Creating a landing page isn’t rocket science—but it does take effort to make an effective one.
High converting landing pages encourage customers to take action. That requires going beyond simply designing something that “looks good.”
So how can you demystify the process and unleash your landing page, to the amazement of the watching world?
Keep reading, and we’ll lay it out for you.
Building your foundation: What is a landing page?
The goal of a great landing page is to increase conversion rates in order to reach your marketing or business growth goals. A landing page can be your homepage, or another page within your taxonomy, or it can be a standalone page created for a specific campaign, sale, or product.
When it comes to a landing page vs. a homepage or other pages your visitors find through a search engine, like sales pages, people often get confused.
It all comes down to how they find your page and why the page exists in the first place. People often find homepages through word of mouth or social media, while landing pages are often found organically, using keywords and high-ranking search results.
Each page has its own purpose: some are to help inform, others act as a gateway to the content or offer your brand is presenting but in the end, a landing page usually exists for one reason only: to convert.
Here’s one of the best landing pages examples I have seen. It’s for Nigella Lawson, the famous chef.
It’s actually carrying two conversion goals in one simple design:
(1) First, it’s promoting her tour, an intimate evening with Nigella Lawson. It contains a simple headline, a brief description, and a strong CTA.
(2) Underneath is another call to action, this one for looking up recipes, which is why many people probably come to her site in the first place.
It contains all of the effective elements of good landing page design, which we’ll get to. But before we do, let’s talk about how a landing page benefits your company.
Let’s touch on some benefits of effective landing pages:
There are a few benefits of effective landing pages, beyond increased conversions.
1. Getting SEO Ranking – Landing pages are crafted to target a specific set of search terms. Paying to promote your landing page means they can be promoted using Google Adwords among other channels to help boost its visibility. Both of these move the landing page up in ranking and get your product, promotion, or sale in front of people searching for similar topics.
2. Promoting an Upcoming Product or Sale – A landing page focuses on one promotion, product or sale. It lives outside of your site’s taxonomy and exists solely to get one message across. This is good in a few ways:
- It moves one specific sales or marketing goal to the foreground for higher conversion
- It gives you the opportunity to isolate and track the success of a particular product, goal or set of keywords.
3. Make the Buying/Subscribing Process More Efficient – A high converting landing page acts simply as a portal to move visitors down the funnel more efficiently. Rather than people stumbling upon your CTA somewhere in your right rail or on your homepage, they find it right away on the landing page and move on to subscribe, sign up, buy or join.
Pro tip: Below is an example of how using a trust badge below the CTA button on a landing page can help increase conversions by as much as 35%.
Building good landing pages might be simple, but it ain’t easy
It’s important to note that there’s no standard manual on the creation of a perfect landing page. What works for your brand will likely not work for another.
Landing pages that convert are as different as the people looking at them. Each one has a different call to action to drive, a different reader in mind, a different product or service to offer, and a different niche to address.
For example, consider these three scenarios:
- One landing page is selling shorts to marathon runners.
- Another landing page is inviting in-house marketers to a two-day conversion conference in San Diego.
- A third landing page is asking cannabis users to take a short quiz.
The page design that works for any of these three is unlikely to work for either of the other two.
That’s because there’s an incredible amount of variation among their audience, purpose, intent, product, angle, focus, industry, niche, perception, buy-in, cost, messaging, value proposition, and testimonial approach – to name just a few!
So one size clearly does not fit all.
But there are unifying elements that characterize highly successful landing pages. No matter what your brand is selling, we want to give you the closest thing to a magic bullet as possible with these tips.
Despite the huge potential for variation, some things do remain constant. High-converting landing pages often have these characteristics in common so pay attention so you can start racking up quick wins today!
How to create a landing page that converts?
You’ve decided that building a landing page is the right move for your brand. But before you begin putting the necessary components together, your team needs to determine what you want it to accomplish. Are you looking to grow your email list? Promote a new product? Promote a discount on a subscription service?
Once you have your goal, think about what your message will be. How can your offering — whether that be a subscription for content, an email list, a service or a product — solve someone’s problem?
Then you can start your keyword research. What do people type in when they’re searching for solutions to the problem that your sale, service, product or newsletter can solve?
Once you have your goal, message, and keywords, you can start putting your landing page together. Start thinking about the elements you want to include: think some combination of a CTA, a sales pitch video, or maybe a form users can enter information into.
