When designing effective digital marketing campaigns, you want to consider how the human mind works. Specifically, what motivates people to perform certain actions? What draws their eye?
Knowing even a starting point to these questions lays the foundation for good marketing. You want to craft attention-grabbing and effective messaging while making sure people find their way to them.
First, you want to drive traffic to the right spot. Make sure that your landing page leaves a strong impression with engaging copy and usability. Landing page best practices work with multiple layers of visual and experiential design methods.
There is no standard template for crafting effective landing pages. But this article will show you some time-tested guidelines for making the right creative decisions for your team.
Keep scrolling to learn more about landing page best practices for B2B, UX, lead generation, paids ads and more.
About Landing Pages Basics & Best Practices
Landing pages act as web pages that can stand alone, separate from a full website. People who design landing pages want consumers to take a very particular or singular action.
You can set up two different types of landing pages:
- Lead gen (also called lead capture) pages set up their CTA (call-to-action) as an online form for users to fill out. These forms exist to collect data and build a solid prospect list.
- Clickthrough landing pages exist to get customers to instantly complete a transaction. The landing page will have a button to click on as the CTA. Clickthrough’s get used most commonly by e-commerce companies.
Crafting a highly-targeted focus will result in the highest conversion rates for your company's landing page. The journey through a landing page strategy happens in these three steps:
1. Funneling
Funneling refers to how prospective customers get to the landing page itself. They get directed through a hyperlink included in targeted marketing content. This includes social media, email marketing, Google Ads, or blog posts on other websites.
2. The Landing Page
This is the entree – the main attraction. A landing page refers to a campaign-oriented web page with a single CTA. Typically, there are no other tabs or sections to navigate to like in a normal website page (to minimize extraneous actions and get the prospective client or customer to focus on the CTA).
3. Conversion
The CTA goal you set up for prospects acts as the conversion. Conversion describes the process by which prospects become customers. This could occur when they buy something, sign up for your company's service, or sign up for a membership.
Are Landing Pages Effective?
Simply put, effective landing pages are effective. Landing pages have the potential to significantly boost conversion rates when they’re done well. You can create strong, effective landing pages for your business by adding the following four elements:
1. Setting Clear Goals
What is your CTA?
Examples of different goals or CTAs include signing up for a newsletter or subscription, buying a product, and generating leads through contact forms.
Your goals act as the map that leads you through designing the concepts, visuals, and layout for the landing page. Think of the goal as the focal point that you refer back to when making decisions around design, writing copy, and setting up your page's CTA.
2. Writing Strong Copy
You want to write copy that matches your brand's core values and messaging while also reflecting the goals you have already decided upon. A good brand strategy has established a consistent brand voice that communicates clearly and effectively to customers.
The key to getting conversions on a landing page is capturing the prospect's attention and making sure they don't click away. You want to write copy that has an engaging and conversational tone. Humor and wit can serve you well here...
Strong brand messages communicate with fewer words.
3. Optimize for Mobile Layout
Only 50% of landing pages have specially designed mobile layouts. So many digital marketing campaigns miss this very easy opportunity to grab people's attention.
Consumers spend more time on their phones than their computers these days. As society becomes more phone and internet-obsessed, keeping mobile layout in mind should be a top priority.
Designing a creative layout and eye-catching visuals for your web page will take you far, but converting those elements from the web to mobile doesn't always fall into place automatically. Mobile pages need to have that same clean and simple design that directs prospects to the CTA.
You want the banners, any visual elements or videos, and fill-out forms to show up correctly on the mobile version of the landing page. Design mobile-friendly pages that won't crap out on someone's phone.
4. Add Video Content
Including high-quality video content on a company's landing page drives up conversion rates by as much as 86%. Online engagement has become increasingly interactive and video is one of the most effective ways to grab attention.
For example, video product demonstrations generate sales because people can see the item in action before they buy. It adds trust and credibility to your company.
The quality and production value of the videos make or break your content. It's common practice for digital marketing teams to hire talented videographers, video editors and scriptwriters for the sole purpose of creating video marketing content.
This opens up opportunities for creative marketing teams to experiment with different visual forms and media. You can use live actors and speakers for your videos as well as animated content.
What Are The Landing Page Best Practices?
When designing a landing page, you want to keep all the most important elements above the fold. Important features include the attention-grabbing headline and the CTA. For a landing page, "the fold" means the section of the page immediately visible before users begin scrolling.
Also, make sure to let your landing page have only one job. Unlike a typical website, the landing page doesn’t have extra tabs or links to navigate through. You want to keep prospects focused on a singular path, leading directly to your one and only CTA.
