10 Top Tips: What Are Landing Page Best Practices for 2023
- Limarah Crathorne, Website Conversion Expert
- Jun 9, 2022
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 28, 2023
A good landing page converts your visitors into leads all while delighting them.
You need to learn how to make a good landing page that gives your customers what they want. This means going beyond simply designing something that “looks great.”
Having the highest converting landing pages on your site is one of the most effective ways to increase your conversion rate. If you’re looking to move leads through your funnel, landing pages are your best friend.
A great landing page is free of distraction and focused on the end goal. From the headline and offer, all the way down to the footer, every aspect focuses on conversion.
In this article I’m going to teach you my top landing page best practices you can use to optimise your existing landing pages so you can attract more prospects and convert more customers.
What is Landing Page Optimisation?
Landing page optimisation is the process of analysing landing pages and implementing changes to improve the user experience and ultimately increase conversions.
It's essentially the art of turning the traffic you already have, so all the people you already coming to your website, and turning more of those people into customers and clients.
In layman terms if you have 1000 people coming to your site a month and you have 1 person converting (this could be signing up to your email list, downloading something, buying your product) and when you do CRO you take the same 1000 people who are already coming to your website, you make your website better and you hope to convert 5 people instead of one.
So, you don't spend more money on driving traffic to your website, you spend time and resources optimising your website so more people can convert.
10 Elements You Need to Create Highest Converting Landing Pages
1. Have an Amazing Offer
When someone arrives on your converting landing page, they need to understand two things instantly:
What you’re offering
How it will improve their lives
To make clicking your Call-to-Action feel like an easy decision, you need to communicate these two things clearly and concisely as soon as the page loads.
Before you do anything else, think about the offer you want to display on your landing page and what will make it irresistible to your target audience.
2. Make Your Messaging About Them
Messaging is the most important part of your landing page. When someone comes to your landing page they need to know what it is you are offering and the most important thing, what is the value for them.
The biggest mistake I see on people's landing pages is they make it all about themselves, about the features, the pricing, the tools or how they're the number 1 at xxx etc.
You essentially only have 2-3 seconds to convince someone when they land on your landing page to keep reading. You need to grab their attention and convince them to stay and the way to do that is to make it about them, what their outcome will be. You're not the hero of the story, they are.
It's important you understand their desired outcome and use this as your message. For example if someone is buying insurance from you they're not buying a document they're buying peace of mind, knowing their family is safe etc and that's what you want to show on the page.
Putting this on the page means a headline which is your value proposition and a subhead that explains how you're going to do that. You also want to include a strategic image, one that shows the desired outcome.
3. A Clear Call to Action
The goal of every landing page is to get your visitors to click your call to action (CTA). A CTA tends to be a button that encourages a website visitor to take a specific action.
For example:
Get Started
Sign Up
Buy Now
Download Now
There are plenty of CTAs you can use, but here are a few tips to make a highly clickable CTA:
1. Choose a contrasting design: Your CTA needs to stand out from everything else on the page. Try to use a colour that contrasts with the background and commands attention.
2. Make the action obvious: Visitors should understand what will happen if they click the button. For example, “Buy now” will clearly initiate a purchase. CTA copy like “Next” or “Click here” is too generic and will leave visitors wondering what action will happen.
4. Show Social Proof
When you’re trying to convince someone to take action on your landing page, social proof is one of the most powerful techniques you can use. People are more likely to trust other customers and relate to their feedback.
Make sure you are strategic about what social proof you add. It should be about addressing specific road blocks that your prospect may have. For example if people are worried that they won't be able to do it themselves then a social proof would be someone sharing a story about how they were worried about doing it alone and how great the company was and held their hands through every stage.
Think about how you could feature:
Quotes from customers
Success stories or case studies
Endorsements from social media
Logos of well-known customers or partners
Reviews from trusted sources like Feefo, TrustPilot, Yelp, or TripAdvisor
Press mentions from popular publications
Podcast mentions
5. Create a Video
Not everyone enjoys reading! You need a video to show everything they’re going to get when they opt in, buy your product or sign up for your service. The video should be short and to the point and under 3 minutes (ideally under 1 minute). It should answer any objections people may have before they sign up or buy from you. Keep it concise and describe everything in a logical order. You don’t want to confuse anyone!
6. Use Relevant Images
People respond to, and process visual data better than any other type of data. In fact, the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, which means the first thing your prospects see on a landing page are the images and colours.
There are many types of image that can be used effectively for landing pages. Product images are the most obvious choice, covering all angles and uses.
As users respond better to pictures of real people, images of people using the product are even more compelling.
