Landing Page Best Practices for High Conversion Rates

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a single web page that stands apart from the rest of your website. It's intended for a specific use, focusing on only one type of action you want visitors to take.

Visitors land on these pages after clicking from another source, such as an email, social media post or advertisement, and organic search and display ads. Unlike a regular web page, landing pages have a single call to action rather than encouraging potential customers to learn more about your business and explore multiple pages.

There are many types of landing pages, but the two most common:

1. Click-through landing pages: A click-through landing page provides visitors with the information they need about an offer to make it to the next step in the journey, ultimately progressing them through the marketing funnel to the point of purchase.
2. Lead generation landing pages: Lead generation landing pages are designed to gather information from visitors through a form. These pages typically have no links or navigation and offer something in return for the customer's information, like an e-guide or discount.

How does a landing page impact digital marketing?

Landing page and SERP are relatively new terms, both born of the digital age. SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page which refers to the page search engines like Google and Bing display after a user types in a query.

A landing page is a standalone page written for the purpose of getting a consumer to go a step further by signing up for email notifications or taking advantage of a free offer.

If the landing page succeeds in getting them to do this, it opens the door to their contact information, so you can send them more information that may entice them to sign up for a service or purchase an item.

A SERP rarely opens to a single landing page, but rather to a choice that can span several screens of landing pages.

Therefore, as a digital marketing content writer, your challenge is to create a landing page that stands out from the rest. Research has shown that on average, consumers give 52 seconds to any one page before moving to the next if it doesn't tell them how the product will benefit them.

If it appears that they have to wade through a lot of extraneous information to find out its benefits, odds are they'll decide in a split second that it's not worth their time.

Details about the business and all its products and services belong on the website. A landing page should only feature a select amount of data that persuades the searcher to follow through on the intended action.

The benefits you should highlight will depend on the type of business and the sector it serves. But there are several high-converting landing page best practices that apply to all sectors.

8 landing page best practices

Whether you're trying to move visitors through the marketing funnel or gathering information to support sales, your landing page must convince them to take action. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. A landing page must sell with quality content and design elements that entice users to take action. Here are a few landing page best practices to help your efforts become more successful.

1. Have a great offer

All landing pages require you to give something to visitors in exchange for them completing the desired action. For example, you might offer a deal on your e-commerce website with a click-through landing page. However, with a lead generation landing page, you might offer a free e-guide or consultation in exchange for customer information, allowing them to enter the sales funnel while feeling like they're getting something out of it.

To determine the best offer that will increase conversions, consider your customers and their behaviors. For example, if your customers are shoppers, they will most likely convert into paying customers for a discount on their purchase. Meanwhile, leads may want access to important information that they find valuable, such as an educational guide, case studies, or tools.

2. Focus your headline on benefits

Your landing page isn't the place to showcase why you're the best company. Instead, use it as an opportunity to highlight the benefits of your product or services, including the offer. The headline is your first opportunity to tell visitors what they can expect on the rest of the landing page. If the headline isn't immediately clear or relevant to them, they'll leave the landing page.

To write an engaging headline, consider your messaging. All the landing page copy should match visitor expectations to let them know they're in the right spot and give them a reason for performing the desired action, like filling out a form.

3. Match it to your ad

Landing page copy shouldn't just align with your brand messaging and the offer; it must match the ad campaigns in some way. Of course, you don't have to use the same headline you used for your digital ad or email, but you must let visitors know they're in the right spot. Your land page design elements should also be similar to provide a seamless user experience and meet visitor expectations.

4. Add a clear call to action

A clear call to action (CTA) will let visitors know what you want from them, making it easy for them to figure out if they want to complete the action. Of course, not all visitors will convert, but if you have a CTA that stands out and can help customers understand what they need to do, they're more likely to do it.

A CTA button must be clear in both copy and landing page design. Of course, you can have a simple "submit" button, but you can make it even more engaging by adding a microcopy that's more casual or professional based on your target audience.

Simply changing the "submit" button to "let's talk" on your forms can help you attract more casual leads while making your brand seem more friendly and approachable. Additionally, you should consider the design of your button by using contrasting colors to make it stand out from other visual elements.

5. Optimize for search engines

Many visitors will come to your landing page from ads, email blasts, social media, and other types of marketing. However, that doesn't mean you should forgo search engine optimization. Optimizing your landing page gives you more opportunities to convert because you'll be able to bring more people to it.

