Landing pages are crucial for turning website visitors into customers. But what makes a great landing page?
In this guide, we’ll break down the key elements of landing pages that convert, with examples and actionable tips you can implement today.
Above the Fold: The First Impression
The top section of your landing page, known as “above the fold“, is what visitors see first. It must immediately convey your value proposition and entice people to keep reading. Here are the essential components:
- Headline: Clearly explain the value you provide in one concise sentence. Make it specific, unique, and memorable.
- Subheadline: Add more detail about how you’ll deliver the value from your headline. Introduce your product/service and its key benefits.
- Hero Image: Use a high-quality visual to show your product in action. Let visitors picture themselves using and benefiting from what you offer.
- Social Proof: Build credibility with impressive stats, well-known logos, or a glowing testimonial. Show visitors you’re trusted and popular.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): A clear, value-focused CTA button makes it easy and enticing to take the next step. Experiment with copy beyond the standard “Sign Up.”
Below the Fold: Sealing the Deal
After hooking visitors above the fold, use the rest of the page to overcome objections, highlight benefits, and persuade them to convert. Key sections to include:
- Features & Objections: Detail exactly how you’ll deliver on your main promise. Proactively address common concerns that could prevent people from converting.
- Social Proof: Add more extensive social proof, like in-depth testimonials, case studies, and impressive numbers. Let your happy customers sell for you.
- FAQ: Answer any lingering questions visitors may have. Clarify details about your offer, your company, pricing, etc.
- Final CTA: After fully making your case, give visitors another chance to take action. Reiterate your value prop and make signing up as easy as possible.
- Founder’s Note: End with a personal touch that makes you memorable. Share your story, put yourself in the visitor’s shoes, and show how your product is the perfect solution.
Putting It All Together
An effective landing page educates visitors, overcomes their objections, and persuades them to take action. As you implement the above formula, remember to:
- Prioritize clarity over cleverness. Make your value prop unmissable.
- Speak to visitors’ pain points, goals, and priorities. Enter the conversation already happening in their mind.
- Keep your writing concise and scannable. Avoid large text blocks.
- Use visuals to make your page engaging and memorable. Show, don’t just tell.
- Test and optimize over time. Try new headlines, visuals, CTAs, etc. to see what works best for your audience.
By applying these landing page best practices, you’ll be well on your way to higher conversions, happier customers, and faster growth. Here’s to your success!
The Power of a Single Goal
One of the most critical principles for high-converting landing pages is having a single, focused goal. Resist the temptation to cram multiple offers or calls-to-action onto one page. When visitors have too many options, they often get overwhelmed and end up taking no action at all.
Instead, decide on the key action you want visitors to take on your page. Maybe it’s signing up for your email list, starting a free trial, or making a purchase. Every element of your landing page should be laser-focused on persuading visitors to take that specific action.
Having a single goal allows you to craft a clear, compelling message that speaks directly to your target audience. You can tailor your headline, subheadline, visuals, and call-to-action to perfectly match the needs and desires of the people you’re trying to convert.
A focused landing page also makes it easier to measure your success and optimize over time. With a single conversion goal, you can clearly track your conversion rate and test different elements to see what resonates best with visitors.
So, as you create your landing page, always keep your one key goal in mind. Make sure every word and visual element works together to persuade visitors to take that one desired action. By staying focused and single-minded, you’ll create a powerful, high-converting page that drives real results for your business.
Designing for Conversion
The visual design of your landing page plays a crucial role in guiding visitors’ attention and persuading them to take action. Here are some key design principles to keep in mind:
- Color: Use color strategically to highlight important elements and create a visual hierarchy. Make your CTA button a contrasting color that stands out from the rest of the page. Use bold, bright colors for key information you want visitors to notice.
- Whitespace: Don’t be afraid of empty space on your page. Whitespace helps create visual breathing room and makes your content more readable. Use plenty of whitespace around your headline, subheadline, and CTA to make them pop.
- Contrast: Create visual contrast between different sections of your page to guide visitors’ eyes. Use alternating background colors, borders, or patterns to clearly delineate each section and make your page easy to scan.
- Typography: Choose fonts that are easy to read and match your brand personality. Use a large, bold font for your headline and subheadline. Keep your body copy at a readable size, around 16px or larger.
