Landing Page Best Practices

The first rule of landing page best practices is this: they are a starting point to help you construct your best first attempt at a landing page. After that, you need to experiment and let the customers decide what they think is the best converting page for the job.

You can use a checklist (tips like those below) or a scorecard to rate your landing page and produce a to-do list of items to fix. Check out our Landing Page Scorecard.

With that caveat out of the way, here are some quick general rules of thumb you can apply to your landing pages:

21 Quick Landing Page Tips

Ensure the primary headline of your landing page matches the ad visitors clicked to get there.
Make your call to action (CTA) big and position it above the fold.
Use directional cues to direct attention to your CTA (arrows or photos/videos of people looking or pointing at your button).
For lead gen forms where the CTA is below the fold (e.g. due to a long form) – make the directional cue point down the page to the button.
A landing page should have a single purpose and thus a single focused message.
Congruence: every element of your page should be aligned conceptually with the topic and goal of the page.
Show your product/service being used in context.
Use video. It’s been shown to improve conversion by up to 80%.
Edit to remove unnecessary content. Be succinct.
Use real testimonials for authenticity.
Show social proof via indicators of your social status.
Test new ideas using A/B testing. Let your customers decide which message works best for them.
Provide a free trial. Try-before-you-buy is a standard and expected feature.
Provide a guarantee to reduce/remove risk.
Include partner co-branding to increase trust by association.
Simplify your copy using bullets.
If you are selling a book, or giving away an eBook via lead gen, provide a preview to increase trust show that you are proud of your product.
Segment by traffic source. Send your PPC, email, social media, organic and banner traffic to separate landing pages for better message match and measurability (which channel performs best)
Segment by user type: don’t send offers about men’s health products to the ladies on your email list.
Show your phone number so people know you are real and can interact with you on a personal level.
Finally, don’t send inbound traffic to your homepage. Use a landing page!

For some design inspiration on the subject of directional cues, read this post: Designing for Conversion – 8 Visual Design Techniques to Focus Attention on Your Landing Pages

For a more detailed exploration of landing page optimization, download our free eBook – 101 Landing Page optimization Tips.

Comments

Joakim Ditlev says:

May 26, 2011 at 12:02 pm

Great advice – I can’t disagree.
If I were to add #22 it would be: Keep it simple! People needs to get the overview within the first few seconds or they will drop out.

Combining Direct Display Marketing and Search Engine Marketing says:

January 16, 2012 at 10:05 am

[...] Now that we have caught the attention of the searcher, the next objective should be how to get the searchers contact information. Companies should incorporate basic information fields like name, email & contact number on their landing pages. If consumers visits the page & leaves, the company will have gained nothing from that click. It is important to have permission based opt-ins like subscribe to newsletters on the landing pages. If they have provided information, we could have another shot at convincing them to buy the product. You can read on landing page best practices here. [...]

Combining Direct Digital Marketing With Search Engine Marketing says:

January 16, 2012 at 10:08 am

Internet Marketing says:

February 5, 2012 at 10:18 am

I will never forget the day that I stumbled into this site.. almost all of the internet marketing tools that I need can be found here! My main problem though is building an email list. I hope I could get some juicy info on how to do that one of these days… building a list is such a pain

Go Landing Pages! | ZUZA Marketer's Blog says:

March 15, 2012 at 1:49 pm

[...] Landing Page Best Practices (from unbounce) – GO » [...]

Identifying and Fixing Your Worst Landing Pages | Buypappa blog says:

June 10, 2012 at 10:16 pm