Note: Multiple CTAs can negatively affect conversion rates.
How to Get Your Prospects' Attention
Design the visuals of your landing page with clear-cut directional cues in mind. A skilled designer will craft a landing page that directs users to scroll down to see more content, placing the CTA in an optimum location.
Using obvious bold visuals that draw the eye and using color schemes to create contrast can be useful design techniques. Longer pages with relevant content can lead to more engagement and the potential for higher conversions.
You should also prioritize maintaining high quality on the backend as well. Successful landing pages will have fast loading times. Research shows that even a short, one-second delay in loading page time decreases prospective conversion rates by 7%.
To avoid slowing down your company's landing page, follow the principles of minimalist design. Use fewer elements that would require more loading time. Only include the most essential information on the landing page, with a special focus on interactive content and fill-out forms.
What a Good Landing Page Contains
There are several key elements to a good landing page. No matter which type of landing page you opt to use, it should at least have these three key elements (ideally above the fold upon loading the page) - see below for a prime example of these landing page elements:
- Enticing headline - “10X your LinkedIn lead quality and revenue generated with Cleverly”
- CTA - “Request Consultation”
- Social proof/Trust - Both Trustpilot and Clutch reviews embedded at the top of our landing page navigation bar. (Additionally, we feature video testimonials from a variety of Cleverly clients further below)
Social proof or Trust can come in the form of social media screenshots of the product or service, testimonials, or reviews. A good landing page will also have a strong and intuitive design aesthetic.
Effective Landing Page Design
As with anything, design is important. But effective landing pages can differ from more general website design. For example, landing pages need to be streamlined and focused on their task. In this way, many effective landing pages adopt a minimalist design.
Now, minimalism doesn’t mean boring. Boring won’t encourage conversions. Layout, structure, color, and imagery will all play roles in ensuring your landing page is engaging to visitors. A good landing page design will also lend itself to a good user experience (UX). UX design is meant to give visitors exactly what they’re looking for in a clear and intuitive way.
Structure And Layout
Good landing pages have a very simple structure, something like this:
- Headline
- Relevant image
- Lead form - See below. In this instance, we require the prospective client to select a service in order to request their consultation.
- CTA
- Copy and description
While these are all important to have on your landing page, the layout – or way you incorporate these things – is just as crucial.
People don’t read everything they see and often just skim the pages they visit. Your job is to create a landing page that brings the information you want to the forefront.
Some things to keep in mind:
- Key information should be front and center
- Keep the information brief
- Use negative space around areas you’d like visitors to focus on
Color
The color you use for your landing page should be the same or similar to your website and brand. This helps familiarize people with your brand colors, creating a sense of trust (key in retaining customers).
But color plays an important role in highlighting the important information you want people to remember. This is where negative space comes in. Negative space is often accomplished by using a large block of alternative, contrasting, or neutral color to frame your important text and images.
You can also experiment with using the boldest colors on elements like your headline and/or CTA button.
There is no ideal combination of colors. Use what works for your brand, makes the page “pop,” and invites people to go on the journey you’re intending.
Images
It’s been proven that the majority of people remember what they see. So, it’s important that the image you use on your landing page both ties into your brand and makes a statement. A good image can help set the tone for the entire page.
While stock images are easier to come by, having an original image can often serve your page better. When choosing the right image for your landing page, remember that it needs to:
- Reinforce your landing page message
- Appeal to your target market
- Lead visitors to your CTA
Landing Page Best Practices for B2B
If your company focuses on B2B (business-to-business) products and services, you can incorporate key strategies for your landing page for optimal results.
Because landing pages should have only one CTA, make a separate landing page for each campaign message in your company's marketing strategy. Funneling prospects directly to the landing page leads them directly to the product or service you wish to promote. For every CTA, create a new landing page.
This will boost how quickly your landing page successfully pushes prospects through the customer journey as they move through a straight and narrow path on a singular page.
More than anything, people value word-of-mouth and recommendations from someone they know or trust. Thus, it can be helpful to incorporate testimonial content on your landing page. Social proof boosts a company's credibility and makes the product or service look more desirable.
Good examples of testimonial-driven content include statistics or customer testimonial videos. You could also cast an "expert" to perform pre-recorded demonstrations. For Cleverly, we have 700+ 5-star Trustpilot reviews and 50+ Clutch reviews.
In Summary
The principles behind building a strong landing page don't need to be overly complicated. They are, in fact, simple common-sense practices that most talented designers, copywriters, and web developers already put into practice.
Keeping in mind landing page best practices will keep brand messaging on point. And investing time and money into well-crafted landing pages can pay off dividends over time.