- Directional Cues: Use visual cues like arrows, lines, or images of people looking/pointing to direct visitors’ attention to your CTA. Subtle visual cues can greatly impact where people focus and what they do next.
By strategically using color, whitespace, contrast, typography, and directional cues, you can create a landing page that looks great and guides visitors toward your desired action. Remember, every design choice should have a purpose and contribute to your overall conversion goal.
Writing Copy That Converts
To create a high-converting landing page, your copy needs to be laser-focused on your target audience and the benefits they care about most. Here are some tips for writing compelling, persuasive copy:
- Know Your Audience: Before you write a single word, deeply understand your target customer. What are their pain points, goals, and desires? What motivates them to take action? Use this insight to inform every aspect of your copy.
- Focus on Benefits: Don’t just list the features of your product or service. Explain how those features will improve your customers’ lives. Paint a vivid picture of the benefits they’ll experience by taking action on your page.
- Use Customer Language: Use the words and phrases your target audience uses to describe their challenges and goals. Mirror their language to create an instant connection and show that you understand them.
- Keep It Simple: Avoid jargon, buzzwords, and overly complicated language. Keep your sentences short and your paragraphs concise. Make your copy easy to read and understand, even for skimmers.
- Tell a Story: Use storytelling to make your landing page copy more engaging and memorable. Share a relatable customer story or paint a before-and-after picture of life with your product. Stories help people emotionally connect with your message.
- Address Objections: Anticipate the reasons why someone might hesitate to take action and address those objections head-on in your copy. Use social proof, guarantees, or FAQs to overcome common concerns.
- Create Urgency: Give visitors a reason to take action now rather than later. Use time-sensitive offers, scarcity tactics, or emphasize the cost of inaction to create a sense of urgency.
- Test and Optimize: Don’t assume your first draft is perfect. Test different headlines, benefit statements, and calls to action to see what resonates best with your audience. Use A/B testing to continually optimize your copy over time.
By writing clear, compelling copy that speaks directly to your target audience’s needs and desires, you’ll create a landing page that informs and persuades visitors to take action. Remember, every word on your page should have a purpose and contribute to your overall conversion goal.
High Converting Landing Page FAQs
Q: What is a landing page? A: A landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign. It’s where a visitor “lands” after clicking on a link in an email, ads from Google, Bing, social media, or similar places on the web. A high converting landing page converts a landing page visitor into a buyer or subscriber at a high rate.
Successful landing pages convert visitors into leads or customers by encouraging them to take a specific action, such as filling out a form, making a purchase, or signing up for a newsletter. Landing pages are designed to be focused and clutter-free, with a clear call-to-action (CTA) that stands out and guides the visitor toward the desired action.
Unlike a website’s homepage, which typically provides general information about a company or organization, a landing page is tailored to a specific campaign or offer. It should have a compelling headline, persuasive copy, and relevant visuals that work together to convince the visitor to take the next step.
By creating dedicated landing pages for different campaigns or offers, marketers can better target their messages and track the effectiveness of their efforts. This allows them to optimize their campaigns over time and improve their return on investment (ROI).
Q: Why are landing pages important? A: Landing pages are designed with a single focus or goal, known as a call to action (CTA), making them an excellent tool for increasing conversion rates and lowering the cost of acquiring a lead or sale.
Q: What makes a landing page effective? A: An effective landing page clearly articulates the value proposition, has a compelling design and copy, addresses customer pain points, and has a strong CTA that stands out.
Q: How do I know if my landing page is successful? A: Success can be measured by conversion rate, which is the percentage of visitors who take the desired action. Other metrics include time on page, bounce rate, and the quality of the leads generated.
Q: Can I use my homepage as a landing page? A: While you can, it’s not recommended. Homepages are typically designed to serve multiple purposes and cater to various user intents, which can dilute the effectiveness of a single, focused CTA.
Q: How much content should be on a landing page? A: The amount of content should be enough to convey the value and address potential questions without overwhelming the visitor. The key is to keep the content focused on the main goal and to make it easy for visitors to convert.
Q: How often should I test and update my landing page? A: Continuously. Regular testing and updating based on performance metrics and user feedback can help optimize the landing page for better conversion rates over time.