You should aim to use images that create an emotional response in the people visiting a landing page. For example, when selling a mattress, someone sleeping on a mattress will be far more engaging than just the mattress itself.
7. Make it Mobile Friendly
So many people are browsing the web on their mobile devices now. It’s a mistake for website owners to overlook how their landing pages will look on smaller screens.
You need to ensure you also have high converting mobile landing pages too. Make sure the design works for mobile or even better create a specific version for mobile - it will increase your conversion rates.
8. Keep it Simple
Don’t over complicate things, there’s no need for it. Keep your landing page clear and easy to read. For example, if you have 10 form fields collecting lots of data and you only need name and email address then remove the extra fields you don’t need.
And if you have lots of copy and you’re saying the same things over and over, remove the fluff and get to the point. landing pages that are super simple tend to convert better than long pages that go on and on.
If you need a long landing page to answer objections or concerns people have before they opt in or buy from you, that’s fine. All I’m saying is just get to the point and remove the fluff.
9. Remove the Navigation Bar
Not including a navigation bar ties directly into the idea of single-purpose landing pages. Navigation is visual clutter on a landing page and can result in users clicking to a different page on the site without completing the desired action. Eliminating the navigation bar helps keep the visitor on task.
There’s no sense in distracting a user who’s ready to sign up or purchase by giving them other options.
10. A Good User Experience
High converting landing pages need good user experience to be effective. You need to ensure the user doesn’t get frustrated with your page and bounce off. So think about:
Page speed -a slow page will make people leave
Simplify and shorten forms
Use visuals to enhance aesthetics and create interest
Use live chat or a chat bot to provide assistance
Now we've answered 'what are landing page best practices' lets talk a bit about how to measure the success of your landing page.
What Landing Page Conversion Optimisation Tools You Should Use
If you want to improve your landing page conversion rate it’s essential that you understand the behaviour and motivations of your website users. I have 2 go to tools I use. Google optimisation tools such as Google analytics and Hotjar. Hotjar helps you to understand what how users behave on your website and how they REALLY experience it by using the power of heatmaps and user recordings. A recording, for instance, lets you virtually look over someone’s shoulder as he or she navigates the page. Watch mouse movements, clicks, and more to see what captures they're interested in, what turns them off, and even see them entering information in form fields.
Google analytics allows you to track and understand your customer behaviour, what they’re looking for, how they’re engaging with your business and how you’re providing what they need.
By carefully analysing this data, you can highlight areas of success, any pain points, and gaps in the customer experience. If you consistently measure and improve the experience you’ll push customers further down the sales funnel and ultimately see an increase in conversions.
Why it's Important to Track Your Landing Page Conversion Metrics
Even the most simple landing pages have dozens of different images, headings, copy, and forms - each of which is a chance to improve your signup, downloads or purchase conversions.
Tracking your landing page metrics allows you to improve your landing pages over time, aligning your messaging with your audience' needs, and fixing any holes in your signup funnel, shopping funnel etc. Plus, getting a higher ROI.
Why Is My Landing Page Not Converting?
Landing pages fail to convert for many reasons, but the culprit often lies in a misunderstanding of what the prospect wants. If you can’t anticipate your website visitors’ desires, needs, or expectations, conversion rates will suffer.
This article goes into using emotional targeting to increase landing page conversion rates in more depth.
What Is a Good Conversion Rate for High Converting Landing Pages?
The highest converting landing pages convert at rates of up to 27.4 percent. However, the median ranges fall much lower, with most industries experiencing between 2 and 6 percent conversion rates.
When it comes to landing pages, the true measure of success is improvement. If your conversion rates stay the same month after month, you’re not collecting data and using it to improve your landing pages.
What if You’re Getting High-quality Traffic from Google Search or Paid Ads, But You’re Still Not Seeing Conversions?
A negative correlation between traffic and conversions means something’s wrong with your landing page, your offer, or your product.
Landing page: The design, framework, imagery, or other qualities of your landing page turns off readers for some reason.
Offer: The “hook” you’re using to get readers to convert doesn’t resonate with your audience.
Product: The product you’re selling isn’t sufficiently desirable to convince people to buy.
Figuring out the problem will help with landing page optimisation.
Conclusion: What Are Landing Page Best Practices
So there you have it, we've answered the question 'what are landing page best practices' now it's time for you to follow these tips and you’ll have amazing highest converting landing pages.
Don’t forget that basing your website design changes on real user data can make conversion rates soar. Measure landing page conversion metrics and view visitor recordings whenever possible to collect more information about your website visitors.
And if you want any landing page conversion expert to take a look then book one of our online landing page reviews.
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