Over the years, we’ve identified nine common elements that all effective landing pages share and we’ve written about them below to help improve the impact they can have on your brand’s conversion rate during different stages of your buyer’s path to purchase.
Element 1: A killer headline
Headline copy is where the process begins — interest, attention, and understanding.
It’s what compels a visitor to stay and learn more about what you’re offering — or not.
Here’s what it needs to accomplish:
- The headline should grab the reader’s attention.
- The headline should tell the reader what the product or service is all about.
- The headline should be short. Never make it more than 20 words, and preferably limit it to 10.
It’s also worth noting that if your headline complements an image that explains the product or service, then you don’t need to go into quite as much detail in the copy.
Now that we’ve established the basics of an effective headline, let’s jump into some examples of companies who’ve written them well.
First, take a look at this landing page for a popular UX design tool.
The headline is short, sweet, and gets to the point quickly. This product is clearly built for teams.
If a visitor relates to or is inspired by InVision’s bold statement, this will pique their interest and make them want to learn more.
Next, take a look at this headline from Netflix. It doesn’t attempt to be clever, but identifies exactly what the service is intended to provide, and what action users are encouraged to take. Plus it doesn’t hurt to offer a nice incentive/perk to increase the chances of collecting more emails.
As soon as a visitor lands on this page, they know what the company is offering.
Mission accomplished. Use the examples above as inspiration when creating landing pages.
Our next example, from MailChimp, does a nice job of summarizing the company’s main goal, instead of a specific product or tool.
This is another effective approach for companies that offer a variety of services.
Of course, landing pages for individual services can be more specific. But if you’re aiming to create a page that sparks visitors’ interest in your company as a whole, naming a high-level goal is often the best way to do so.
In this case, MailChimp uses a simple, declarative statement to democratize its product and emphasize its importance.
Element 2: Persuasive subheads
The next element you need to create an effective landing page is the subheadline.
If the headline makes the visitor look, then the subheadline should make them stay. Together, these pieces of copy make up the one-two punch of a landing page’s power.
Here’s what to keep in mind as you create yours:
- Normally, the persuasive subheadline is positioned directly underneath the main headline.
- The subheadline should have some element of persuasiveness.
- The subheadline can go into slightly more depth and detail than the main headline.
For example, take a look at Slack’s homepage:
Its main headline, “Where Work Happens,” is sufficiently concise and attention-grabbing.
You could argue the subheadline is a bit on the wordier side but Slack, in this instance may be an outlier seeing as it’s such a big company that many reading the landing page copy will give them the benefit of the doubt. Regardless of the size of the company, the subheadline in this example encourages readers can learn about the platform. If their team needs to undertake any of the listed tasks, it’s clear that they benefit from using it.
And if that’s the case, they’ll be much more likely to click that “Get Started” button than they would after reading the headline alone.
It’s also worth noting that the explanation doesn’t always have to come after the page’s most compelling statement.
HelpDesk, for example, flips their headline and subheadline on the following landing page.
The page’s main headline, as indicated by the larger font and central positioning, is “A delightful customer experience.”
Although “A help desk for teams that insist on” is placed above that main headline, it’s clearly the subheadline. It’s much smaller and not featured as prominently.
Still, it elaborates on the headline’s general idea by explaining who the platform is for.
The position switch seems to be intentional. Taken together, it forms a complete idea of what HelpDesk offers.
Plus, with the way it’s presented, visitors’ attention is first directed to that emotionally loaded phrase: “delightful customer experience.”
If you try to rearrange the information on the page to place that phrase before the subheadline, the explanation doesn’t come across nearly as streamlined.
And considering that the only reason to do this would be to meet some standard idea of how a headline and subheadline should be arranged, there’s no reason to.
So as you write your landing page copy, remember that you don’t necessarily have to follow a specific formula.
Arrange your content in a way that efficiently explains what you’re offering, and you’ll be much more successful in connecting with readers.
Asana actually combines simple copy with fantastically simple subheadline text as well while targeting the user (in this instance product managers) that most benefits from using their product all at once. Our hat’s off to you.
Element 3: Pictures
Visual content is an essential component of landing pages that work.
In fact, the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. This means that visitors will be affected by the images on your landing page immediately.
So as you select and place your images, remember that
- The pictures should be large.
