successful landing page looks like and how you can use one for your business.
As you’ll see, companies across industries use landing pages to convert customers for various reasons.
Follow the 10 steps we list in the next section to create a high-converting landing page that doubles as your homepage.
How to Create a High Converting Landing Page
Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s get into more detail about the essential features of successful landing pages.
Keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all manual that can tell you exactly how to make a landing page that converts.
Use these ideas to formulate your landing page, then optimize it based on your analytics that measures user interaction and conversion rates.
Be Extremely Clear About Your Offer
Because the landing page’s primary goal is conversion, you need to make your offer crystal clear.
Your offer can be information, a PDF download, a form to fill out, or anything else that turns your visitor into a lead.
There should be no question of what you want visitors to do when they land on your page.
Keep your landing page free of excess clutter, and use a call to action (CTA) button that users can click on to perform whatever action you want them to perform.
That could be downloading a freebie, contacting you for a quote, or making a purchase.
If visitors do not know what to do once they land on your page, they will leave, and you will miss out on important conversions.
Use Contrasting Colors
Landing pages rely on visual appeal to attract users and keep them on the page.
Be consistent with your brand’s style guide here, and don’t stray too far from what your customers are used to seeing when they visit your website, social media pages, or other online mediums.
However, you can get a little creative to make your offer stand out.
On a landing page, it can be helpful to use contrasting colors for the background and CTA to make your offer pop out to visitors.
Focus on Above the Fold Content
The phrase “above the fold” (ATF) harkens back to a time when newspapers were the primary news source for people.
The top headlines, images, and stories would be, quite literally, above the paper’s fold or crease.
Anything below the fold would not be seen immediately, or possibly, at all.
On a website, the content that lives ATF is the content visitors see before scrolling. A recent study found that people spend less than a second forming an impression of your website.
To avoid people bouncing from the page, keep ATF content relevant to the landing page’s purpose.
Put the most pertinent information here, including your CTA, so visitors know immediately what the landing page is about and what they are supposed to do.
Reinforce Urgency
Humans are naturally drawn to urgency.
We don’t want to miss out on a good deal or opportunity.
Employ scarcity techniques to demonstrate that the offer you are presenting is only available for a short amount of time.
You can use a countdown clock on your landing page to show visitors how much time is left until the offer expires.
If you want to keep things more simple, say that the offer is only available for a limited time.
Offering a one-time-only webinar, for example, can encourage visitors to convert so they don’t risk missing a special opportunity that will never come around again.
Keep CTA Buttons Straightforward
It can be tempting to try to vary your CTA message to avoid sounding like every other website.
However, it is essential to have a clear call to action, so visitors are not confused about what will happen when they click on your CTA.
There’s nothing wrong with being direct.
In fact, the more straightforward your CTA, the better! “Buy now,” “Call now,” “Download now,” “Try for free,” and “Join now” are all simple but effective CTAs that give visitors a clear direction on what to do and what to expect once they click on the button.
Feel free to play around with different types of CTAs. You can even use a dynamic QR code to test its effectiveness.
Test Early, Test Often
Testing is crucial for landing page optimization.
You should frequently run A/B tests to see how different headlines impact conversion rates.
You can test everything from your layout and content to your background and button colors.
Regular testing will give you useful insight into how visitors react to your landing page.
Use the data you gather from each test to improve the landing page experience for your visitors.
Don’t Ignore Good Content
Even though landing pages are relatively simple and uncluttered, they still need to have enough good, quality content to engage users and encourage them to trust you.
Focus on quality instead of quantity for landing page content.
Catchy headers and informative content will drive conversions much faster than overly wordy or flowery text.
People are smart and know the difference between authentic content and content that is clearly just trying to sell them something.
Optimize for Search Engines
Whether your landing page is standalone or part of your company website, search engine optimization (SEO) is still incredibly important.
Do your research to discover which keywords to target that will help users find your landing page.
The better your landing page matches user intent, the more likely you are to get conversions.
Employ Trust Elements
People trust video, images, and graphics when deciding to convert.
These types of content can help visitors engage with your brand on a more emotional level than text alone.
Video testimonials can be compelling because they connect visitors to the brand through a trustworthy third party.
To effectively use video, make sure it is high quality.
Use a video editor, like Fastreel, or Magisto, to turn any amateur video into one that looks like it came straight from the studio.
People prefer watching videos to reading content, and one study found that landing pages that incorporate video enjoy a 34 percent higher conversion than those that don’t.
Integrate a Live Chat
People expect instantaneous responses from brands, which, fortunately, is now possible thanks to live chats.
Integrating a live chat software on your landing page will help you stay connected to your visitors so you can answer questions instantly, rather than risk having visitors leave your landing page and never return.
Live chatbots have come a long way in recent years.
Many are powered by AI, which allows them to answer questions in a personalized way.
They become smarter as they get more input, so the more frequently an AI gets used, the better equipped it is to help your landing page visitors.
Which Tools Will Help?
Now that you know what your landing page should look like and what goals it should achieve, it’s time to get the right tools to make it all work.
We’ve put together a list of landing page optimization tools that will help you come up with the perfect layout, conduct tests, analyze the page’s effectiveness, and implement other optimization techniques.
Unbounce
As the name suggests, Unbounce helps you do your best not to let visitors bounce from your landing page.
You can use it to build pages, and you don’t need any particular skills in design or web development.
The tool includes a set of customizable templates, so you can create as many pages as you need.
Leadpages
Leadpages is a multifunctional toolkit for building landing pages, creating pop-ups, and other website elements.
It has a drag-and-drop builder and a collection of mobile-friendly templates appropriate for any industry.
The service also allows you to check the growth and success of your landing page.
Optimizely
Besides being a website builder, Optimizely is a great A/B testing platform.
Split tests can help you understand which version of a page is more appealing to visitors and will hopefully earn you more money.
With this tool, you can test and compare your newly built pages, score their performance, and monitor conversion rates.
Crazy Egg
Another way to monitor your page performance is to use heatmaps like Crazy Egg.
The app gives you a visual representation of what people do on your page: where they click, how far they scroll, and what they ignore.
This insight into how people interact with the page will help you write better content and place calls to action where they are most likely to be seen.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics (sometimes referred to as just GA) gives you a full analysis of activity on your site’s pages: user sessions, average on-page time, transactions, and more.
With this data, you’ll get a comprehensive picture of what aspects are performing well and which need attention.
Takeaway
Whether you have one landing page or dozens, there’s no question that an optimized landing page is essential for your business.
By creating a landing page that is clear and concise, while still offering helpful visual, video, and textual content, you can encourage conversions from all of your visitors.
While many businesses use their homepage as a landing page, marketers also often create new landing pages for each campaign.
This tactic can help you focus your efforts to get different responses from leads for different campaigns.
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Landings have always been the tool that helps to get maximum profit during special offers/holidays, as here you can place all the info, spend minimum resources and get maximum conversion. I also like these landing page templates – CTAs, SEO-friendly, fully responsive – all you need to start a successful ad campaign:)
Overall it is quite simple and logical – deliver clean design with clear call to action with not much scrolling. And if this doesn’t work, try to do A/B testing with modified version of the landing page.