6 Elements of a High-Converting Website Landing Page

Your landing page is your website’s first impression on your customers and leads. In other words, there’s little margin for error. For a landing page to hook new prospects and represent your brand in the best light, it must do more than simply look good and present a barefaced CTA. 

Instead, high-converting landing pages are personalized to their audience, feature compelling copy, and appeal to the needs and emotions of the reader. Anything short of that will bleed your company of customers and lead to a sky-high bounce rate, something any business owner should avoid. 

Want to craft a better, higher-converting landing page for your website? In this article, we’re not going to discuss “tips and tricks” for converting more customers from your website. Instead, we’re going to take a deep dive into the tried and true elements of a successful landing page so you can optimize your website for serious customer engagement.

Element 1: Keep It Clean

The second that your website loads in a viewer’s browser, they automatically judge the professionalism of the design. If your website looks cluttered, disorganized, or too “busy” then it will appear outdated, sloppy, and potentially even predatory. To avoid turning off potential leads, you must err toward simplicity and modern web design principles wherever possible.

Don’t know where to start? Here are some of the best, can’t-lose principles to follow when it comes to modern and efficient web design:

• Use consistent typefaces that establish a typographic hierarchy (e.g., New York Times)
• Use a limited and consistent two-color palette
• Stick to consistent imagery (Pick one: photography, charts, illustrations)
• Start complex, then simplify as the viewer scrolls
• Don’t be afraid of an organized grid-style layout to establish order and unity
• Implement responsive JavaScript animations, but don’t go overboard

Element 2: Message Continuity

Your company’s message is just as important as its visual appearance. What your landing page delivers should align with what your advertisements promise. For instance, a Facebook PPC ad that promises “BOGO Every T-Shirt Sale” should lead to a landing page that builds on this promise. On the landing page, use the same color scheme and typeface that the ad used, and feature a clickable icon or button that transports visitors to the relevant webpage.

Element 3: Personalize Your Sign-Up Flow

Your landing page should be optimized to appeal to various types of visitors because not every visitor to your webpage has the same interests. If you run an e-commerce store for boy’s and men’s clothing, for example, you shouldn’t feature a single button on your landing page saying “Shop Now” because your viewers aren’t all shopping for the same items.

Instead, provide custom solutions on your landing page that funnel your visitors toward different products. For a men’s clothing retailer, we would suggest featuring three buttons on your landing page, such as:

• Shop BOGO Sales
• Shop for Boys
• Shop for Men

Remember, keep your design clean and visually consistent. Unless you want one of the three buttons to stand out in the visitor’s mind, use the same shape, color, size, and borders for each button as not to appear disorganized. 

Element 4: Don’t Forget SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a must for companies who want to maximize exposure to their market. Ranking for a specific set of keywords relevant to your niche or industry can increase your visibility several times over. Securing a coveted spot on the first search engine results page (SERP) can make the critical difference between perpetually relying on PPC ads for driving traffic, or securing free, passive, and organic traffic via search queries. 

Investing in a trusted SEO agency is an excellent starting point in your website’s SEO process. Agencies have the expertise and industry ties to build out backlinks on high-authority domains. The more links that exist on the internet that lead to your website, the more that search engines will trust your site and boost its visibility on SERPs.

Element 5: A/B Test Your Forms

If your landing page doesn’t include a sign-up form, you’re already making a big mistake. Including a landing page form is a must if you want to build a high-value mailing list with the contact information of your leads, customers, and prospects. However, some sign-up forms have far better conversion rates than others. 

As you optimize your landing page for search engines, so too should you optimize for your sign-up forms. It begins by selecting the correct form length. It’s a tricky game because the shorter the form, the less valuable it is to you, the longer the form, the less likely visitors will fill it out. Second, you must find the optimal placement of your form (bottom, middle, top, or side panel). 

Dedicate a two-week period to various placements and lengths of your sign-up forms. Stick with whichever form type performs best during its two-week trial. Be sure to gauge performance by paying attention to total conversions divided by the number of total visitors in that time.

Element 6: Make It Mobile

In 2018, over 52 percent of all web traffic worldwide was generated via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. If our mobile phones are becoming our default web browsing devices, we must meet the demand of the market by optimizing our websites for mobile browsers. 

It’s painful to see so many landing page forms and images fail to load on an Android or iOS browser in 2020. If your website is a culprit of mobile neglect, consult a mobile web development agency so you can stop bleeding customers who aren’t using desktop devices.

Putting It All Together

There are over 130 trillion websites indexed by Google—that’s a lot of competition! To stand out in the crowd, your landing page needs to get everything right, from SEO, messaging, personalization, and form placement. As your brand’s first impression to new visitors, it’s well worth the time and effort to make your landing page experience as user-centric as possible.