- The pictures should be relevant to your product or service. If you are selling a physical product, it is essential that your landing page contains an image of the product.
- If you are selling a service, the primary purpose of the image should be to grab attention and demonstrate relevance to the visitor.
- The pictures need to be high-quality.
And as you determine what to include, keep the focus on high-quality, relevant visuals. This is not the place to feature stock photographs or last-minute Photoshop jobs.
After all, if your images are the first thing a visitor processes, they have the potential to shape that visitor’s impression of your brand before they even read your copy — and you need that impression to be a good one.
For example, Mixpanel uses images on the following landing page to show the functionality of their product and to help explain it.
These images are fun and attention-grabbing.
Plus, they give potential customers a sense of what using the platform is like, and highlight its user-friendliness.
For software and other tools, screenshots like this are a great choice.
For companies that sell products, often showcasing the products in the landing page is one of the strongest moves you can make.
Take Great Jones for instance. While many have been doing a lot more cooking during the pandemic and looking to upgrade their gear, the landing page taps into the inspiration behind many of our ideal kitchen dreams.
This landing page works because of the:
- Use of Color: Great Jones’ site is colorful just like its cookware. The use of bold colors quickly draws visitors in and makes the cookware stand out.
- Prominent CTA: You can’t miss this giant yellow CTA and bold font $100 Off coupon. Who wouldn’t want $100 off these gorgeous pots?
Even before a potential customer takes the time to read about how these products might be different from others like them, they have a sense of what using them would be like.
This essentially gives potential customers a visual understanding of what they stand to gain. And that’s an approach that works for many product and service-based businesses.
For example, Shutterstock sells images — so it’s only natural that they would have a landing page with a large, high-quality photo.
Even before someone takes the time to read about what this product does, they have a sense of what using it would be like.
This essentially gives potential customers a visual understanding of what they stand to gain. And that’s an
After all, who would want to purchase photos for their website from a company that didn’t have a great one on their own site?
Probably not too many people.
It’s also important to remember that because many people will base their opinion of your brand on your landing page, you should view it as a chance to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
For example, PictureU, like Shutterstock, also offers photos for marketing purposes. So it makes sense that they feature large images on their landing pages, as well.
Both of these sites do a nice job with their landing page visuals. But if one of them didn’t, and potential buyer viewed both, which one do you think they’d choose for their image needs?
That’s a pretty easy call.
Element 4: An explanation
We’ve mentioned it a bit in the sections above but we wanted to add some color around the explanation portion of your landing pages and how you can nail them to boost conversion behavior. Above all, your landing page needs to make what you’re offering perfectly clear.
If a potential customer doesn’t understand what your product or service is about, you’ve lost them. So a straightforward explanation is crucial.
If your landing page is for a simple product or service, you might be able to get away with your headline and subheadline being the only copy.
But regardless of how you choose to approach your explanation, here’s what to keep in mind as you write it:
- Your explanation can be integrated with your headline, or completely separate.
- An explanation should be benefit-oriented. In fact, it should tease benefits while explaining value. Explanations are functional, but functionality should be tilted in favor of the user.
Your explanation doesn’t necessarily need to be separate from your headline and subheadline.
If you think back to the examples in the previous sections, most of them don’t have an additional paragraph or chunk of text to elaborate on what they’re offering.
So instead of thinking of your explanation as a standalone element, consider it more of a goal that your page needs to accomplish.
Taken in isolation, each of the elements on your landing page might not explain your product or service. But if, as a composite, they create a clear picture, your page accomplishes what it needs to do.
That’s why for most landing pages, your best bet is to keep things straightforward and simple. Depending on the preferences of your audience, you might consider making your copy “fun”, “witty” or “sarcastic” — and if that resonates with your target users, run with it. But your top priority should always be clarity.
You can also rely on images to help or enhance your explanation. For example, check out this landing page from Webflow:
The headline and subheadline here are compelling but might leave readers wondering what “production-ready experiences without coding” actually looks like.
With this landing page, Webflow does a great job of showing rather than telling. Being able to view Webflow’s tool in action gives potential customers a clear idea of not only what it does, but how their user experience will be.
This is much easier to understand than a text-based explanation, and for most visitors, much more interesting, too.
Element 5: Something about pain
Here’s the psychology behind pain: Humans are wired to avoid pain. Every product or service can help to alleviate pain in some way.
