Landing pages play a critical role in the success of your marketing campaigns and conversion rates. As the name suggests, a landing page is a page a visitor lands on after clicking on a link. Oftentimes, this is their first introduction to your website or brand.
What Are Landing Pages Used For?
Landing pages can vary in design and content depending on the target audience. While the contents of the page impact its success, one of the most important elements of a landing page are its design and layout. Additionally, research has found that visitors are 80% more likely to read through landing page content that’s colorful and well-designed.
In a marketing context, a landing page is a conversion tool that drives potential clients further down the sales funnel, where the desired conversion would often be a sale or consultation booking. For visitors at the beginning of the funnel, it can be used for collecting contact information (e.g. email or phone number). Regardless, a landing page should only have one purpose: a CTA (call to action).
Key Elements of a Successful Landing Page
Landing pages are typically comprised of five key elements. You can play around with the order and contents of each segment, but they all need to be present in one way or another.
- Above-the-fold content
- First CTA
- Benefits of the offering
- Social proof
- Closing argument and CTA
While all landing pages share the same components and structure, having a single design template for all of your landing pages is counterproductive. By understanding landing page conversion and design principles, you can discover which design is ideal for each page based on its purpose.
Considerations for Landing Pages That Convert
Landing page design shouldn’t be an afterthought or something you decide on at the last minute. The page layout is the first thing a potential lead sees when they visit a page — even before the main and supporting headlines. The design needs to reflect the branding of your website, social media, and ads.
But design goes deeper than aesthetics and branding. How the various elements of a landing page are situated should lead the eye through a miniature sales funnel. For instance, while a flashy CTA is important, if it takes away from the product benefits and the main headline, the visitor is less likely to convert.
Landing Pages Design Examples
You can learn about design from studying and analyzing good landing page examples.
Here’s an example of one of Infusionsoft’s landing pages. They opted for simplistic and easy-on-the-eye design elements. The layout draws your focus to the first CTA as well as the main and supporting headlines.
Next, your eye should immediately go to the benefits, written in short and concise sentences next to bright green icons. Finally, the design highlights the social proof. The overall layout is easy to follow and the primary CTA remains the focus of attention.
Notice how your eye flows over the page’s content on Lending Club’s landing page. The header image is relevant but not too loud. Plus, the main headline and first CTA take the majority of the page and catch your attention.
If you need more persuading, the benefits are written as numerical statistics with the most important information in a larger, different color font. It's recommended that you study well-designed landing pages for design inspiration.
How to Design a Landing Page for Conversions
Note that the following step-by-step guide is only meant to guide the landing page design process and not restrict it.
1. Who Is the Page By and For?
Design is all about feel and voice. Both the design and tone of voice need to match the rest of your brand. A casual and fun brand should remain as such, while more serious brands should convey their professionalism.
2. It’s all About the Headline
When using both main and supporting headlines, the design of a page needs to work in support of the headline, not against it. Any design elements and images should always lead the visitor’s eye back to the focus of the landing page.
3. Go Easy on the Eye
After element placement comes the color scheme. Colors need to be compatible and complement each other. Anything with too little contrast can be hard to read and may even come across as low-quality and unprofessional web design.
4. Create a Flow
While the above-the-fold content is arguably the most important portion of your landing page, the remaining elements aren’t without value. Your design needs to wordlessly lead the visitor from one section to the next, introducing them to the benefits of your service and client reviews to your closing argument and second CTA.
Testing and Optimizing
No landing page is ever perfect. As standards and audience expectations change, the design of your landing page needs to follow along. But instead of blindly changing various elements of a landing page in hopes of optimizing performance, you should take a calculated approach.
A/B Testing
A/B Testing is a classic quantitative approach that helps marketers and business owners understand what’s working and what isn’t. By going live with two versions of your landing page simultaneously, you’ll be able to find out which converts better and hypothesize the reasons behind the performance. A/B testing takes the guesswork out of the equation and allows you to design the perfect landing page based on engagement data.
While you can utilize one of the many A/B testing tools on the market, you can still make do with traffic and conversion tracking and an Excel spreadsheet.
Designing Landing Pages Is an Art Form
Ultimately, a landing page is meant to communicate a message and persuade the visitor to take a specific action. While there are suggestions to help design a landing page with a high conversion rate, these guidelines are meant to be dynamic as needed.
If you’d like help creating your landing page, schedule a free consultation with the team at Cleverly to ideate, develop, produce, and test pages that convert for your business.