6. Include social proof

Word-of-mouth is still one of the best ways to bring customers to your business. Social proof, including reviews and testimonials, can help build trust with potential customers who may have never heard of your business and don't yet know whether they can trust you.

No matter how great your offering is or how many benefits you list on your landing page, visitors are more likely to trust the word of a human rather than a company. Using testimonials from real customers can help you start building relationships with potential customers early in the process, allowing you to convert them faster.

7. Remove navigation

Your website has navigation to allow customers to browse your products and service offerings while giving them the opportunity to learn more about you. Landing pages don't need navigation because it only has one focus– to convert visitors into paying customers or leads.

Any navigation that may distract potential customers or force them off the landing page with your offer can prevent you from achieving your goals.

8. Test everything

Even if you use every landing page design best practice you've learned about, you may still get lackluster results because every business is different, and you must cater to the needs of your audience. Every aspect of your landing page, including every design element, headline, and word, can be A/B tested, allowing you to learn from your successes and failures. A/B testing can help you convert as many people as possible.

However, you should only test one element at a time and allow your landing page to get enough views to help you form an opinion. A/B testing allows you to make informed decisions based on real data, so we recommend testing everything until you've found the right mix of copy and landing page design elements to improve conversion rates.

Landing page best practices examples

Not every successful entrepreneur is a professional website or landing page designer, but you can learn from the most successful companies by studying their landing pages and finding elements that you believe can help you convert visitors. You can also browse Mailchimp's landing page templates to find pre-designed templates that already use best practices for landing pages. Here are a few landing page best practices examples in action to spark your creativity.

Airbnb

Airbnb's landing page is geared towards individuals looking for a place to stay, offering them the opportunity to find a location immediately. The page also uses social proof, allowing potential users to find out what real guests are saying about their rentals, along with the benefits of using their services to find your next getaway location.

BarkBox

BarkBox's landing page immediately hits you with an offer to let you know how you can become a customer immediately. The headline "Get your dog's tail waggin" also aligns with BarkBox's brand messaging with a playful tone. The landing page also uses data, stating that over 2 million dogs have been served by BarkBox, giving visitors a reason to believe that this dog toy and treat subscription box company delivers high-quality products.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a project management tool used by companies of all types to manage workloads. On ClickUp's landing page, they have a clear headline that clearly states what the software is used for. They also list their customers, all of which are internationally recognized brands.

The goal of this landing page is to get users to sign up with an office that allows you to get started for free with no credit card required, giving potential users a significant reason to experiment with the software before making an investment.

Develop the best landing page for your company

The main thing to understand about a landing page is that it is created to serve only one purpose: to gather sufficient data and contact data to generate a lead.

A landing page that succeeds in this pursuit is known as a converting landing page. And while the success of any digital marketing campaign starts with the landing page, how successful it will depend on using eye-grabbing vibrant graphics but more importantly on the incentive you use to persuade the searcher to yield contact information.

That dangling carrot may be a monthly newsletter, a discount coupon, a complimentary sample, or further information. But that's only part of the equation.

Successful digital marketers offer several landing page recommendations, but unless you word it to appeal to a specific type of intended customer, in other words, your target audience, you are dooming it to a high bounce rate.

A bounce rate is the percentage of people who land on a page and exit immediately without performing any action or advancing to the business's next webpage.

Retail and e-commerce websites have the lowest bounce rates - 20 to 45% while landing pages have the highest, - an astounding 60 to 90%.

If you're wondering why 90% of searchers immediately scroll down to the next SERP on the screen, it's because the content creator did not take time to decide on a specific target audience.

Understand your target audience

When you create a website you're trying to provide a general education to a general audience so you want to create a multi-page site where people can go to learn all about your company and all its products. The purpose of a website is to reach out to all and everyone.

When you craft a landing page you have to narrow your focus to appeal to a particular audience and its specific needs.

So whereas the website talks to the general population, your landing page should have a more intimate conversation with a particular segment of the population that has a specific need that your business can fill if only they reach out to you by responding to your call to action (CTA).

But first, you have to decide who this target audience is. And if it turns out there are several segments you can serve, you may need to design a different landing page for each.

This may seem like a lot of work, but when you consider that you can increase your conversion rates by targeting your pages correctly, it's well worth the effort.

First the Gathering

Since your target audience is the specific group most likely to be interested in your services or products, your first challenge is to pinpoint them since they comprise your target audience.