Deep discovery during the early stages of building a sales relationship with your target users are where your brand can uncover real pain points your solution was designed to help overcome. If you can cause a potential customer to think about their pain, they will subconsciously seek relief from that pain, and thereby be more likely to convert.
Here’s how to accomplish that on your landing page:
- Mention what someone will lose, not just what they will gain. According to the theory of loss aversion, we are more likely to anticipate the pain of losing something than we are to feel the pleasure of gaining something of equal value. In other words, it feels good to get $50, but the pain that we feel from losing $50 is twice as intense as the pleasure we received from gaining the same sum.
- Consider implementing pain references in your testimonials, as well as in the remainder of the copy. Since pain is a powerful human element, real human testimonials are often very effective at conveying this pain in a trustworthy way.
- Be sure to relieve the pain. Your product or service is provided as an antidote to the pain. Don’t present a problem without providing a solution!
Essentially, you want to illustrate a pain point your reader might be experiencing. Then, draw the conclusion that your product or service provides the answer to that pain.
For example, let’s say I have a landing page designed to persuade people not to lose out on search traffic.
To kick things off, I start off with a simple interactive element – a quiz:
Many of us can relate to the challenge of ranking higher on Google. By highlighting that challenge and offering a fun diagnostic tool, I immediately establish a connection with my visitors.
Element 6: Mention something about pleasure
Just as humans are pain-avoiding machines, we are also very focused on pleasure-seeking as well. Every human is motivated by the desire to gain pleasure, which can have a variety of forms.
There are two main ways you can incorporate this element into your landing page:
- Show how pleasure is a by-product of having your product or service.
- Show how your product meets an emotional need beyond its functional role.
To illustrate how this might work, imagine that you’re selling a potential customer on why they should purchase an ongoing gym membership. On the surface, you’re selling access to the machines, trainers and classes.
But you’re not just selling access to the gym’s equipment and its amenities. You’re selling confidence, self-esteem, freedom and joy.
The same principle can be applied to all different products and services. You just need to expand your mind to understand the underlying value your products or services bring to the customers that purchase them.
If you sell athleisure apparel, you’re not just selling something that goes on a customer’s body. You’re selling respect, trendiness, security, confidence and fulfillment.
The key here is to present your product in such a way that highlights how it brings emotional and psychological pleasure.
We all desire to be accepted, loved, appreciated, recognized, honored, compensated, admired, etc. Figure out which emotional craving your product or service can help to satisfy.
And if you don’t consider your product “emotional”?
You can still make this tactic work.
To illustrate this point, we’ll take a look at a landing page from Mixpanel. The company sells A/B testing services. Not all that emotionally powerful, right?
In the hands of some marketers, sure.
But they use the following effective landing page to inspire a sense of wonder and surprise.
Humans have a psychological proclivity for surprise. It scratches an emotional itch. That’s exactly why this headline is perfect for speaking to the brain’s pleasure center.
Now, take a look at this page from Reputation.com.
The company helps people gain back their reputation — and it’s easy to see the emotional connection in their headline, subheadline, and CTA.
Element 7: Methods of contact
Is your business legit?
We encourage all vetted brands to be loud about it! You’ve earned our verified trust badge so now it’s time to make that clear on your landing page for all to see!
Part of being a verified brand means being very transparent about displaying customer centric policies. Some of the most persuasive landing pages have multiple methods of contact, including a phone number, a physical address, an email address, and a contact form.
Some even have popups where a live chat customer service reps asks me if they can help.
These go a long way to help strengthen my trust in the company and to eliminate any friction in the conversion funnel.
Here’s what to keep in mind as you add contact information to your landing page:
- At the most basic level, provide some assurance that you are a real company. Usually, this involves a physical address and a phone number. If you’re looking to compliment your efforts, displaying our trust badge can also help your brand convey the level of trust and assurances you crave without breaking the bank. Sometimes little symbols can help make the necessary connection required to close sales that might be on the fence.
- Live chats featured in a popup can be helpful, but not a must-have. Using live chat is somewhat controversial. If you insist on using one, do your homework, and make sure you have some convincing reasons for keeping it there.
Below is an example from Intercom where one of the representatives hopped into a chat with me to help me navigate solutions to my questions.
