7 Elements of a Successful Landing Page

Creating an impactful landing page is crucial for enticing potential customers. A landing page is simply a standalone page on a website designed to drive conversions. They are easily one of the best strategies that have emerged from this modern marketing era.

Properly optimized landing pages can help marketers across all industries improve engagement, grow their email list, boost sales, and drive traffic to other marketing channels, like social media. 

Today, we will explore seven key elements that make up a high-quality landing page and give you plenty of actionable strategies you can use to put these tips into practice.

Benefits of Building Landing Pages

Understand audience segments: Landing pages are usually not designed for everyone who visits your website. For example, an online pet supply shop would likely create two landing pages for their latest flash sale, one for cat owners and another for dog owners. Reviewing on-site analytics and understanding how audience segments engage with your landing pages can help you create better content and offers in the future.

Improve your next marketing campaign: Landing pages can help visitors learn about your latest promotion or product launch. Instead of hoping they find the product page, create a landing page to draw users’ attention when they land on your site.

Boost sales: Another noteworthy benefit of landing pages is they can help boost sales. Product landing pages are an excellent way to show visitors your value proposition and convince them to take action. 

Generate leads: Landing pages are one of the best ways to grow your email list. Marketers can create a standalone landing page that invites users to subscribe to their email list in exchange for a lead magnet or delayed benefits (like subscriber-only discounts).

Enhance brand awareness/SEO: A well-optimized landing page is far more likely to appear in one of the elusive top spots on Google. If you’re interested in improving your search engine optimization strategy and boosting brand awareness, a few well-made landing pages can help you find success. 

7 Elements of a Successful Landing Page

1. Engaging Visual Content

Visual content is a necessity for high-converting landing pages. People expect to see pictures and videos when they visit your site. If they are instead greeted by a wall of text and no visual content, many will leave without taking action. 

The key to putting engaging visual content within your landing pages is to consider the context.

Static images can also help you connect with readers, provided the content is relevant, engaging, and demonstrates value to your audience. 

2. Mobile-responsive Design

If a visitor clicks on your landing page from their smartphone and is greeted with a jumbled mess, they will click the back button without a second thought. There’s a good chance people in this position won’t come back either. 

Instead of losing out on potential sales, engagement, and subscribers, optimize each of your landing pages for desktop and mobile devices. 

The best way to make sure your pages are responsive is to use a landing page builder that comes with mobile templates and a detailed preview option. Use these tools to make sure your landing pages look great across all devices. 

You should also make sure that forms, visual content, and buttons are all clearly visible and easy to use, regardless of how someone decides to engage with your brand. 

It’s also important to check your loading times, especially for mobile. According to Google, users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. If it doesn’t load within that small window of time, you may experience a high bounce rate and see minimal engagement.

3. Benefit-focused Copy

Next, let’s talk about the copy within your landing page. If you managed to attract a reader to your landing page with a captivating title and value proposition, you need to expand on that idea within the text on the page. 

The way you accomplish this task will vary based on the type of landing page you’re promoting.

For instance, if you want people to place an order via your sales page, you should explain to users in simple terms what they stand to gain by investing in your product or service. A list of direct benefits will help people visualize themselves using what you’re offering, which will likely increase conversions. 

Similarly, if you create an email registration landing page, users should know how they’ll benefit from joining your list. Explain the perks of signing up, and you can expect to see more subscribers. 

This same principle can be applied to virtually every type of landing page. Before you publish a page, ask yourself, “If I was a visitor reading this page, what’s in it for me?” If you can’t answer this question, consider revising your copy and focus on presenting value to the people who interact with your landing page. 

4. Trust Signals

If you want to boost landing page conversions, trust signals are a must. 

Trust signals can help build social proof, a psychological trend where people follow others based on their actions. There are many different types of social proof worth including on your landing pages. 

Reviews are often seen as the holy grail of trust, and for a good reason! Research shows people trust reviews more than product descriptions and sales copy. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. 

Here’s an example so you can see what I mean. Let’s say a new Italian restaurant opened in your town. The company decides to put up billboards around the city that exclaim, “The best spaghetti in town!” You see them around but don’t think much of it. A few days later, your friend calls you and says you need to try the new Italian restaurant down the road because they have the best spaghetti in town. 

Whose review would drive you to take action? The person who actually paid money to try their food, or the company that stands to gain money if you go to their restaurant?

Thanks to the evolution of digital marketing, reviews from complete strangers can be just as helpful as reviews from close friends. 

The best way to use this strategy is to include reviews from real customers on your product landing pages and event registration pages. If users can see that other people have invested money or time with your brand and are happy with the results, they may follow the same path. 

5. A Singular Purpose

The five element a landing page needs to succeed is a singular purpose. In other words, ask yourself what single thing you want readers to do after reading your landing page. 

For example, if your goal is to get more email subscribers, you need a landing page specifically designed to convince people that subscribing to your email list is worth their time. 

Imagine what would happen if your goal was to get more subscribers but you also spent time talking about how users should buy your products, follow you on social media, and check out your next live webinar. 

Odds are, readers would feel overwhelmed, which could cause choice paralysis. Readers won’t do anything at all because they don’t know what next step they should take.

6. An Eye-catching Headline

Choosing the right headline for your landing page can make or break your campaign. When visitors discover your page for the first time, their eyes will immediately dart to the headline so they can figure out what the rest of the page is about. It needs to accomplish:

– grabbing the visitor’s attention

– informing the visitor what your product or service is all about.

– it should be short, preferably only ten words and never more than twenty

It doesn’t matter how much value is within the post; if visitors can’t figure out how reading your content will benefit them, there’s a slim chance they will click through, let alone take action on the page. 

There are a few ways you can improve your landing page headlines and attract more users. The key point to remember is your headline should be clear, concise, and offer value to your readers. People should be able to take one look and understand what they stand to gain by clicking the link and opening your landing page. 

Using complicated language may confuse or alienate your audience, resulting in fewer conversions and less engagement. 

7. Compelling Call to Action

Finally, all successful landing pages have a prominent call to action (CTA). Your CTA is the button (or another element) on your page that encourages readers to take action. As we discussed, this will vary greatly based on how you use this marketing tool to connect with your audience. 

A business that wants users to join their email list may use CTAs that say things like “subscribe now” or “join and save today.” 

We strongly recommend using A/B testing when creating CTAs for your landing pages. Experiment with different options until you find messages that resonate with your target audience. 

This piece of the puzzle is so important because your landing page will be a dead end for readers after they’ve finished reading your landing page unless there’s a clear and logical next step they can take. 

CTA buttons are arguably the most important element on your landing page. By designing these buttons to stand out, you can dramatically increase the chances of conversions. This includes playing with color, fonts, sizing, and placement—all quick and easy fixes.