Landing page best practices: How to create a page that converts

Getting people to your website is an ongoing process, and often a challenge. So when they finally land there, the last thing you want is to lose them because they can’t easily find what they want. 

Whatever your marketing goals, well-designed landing pages encourage users to take the next step towards making a purchase, which in turn drives satisfaction and loyalty.

In this article, we’ll look at exactly how you can optimise your landing pages to turn visitors into customers.

What we’ll cover:

– What is a landing page?
– The importance of a high-converting landing page
– Types of landing pages
– What to include on a landing page
– Best practices for optimising landing pages
– Optimising landing pages

What is a landing page?

When a customer clicks on your ad, email or arrives by organic search, you’ve already captured their interest. But that doesn’t mean they are ready to buy or hand over their personal information. 

A landing page creates space for them to explore your products or services in more detail, and find out how you can help. It’s an opportunity for you to win their trust, with relevant content and call to actions (CTAs) that make their life easier. 

A well-designed landing page will drive enquiries, sign-ups and sales with persuasive copy, visuals and a good user experience (UX). Along with your home page, you’ll have product-specific pages that are relevant to different search terms. 

Keep a close eye on conversions to find out how well your landing page is performing, so that you’re able to meet your goals. Find out how to calculate your conversion rate and the tactics to improve it.

The importance of a high-converting landing page

Every brand wants a high-converting landing page, even if they’re not sure how to get there.

By optimising your landing pages, you not only can not not only increase sales but also reduce your customer acquisition and retention costs, and improve brand perceptions. A good conversion rate to aim for is around 5-10%.

Landing pages are optimised with UX in mind. That means they are easy to read, navigate and take action, and are optimised for different devices. Conversions, sales, repeat sales, loyalty and brand advocacy can all follow if you get it right. 

A high-converting landing page can also reduce your bounce rate as customers may interact with the on-page content for longer. However, a high bounce rate isn’t always bad. In fact, it could mean that your landing page was so easy to use and functional that customers didn’t need to stay for long. The key is to measure it against conversions. 

Fortunately, there are plenty of tactics to build a high-converting landing page.

Types of landing pages

A generic landing page is rarely effective. They need to be highly-targeted, so you can meet your campaign goals, as the examples below show.

Click-through landing pages

A click-through landing page is designed to drive potential customers to click onto another page such as a form to fill in for more information, request a call-back or demo.

Not all companies sell products online. Some might be promoting a service or selling intangible assets like software. These big purchases aren’t spur-of-the-moment decisions, so the next stage might be for the visitor to request more information. For low cost items or a typical ecommerce site purchase, visitors can go straight to payment. In fact, it’d be a tad bit frustrating if they didn’t land on check-out. 

Lead generation

Lead generation pages are designed to capture your potential customer’s details like email address, name, mobile number or workplace in a form. In return they get something of value like a downloadable report, discount code, quiz result or template. 

The information is collected so you can nurture customers and target them with the latest news or offers to improve conversions. Once qualified, their details can be passed to the sales team. 

Sales landing pages 

Long-form sales pages contain product details, benefits, reviews, case studies, visuals and compelling copy to convince customers to make a purchase. Short-form sales landing pages are more concise and usually suited to less costly products where customers can make a spur-of-the-moment decision. 

Squeeze landing pages 

Squeeze landing pages, also known as capture pages, are similar to lead generation pages. 

The key difference is visitors usually arrive from an email and the form contains a maximum of two fields – usually a name and email address. They are simpler than lead generation pages, but still offer things like free e-books or discount codes to entice customers to hand over their email address. 

What to include on a landing page

Copy 

The most important aspect of your landing page is the copy. 

It needs to be compelling, grab attention and tell a story so that the value you’re offering is communicated and visitors complete an action. You could include the following:  

• Attention-grabbing headlines 
• Taglines 
• Product descriptions 
• Product benefits 
• Case studies, reviews or testimonials 
• SEO keywords and search terms 
• Compelling call-to-actions

Create a sense of urgency with your CTA using phrases like ‘now’ or ‘limited.’ Words like ‘free’ will also be sure to grab attention, while positive reviews will help to build credibility and trust. UX copywriting is highly user-centric, focusing on customer challenges to boost conversions.

Visuals 

Include visuals to keep visitors engaged and show off your product. 

Keep the design memorable and balanced, but also take into account the UX. It should still be simple to navigate and not overpower any other elements. 

You can include: 

• Hero pictures to welcome visitors 
• Images of products and people 
• Videos 
• Infographics 
• Illustrations 

Form 

Arguably, the most important thing to include is a form – especially where lead generation pages are concerned. 

Create a simple and easy to follow form to improve your chances of customers submitting their details. Only include the critical fields. If you try to extract too much or irrelevant information, customers might not go through with it. 

Best practices for optimising landing pages

Here are 11 landing page best practices to keep you on track: 

• Optimise your landing page for UX 
• Keep forms concise 
• Design it with one focused goal 
• Create an unforgettable yet balanced design 
• Include engaging, relevant and persuasive copy 
• Communicate your value-offering 
• Set up A/B testing 
• Ensure site speed and usability is good
• Include visuals to help with storytelling 
• Make sure it’s primed for search 
• End with a strong CTA

Optimising landing pages

Landing pages are critical to generating leads and sales. 

Whether you’re selling a simple product or long-term software investment, they give you the chance to provide detailed information to ensure your sales goes through and customers feel confident with their purchase. 

You can also gather data to follow up on leads and nurture potential customers. The better your landing page converts, the higher your return on investment (ROI) and revenue too. 

That being said, building a high-converting landing page needs the right level of expertise and know-how. It should take into account your customer’s behaviour and preferences, while being optimised to meet your goals. Speak to Tank for expert CRO support.