Some chat tools can be personalized to send different messages depending on whether you are a first-time browser or a repeat visitor. This is another, even more powerful way to tailor your landing page experience and boost conversions:
As another example, bra seller ThirdLove has a live chat button that follows you as you scroll down the page:
If a visitor is hesitant about converting, they can easily chat with a representative and have their concerns addressed.
But live chat isn’t the only way to make your company accessible to visitors.
For example, this large contact form on the TasksEveryDay landing page makes it easy to get in touch with the company with any questions or concerns.
Element 8: Shoppers love a guarantee
A guarantee, regardless of what it is or how it’s presented, can help people feel reassured while on your landing page.
In fact, simply showing the word itself improves the likelihood of a conversion.
Here’s what to keep in mind as you create one for your landing page:
- Guarantees can take many forms. Choose a type of guarantee that works for your business type, and state this guarantee on your landing page.
- In the absence of any explicit product guarantee (e.g., satisfaction, money back, etc.), you can provide a different type of guarantee: e.g., “100% No Spam Guarantee.”
- Position your guarantee statement close to the CTA. This proximity will help the potential customer receive a final bit of assurance, and be ready to convert.
As you write your guarantee, you don’t necessarily need to delve into the legalities of it. Just say it. The point is that you have a guarantee, and the customer knows it. With Consumers Digest, you can feel at ease knowing we’ve vetted the brands that display our trust marks and that means their guarantees are backed by us!
Notarize.com’s money-back guarantee just underneath the CTA button is likely extremely compelling for potential customers who are on the fence about trying out an electronic notary public.
But your guarantee doesn’t necessarily need to be this extreme. For example, take a look at the reassurance Help Scout includes at the bottom of their landing page:
Although it doesn’t necessarily give an explicit guarantee, they do provide a level of comfort that’s similar to a guarantee. The award and shield icon are also reminiscent of trust badges, further enhancing this assurance.
Element 9: A powerful call to action is a must!
When creating a high converting landing page, the call to action is the most important element of them all.
This is the element that the rest of the content on the page is designed to drive visitors’ attention to. It’s what ultimately converts visitors into customers. So make it big. Generally speaking, the bigger, the better.
Strive to make your copy compelling. The actual CTA copy is the most significant copy on your entire landing page. Don’t use the word “submit.” Instead, use something explosive, exciting, and persuasive.
Use a button. People have been trained to expect the CTA to be a button. Do not attempt to force back years of expectation by using something other than a button. Stick with the tried and true tactics. People intuitively know what to do when they see a button.
Use a contrasting color. Your landing page, your company, your stylebook, and your designers all have certain colors that they like. Your landing page has a color scheme.
Now, whatever color you use on your CTA, make it different. At the most basic level, your CTA needs to possess color. And, to make it stand out, that color needs to contrast from the other colors on the screen. Contrasting colors help to attract the eye and compel the click.
Bonus points if you can incorporate graphics that draw the eye to your CTA!
In the example below, Tubik did a great job adding the graphic where both people in it are literally looking and pointing to the CTA. The user’s attention will follow suit:
This provides a seamless and logical flow, both from a design and cognitive perspective.
Ad tech software company Nanigans takes a similar approach, positioning their CTA so it contrasts with the other sections of their page.
It’s positioned brilliantly, and the “Reimagine retargeting” button copy is simple, yet inspiring.
And positioning is an essential consideration for the CTAs on each of your landing pages. It can make or break whether someone clicks them.
For example, the high-contrast colors and hard-to-miss form placement on MeetEdgar’s landing page make their CTA extremely eye-catching.
This likely earns the page a decent conversion rate.
Sprout Social has another great example of a high-contrast CTA button.
Notice how this button is a contrasting green, which stands out from the grays and purples of its surroundings. It’s big, bold, and impossible to ignore. That’s exactly what you should aim to achieve with your CTAs.
Closing thoughts to leave you with
A high converting landing page is a place where all your efforts come to fruition. This is the place where customers click, sometimes they buy, and where you earn revenue.
Fortunately, creating a powerful and high-converting landing page isn’t rocket science. Anyone can do it but like we said in the very beginning, just because anyone can create them, doesn’t mean they’re effective just because they exist.
Start by implementing each of the 9 essentials in this post and remember to add social proof wherever you can to instill trust with your potential customers. Do these things well and you’ll be well on your way to engaging your visitors at scale and converting them into customers.
