How to Create a Landing Page That Converts

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a business website page designed for a digital marketing campaign. These pages include specific information ― often tailored to a specialty target customer ― that reflects the marketing campaign’s messaging and goals.

Why do you need a landing page?

While some may define landing pages as any page on your website where a visitor arrives, that’s not technically the definition. Landing pages are launched specifically for a digital marketing campaign’s purpose.

A landing page is essential for digital marketing campaigns because you can use the space to target audiences with different needs. For example, a software program may have many features advantageous for specific sectors, such as students, graphic designers and work-from-home office professionals. Through landing pages, that company can tailor messaging to tout the benefits for students, launch a page about graphic design and have yet another page discuss the software’s small business tools.

Landing pages are also purposeful in their end goal: to get visitors to engage with your company. This can take many forms:

• Registering for an event
• Calling your place of business
• Making a purchase
• Scheduling a consultation
• Downloading a whitepaper or e-book
• Engaging with a chatbot on your website
• Filling out an online form
• Signing up for your company’s email newsletter

What’s the difference between a landing page and a webpage?

While you may have heard a page on your business’ website referred to as a “landing page,” that’s not always accurate. A webpage can be about anything and comprise any type of website copy and information. Your homepage, contact page and privacy policy page are all webpages. They contain vital information for your business but don’t have the explicit purpose of converting users.

A landing page is crafted with the express purpose of getting visitors to take action as the result of a digital marketing campaign. With a landing page, you can fine-tune your messaging and hyper-target its content to any demographic or audience. This allows you to easily segment customers and reach more people with different interests, bringing them to consider your products or services. 

Some marketers may use an existing webpage as a landing page, but that’s not always the best move for your business.

What should be included on a landing page?

The information you include on a landing page depends on your goals. Still, some primary points should be present.

• Headline: Use the space at the top of the page ― called “above the fold” in marketing lingo ― to catch your visitor’s attention.
• Forward-facing summary of the campaign goals: Use the space directly underneath the headline to briefly explain your talking points or what you’re offering.
• Social proof: If you have testimonials from satisfied customers, positive reviews on social media or happy bloggers who sing your praises, use those items to show visitors that they can join a long list of happy clients when they work with your business.
• Trust logos: Trust logos demonstrate authority or security. Trust logos can include the logos of companies that work with you, badges of awards you’ve received from other organizations or business associations of which your company is a member in good standing.
• Calls to action: Calls to action (CTAs) typically are buttons or short forms that entice the visitor to follow through. If you’ve ever seen a “contact us” or “download now” button while reading content on a website or landing page, you’ve seen a CTA.

It’s also crucial to include the right information on your landing page. To decide what to include on your landing page, ask yourself these questions:

• Who am I targeting? It’s crucial to identify your customer base ― or bases. Your products and services may be important to separate audiences for different reasons. Tailor your landing page for each target audience. You may want to create a unique landing page for each audience.
• What does my target audience need to know? As you write your summary and bullets for the landing page, ensure they convey the most important information. Cover the what, why and how in this space.
• What action do I want visitors to take? Whether you want visitors to buy your product or call your hotline, the information you include should be shaped around this key action.

How do you create a landing page?

If you work with a web developer or have the skills to build it yourself, you can create a new page on your existing website as a landing page. While this page won’t be linked on your website’s navigation bar or in the footer, it will still help capture leads from your digital marketing campaign. Ensure you’ve properly set up visitor tracking tools so you can monitor the page’s performance.

If you’re looking for a do-it-yourself or more accessible alternative, a landing page builder might be the right option. A landing page builder creates intuitive pages that make it easy for customers to take action. Note that a landing page is not a replacement for an entire website. However, you can use it in conjunction with your website or even if your business doesn’t yet have a website.

Some examples of landing page builders include the following: 

• Google Sites: Google Sites is a free tool for building landing pages.
• Unbounce: Unbounce is a budget-friendly option great for small businesses.
• Leadpages: Leadpages specializes in selling products. 

How do you make a landing page that converts?

To ensure your landing page motivates your audience to follow through on your CTAs, incorporate the following tips:

• Keep your landing page simple: Landing pages should get right to the heart of the action you want your visitor to take. If you want to make sales, include content directly explaining why the visitor should purchase your product. If you want the visitor to fill out a contact form, boil it down to the basics so they can quickly and easily fill out the information you need most.
• Include CTAs on your landing page: Be clear about the action you want the visitor to take, whether purchasing or signing up for a webinar. It must be easy for your visitors to take that action.
• Prioritize the user experience on your landing page: The last thing you want to do is frustrate visitors who can’t find what they’re looking for. Ensure your content is to the point and easy to follow. This ties into the call to action: An uncluttered, clean design ensures your CTA is easy to find and entices visitors to take the action you want them to take.
• Test your landing page: Create more than one variation of your landing page and compare the results to see which version performs better. Going forward, stick with the landing page that gets the best feedback or nets you the highest conversion rate. This is known as A/B testing.
• Study the landing page analytics: Collecting anonymized visitor data through tools like Google Analytics can help you make improvements to attract, capture and convert more visitors. For example, if you find that only a small percentage of visitors are signing up for a webinar advertised on your landing page, you may want to alter the landing page design to put the sign-up button front and center.

What makes a good landing page?

These practices are essential to developing an effective landing page:

• Keep landing page copy brief: Your landing page’s copy should be short, sweet and to the point. According to ContentSquare, website visitors spend between 44 seconds to 1.37 minutes on a webpage, depending on the industry. Become familiar with your industry’s stats and ensure your visitors grasp the most essential points before moving on.
• Lean into clean design on your landing page: While design trends are constantly in flux, the preference for crisp and clean design is here to stay. Your page should be intuitive and easy to follow so the navigation won’t frustrate visitors who want the essential information.
• Consider contrast on your landing page: Embrace negative space ― the blank areas between design elements. This breathing room helps the primary elements of your landing page stand out.
• Ensure your landing page works, no matter where it’s viewed: Use browser tools to ensure the landing page looks correct on all types of screens, including computers, tablets and smartphones.
• Ditch video on your landing page ― sometimes: This is particularly important for mobile landing pages, where video can take up too much bandwidth and load too slowly. However, if you’re confident that your audience will be on a 5G network, this is less important. 
• Tap into testimonials on your landing page: Many online shoppers turn to reviews to influence their decisions. Use space on the landing page to showcase some of your top reviews.

Launch a landing page for your next campaign

Before sending your next digital marketing campaign, rethink what your visitors will do after they click. Are they going to a contact form or a special webpage customized for them? The latter will go much farther than any generic page ― and that’s where landing pages work their magic.

As you build your landing page, consider the customer journey ―  what they must know and what they need to convince them to act. The result of a thoughtfully designed landing page is increased conversions and a successful digital advertising campaign.

Jessica Pooree contributed to this article.