Anyone who makes money online can speak to the critical nature of having an effective landing page. No matter what means you used in order to get your visitors to your landing page, you probably put a lot of time and money into getting them there, and this is when it all needs to pay off. This is the climax moment. As soon as the customer clicks “sign me up”, puts in their billing info, or registers their contact info, you’ve made a conversion, and your business will live another day. By contrast, if no one on the landing page converts, it doesn’t matter how effective every other step in this process was.
The great thing about improving your landing page quality is that it’s usually way easier than improving other marketing aspects, and a little upgrade can go a long way. Think about it this way – a jump from 0.5% conversion rate to a 1% conversion rate doubles your sales. So the question becomes “How can you improve that conversion rate?”
In this article, I’ll list seven examples of effective pages and name some tips and principles that hopefully will enable you to make some strategic adjustments.
What makes a high-converting landing page?
How you put together your perfect landing page will depend entirely on your target audience. The page’s CTA (call to action), copy, visual assets, and overall design should be informed by who you want the page to resonate with most. Even though each landing page is unique to the company and its goals, here are some points to keep in mind when designing the page to get the best conversion rate possible:
- Figure out what CTA you want for your landing page. Do you want visitors to learn more about your business, learn more about your product, subscribe to a newsletter, or buy your product? Keep your CTAs clear and limit the amount per page to keep your audience from being confused about why they’re on your site. Whatever CTA you choose, focus all the page’s content to that end.
- Keep your audience in mind when writing copy. When you work at a company, you have all this background information on your product—your readers don’t. Write to your customer as if they are hearing about your company or product for the first time, and focus on the core problem you’re trying to solve. You can get a little wordy and detailed in the blog, but on the landing page make it highly skimmable and highly digestible.
- Make sure it has a visual impact. The best landing pages keep the viewer engaged with beautiful and interesting visuals. Attention spans are shorter than ever these days. Photos and videos on your landing page can both entertain and inform your audience, and lend credibility to your brand.
Now that we’ve gone through some basics, let’s look at some examples of some of the best converting and most effective landing pages I’ve been able to find on the internet.
With copywriting and design, white space is gold. Airbnb’s simple design and layout bring the focus of the page to the content. The CTA is clear, and the copy is easy to follow as you scroll. Write concise headers with short, and punchy paragraphs. Even though the blocks of texts on their page are short, they still convey all the information they need to get the message across. It can be difficult finding the balance between too much and too little writing, but Airbnb shows us here that having lots of short paragraphs is usually smarter than having just a few, big meaty ones.
I can’t overstate the importance of having good reviews and showing off to your customers what reputable names have trusted you with their money. In addition to Drift’s dynamic slightly rebellious branding, their scrolling gallery of logos and reviews does an amazing job of proving to the consumer that they are proud of what they do and they know what they’re doing. Social proof is a big deal to potential customers. If you have high-profile users, show them off! It’s a small world—you could land some more high-profile clients this way.
Sometimes the simplest landing page is the most effective. Landing on Bills.com’s page, you’re forced to use the interactive bar and go through a few simple questions to get to their recommendation. Interactive elements can help your user feel their experience on your site is personalised, and they keep users’ attention far better than just content for reading. To see their debt relief recommendation, you have to put in your contact information. If the viewer gets past this point, you can generate a lot of leads for future email campaigns and retargeting.
One of my favorite elements on Smartcare’s page is the video. In clear, relatable, and charming terms, their video at the top of the landing page relays the benefits of their product and earns an emotional response. (Adorable children playing will do that to a person.) Videos on landing pages can be difficult to pull off since mobile-first design causes people to watch shorter videos with no audio or not watch videos at all, but luckily this page’s beautiful design and persuasive bullet points do a good job substituting for the video when they need to.
It’s a challenge for SaaS companies to visually explain what their product is on a landing page. For companies that don’t have a physical product, photos are still vital. Moz does a great job explaining how their software works by using screenshots of their product and how the customer would use it. We usually think of screenshots as being cheap and ineffective compared to featuring professional photography, but this isn’t always the case. There’s something refreshingly authentic about a screenshot, and for products and services that are entirely online, they play an imperative role in explaining what exactly the product is. Giving your users visuals will help them understand your value offering and how it can solve their problem.
With Unbounce’s expertise in the landing page design space you shouldn’t be surprised that their own landing page is beautifully done. In particular, I love Unbounce’s sticky nav – that bar at the top that follows you as you scroll so that you can click “Start My Free Trial” at any time you like. Sticky navs are a great strategy to make sure your page’s CTA is clear and to remind you why you’re on the page as you scroll. This page’s CTA buttons are large, they stand out really clearly from the background, and they make themselves extremely tempting to click the way that they light up when you hover over them.
Great landing pages often have an interesting or thought-provoking headline at the top that entices you to read on and learn more. The landing page is also a great example of how simple design can work in your favor. The screen scrolls through beautiful photos with only two sentences of text and a CTA on the centre of the page. There’s no way for the viewer to get lost and go where they shouldn’t. No distractions, no complexity, just photos and a CTA button. More often than not, simple is best.
It’s time to convert!
When done right, landing pages can convert viewers to buyers like crazy. To make the most effective landing page you need to find the right balance of copy, visuals, and design that works best for your audience. Make data-driven decisions and test lots of variations to see what hits your audience in just the right way. Researching what’s working for other companies in your industry will prepare you to get as many conversions as possible.