What do people see when they land on your website? 

Whether you’re routing website visitors to your homepage or to a unique landing page, you need to design high-converting landing pages that evoke action. 

Anyone can make a landing page. But as a brand, you need to get results, and that means creating the best landing page for your target audience. To do that, you’ll need to nail not only your page offer, but the design and flow of your landing page, too. 

Check out this guide to learn why landing pages matter so much, plus five insider tips to help you create high-converting landing pages for your business. 

What Is a Landing Page and Why Does It Matter?

A landing page is a web page that’s designed to get a response from site visitors. Some businesses use their homepage as a landing page, but it’s better to create a standalone web page if you want to boost conversions. This helps you create specific content tailored to your target audience’s exact needs.

Landing pages are typically one of several touchpoints you have with your customers throughout the buyer’s journey. Every landing page has a different goal, but the ultimate purpose is to bring in more leads and sales. You might ask visitors to sign up for a webinar by filling out a form, or you might ask them to buy an e-commerce product.

You can use landing pages for all kinds of digital marketing campaigns, including: 

• PPC campaigns: You need high-converting landing pages to boost your paid ad ROI. Try creating a unique landing page for each ad group to customize the messaging and skyrocket your conversion rates.  
• Email marketing: Bulk up your email list with effective landing pages. You can create an opt-in landing page that offers a lead magnet in exchange for a subscriber’s email address. It’s that easy. 
• Social media campaigns: Funnel social media leads to owned channels, like your website, to engage more deeply with your followers. Encourage them to read your blog, download case studies, and more. 

If you’re directing traffic to your About page or Product page right now, you’re leaving money on the table. Investing in high-converting landing pages can help with:

• SEO rankings: Did you know that landing pages can have an effect on your SERP position? Search engines take notice when users interact with your content, and a high-converting landing page tells Google that your website is worth visiting. 
• Increased conversions: Who doesn’t want to make more sales? Paired with a solid SEO or PPC campaign, landing pages can increase your lead generation efforts and conversion rates. Since each landing page ties to a single campaign message, you can target very specific keywords, pain points, and benefits in your copywriting that encourage conversions.

• Attribution: Where do your leads come from? Unique landing pages will help you understand which URLs are responsible for the bulk of your results. This allows you to better understand where your potential customers come from. 

Regardless of your goal, you need to optimize your landing pages to get the highest conversion rates possible. The way you design, write, and test your landing pages can have a tremendous impact on your conversion rates — and overall marketing success. 

5 Tips for Creating High-Converting Landing Pages

It isn’t impossible to nail the perfect landing page template for your brand, but you’ll need to put in some sweat equity to crack the code. Follow these five tips to create high-converting landing pages for your next campaign.

1. Set a Goal

Every landing page is different. What do you want people to do when they visit your website? You might ask them to: 

• Sign up for a webinar
• Buy a product
• Start a free trial

You always want to start with your goal in mind. Once you know the ultimate purpose of your landing page, you can choose keywords, outline copy, create images, and choose a call to action to align with that goal. 

2. Include the Most Important Landing Page Elements

A concise landing page is a successful landing page. But as much as we like brevity, you need to include these eight key elements on every landing page to boost conversions. 

1. Headline: Start your high-converting landing page with an attention-grabbing header. It’s okay to make this a little clickbait-y as long as you clarify your message in the subheadline. Keep the headline short and informative, focusing on why your offer benefits your target audience. 
2. Sub-headline: The subheading goes right underneath your header. This two to three-sentence blurb adds more context to the header. State your value proposition here; tell people why your solution is the best option.
3. Social proof: Back up your claims by sharing evidence that other people love your brand. Feature case studies, testimonials, and reviews on your landing page to build trust. If it’s relevant, you should also add logos, certifications, or badges to show you’re legitimate.
4. Visuals: Add visuals to maintain your audience’s attention and to offer more context. Instead of stock images, go with relevant images related to your product or service. If you don’t have any relevant images, swing on over to Canva to create an infographic for your (hopefully) high-converting landing page.
5. Landing page copy: This is where you explain your offering in detail. While it’s tempting to create in-depth, long form content, remember that people will skim through your copy. Use lots of bullet points and formatting to break up the text so you can maintain your visitors’ attention. When in doubt, check your customer personas to ensure you’re touching on your audience’s biggest pain points.
6. Contact information: Even if you’re asking leads to fill out a form, you should always add your contact information to a landing page. This not only shows that you’re a legitimate business, but it also gives potential customers a way to get in touch if they aren’t ready to convert.
7. Form: Yes, the form fields you choose can have a big impact on your conversion rates. You typically want to minimize form fields to increase conversions, so try to keep this to the bare minimum.
8. Call to action: What do you want leads to do next? Your call to action should persuade people to take a desired action. Optimize not only the text above your call to action button, but the CTA button itself. Consider adding your CTA both above the fold and at the bottom of your landing page to encourage conversions. Remember to stick with just one CTA per landing page; otherwise, you risk confusing potential leads with mixed messages.

3. Follow Landing Page Design Principles

The content of your landing page matters, but the user experience matters, too. Carefully design your landing page to not only look beautiful, but to draw website visitors in. 

Use color theory to design eye-catching experiences that draw people in. Many landing pages use complementary colors for the overall color scheme and use contrasting colors to make their CTA buttons pop. But don’t overdo it: Preserve plenty of white space so the page looks clean.

4. Include Multimedia

Images and text are essential to any landing page, but your website visitors probably won’t absorb all of your content. Add video to your landing page to boost time-on-page and conversions. In fact, video can increase your conversion rates by as much as 86%.

Be sure to place your video above the fold. Most users are in a hurry and likely won’t read all of your copy, but a video can quickly give them the information they need in just a few seconds. 

5. Optimize With Regular Testing

You aren’t going to get it right the first time you try to design a high-converting landing page — and that’s okay! Part of creating high-quality landing pages is acknowledging that your work is never truly over. Constant optimization is a must. 

Treat landing pages as living documents that change over time based on your offers, campaigns, and target audience. 

Do A/B testing to see which landing page features perform the best. For example, if you’re torn between a green button or a red button for your CTA, you can split test to see which option rakes in more leads. 

You don’t have to be a technical whiz to pull this off, either. A/B testing platforms can help you automatically conduct landing page tests on an ongoing basis.

Boost Your Landing Page Conversion Rates

High-converting landing pages are a must-have for any marketing campaign. You can boost your landing page conversions by: 

• Setting a goal
• Including key landing page elements
• Designing for the user experience
• Including multimedia
• Optimizing with A/B testing

But designing, writing, and optimizing landing pages is far from easy. It’s an ongoing task that your team needs to take seriously to rake in more qualified leads. 

Having high-converting landing pages is just one part of a larger SEO strategy. Could you be getting more traffic, more clicks, and more leads? An experienced content marketing agency like Growth Machine can perform an audit and tell you which elements of your website need help. Chat with us now to level up your SEO strategy and finally start seeing the results you want.