You may want to consider broad demographic categories like age, gender, location, or income, but you'll do better if you can Venn Diagram into subcategories or subcultures.

Depending on what your product is, these subcultures may include those whose occupations, hobbies, entertainment preferences, or whose participation in, or interest in sports indicates a need.

Then You Divide

And just as important you need to decide who doesn't belong in your target audience because devoting time and effort to create landing pages to segments of the population that do not yield results is a waste of time and money as exemplified in the bounce rate example above.

So once you've compiled your target audience your next step is to weed out those who, while they may have a general interest in your offerings, aren't likely to act now.

Your immediate focus should be on designing a landing page for those individuals who seem to be in a position to purchase a product you deal in such as a specific vehicle, type of electronic device, or article of clothing, in the immediate future.

These are consumers who have submitted queries, responded to other CTAs, or visited a trade show and filled out a questionnaire.

As for the others, you don't want to forget about them, just put them on your to-do list for a landing page of their own, one that makes use of different landing page design tips for conversion.

Create a user-friendly design

Once you have ascertained your target audience you need to design the User interface (UI) design which is the face of your landing page.

Since it is impossible to know the level of computer use experience of each member of your target audience, your best bet is to keep it simple and leave out all the bells and whistles. This way, even those with little experience online will find it easier to understand and respond to your CTA.

And while simplicity is of prime importance in creating an easily accessible, friendly- to- all UX design (user experience design), other factors should be given thought.

You need to decide on a suitable typeface, one that is colorful and eye-catching but also has strategically placed white spaces for maximum readability and comprehension.

In addition, the navigation should be intuitive so make sure any buttons you want the user to click on stand out either by virtue of color or style.

These by the way should be kept to a minimum so that the CTA button can be the star of the show. And if you include any forms to be filled out, the kiss principle (keep it simple stupid) is in order. Ask only for essential information and make all the fields to be filled in clearly visible.

Minimalism should be the rule since it constitutes one of the most important conversion landing page best practices.

Making this important page complex can be off-putting to even the most seasoned user and can result in the consumer leaving the landing page and going with a more user-friendly UX design.

Test and optimize the landing page

After you have finished creating a landing page, geared it to suit the right target audience, and tweaked the UI design to ensure a UX suitable for all levels of computer expertise you may think it's time to launch it.

However, you'll have better results if you take the time to make some adjustments in order to optimize its chances of generating leads and ultimately converting browsers into customers.

Your first step in landing page optimization may be to test it on yourself and the other members of your digital marketing team.

Click on any videos and photos you include. Do they increase the load times? If so, impatient browsers are likely to bow out at this point, so unless they're absolutely necessary, you should consider scrapping them and finding a better home for them on one of your web pages.

The next step up the ladder of landing page recommendations and conversion landing page best practices is to put it through a round or two of A/B testing.

If you're unfamiliar with A/B testing it's a process where you take the landing page and tweak a few elements like color, design, typeface, and the presence or absence of landing page images and videos. Then send the original to an A list of consumers and a B list to others.

Doing so enables you to compare the results of each, and perhaps make a few more adjustments before sending them to alternate lists of people. When you find the one that results in a maximum number of conversions, make that the one you use.

Measure and analyze the performance

Even after you have launched the landing page that produced the best results, it's always possible it won't bring in as many conversions as you thought.

In this case, it's time to measure and analyze the page's online performance in order to see where it's missing the mark.

Once you know, it's time to incorporate landing page SEO tips such as using social media to attract unpaid traffic to the landing page. Just be sure to include target keywords, so you can measure its effects if any on SEO rankings.

Maximize your landing page's potential

There are several things that go into making sure your landing pages will have an optimal effect on the success of your digital marketing endeavors.

The first of course is to put every effort possible into the excellence of its copy. After it is launched the challenge is to keep an eye on it and measure its performance. This is where tools such as those Mailchimp offers can help.

Mailchimp's reporting and analytics can track performance and its AI-assisted monitoring tools can spot and suggest trends you can incorporate into your campaigns.

And once you have launched your campaign and all through its online lifespan Mailchimp's benchmarking feature will let you monitor the business it is driving to your site and compare it to that of your competitors.

And if you're just starting your digital marketing journey. Mailchimp can help you create a UX-friendly landing page. It can also aid in creating SEO-optimized digital ads for use on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels, so you can get your business online and make use of further landing page SEO tips to keep it in the online public eye.