7 lead capture landing page examples with best practices

So you “own” marketing, eh?

You’re responsible for bringing leads through the door that either sign up for your product on their own or get passed along to sales to close. The only question is…

How are you supposed to actually generate leads?

The actual answer is there are more ways to generate leads than we could possibly list in one blog post. But the good news is, there’s one key element at the center of virtually all of those lead generation strategies:

Lead capture landing pages.

In this blog post, we’ll explore what they are, share real-world examples from the wild, break down landing page best practices, and share a 15-step walkthrough to help you build your next winning lead capture page.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. What is a lead capture page?
  2. 7 lead capture landing page examples
  3. Best practices to build high-converting lead capture landing pages
  4. Ready to build a high-converting lead capture page?

What is a lead capture page?

A lead capture page is a landing page that offers potential customers something in return for their email address or other information. Any page with a form, including ebook download pages, demo request pages, or newsletter sign-up pages, can be considered a lead capture page.

Unlike other pages on your website, a lead capture page only has one goal: exchange a lead magnet (or reward) for your visitor’s info. Get this exchange right, and you’ll be able to turn more visitors into leads—or more fans and observers into full-fledged leads and customers.

Why are lead capture landing pages important?

To put it simply—leads are the lifeblood of any business. Without people showing interest by engaging with your team, downloading resources, or watching webinars, you won’t have anyone to convert into customers.

Lead capture landing pages are one of the primary mechanisms for attracting leads who want what you’re offering.

7 lead capture landing page examples

Throughout this article, we’ll analyze each of these examples in more depth. We’ll connect what we like most to some lead capture landing page best practices you can put into practice to run more effective marketing campaigns and convert more of your visitors into leads.

Here are the pages we’ll be digging into:

1. Unbounce

A lead generation landing page for marketers interested in downloading an ebook about A/B testing.

Unbounce A/B testing ebook download lead capture landing page example screenshot

2. Arrive

A lead capture page targeting newcomers to Canada looking for financial advice.

Arrive financial lead capture landing page example screenshot

3. Later

A lead capture page offering social media pros free templates to elevate their monthly social media reporting deliverables.

Later lead capture landing page example screenshot

4. Morning Brew

A newsletter signup page for people interested in daily business topics.

Morning Brew newsletter lead capture landing page example screenshot

5. Intercom

A webinar landing page for startup founders who want to learn more about product-market fit, marketing, and Y Combinator.

Intercom product fit lead capture landing page example screenshot
Intercom webinar lead capture landing page example screenshot

6. Marie Forleo

A waitlist lead capture page for business owners interested in joining Marie Forleo’s B-School course when registration opens.

Marie Forleo. waitlist lead capture landing page example screenshot

7. Designlab

A free email course signup page for people interested in learning the basics of Figma.

Designlab email course lead capture landing page example screenshot

Best practices to build high-converting lead capture landing pages

Keep the following best practices in mind as you build out your own lead generation landing pages.

1. Know your goal

Your lead capture page has one job to do (and needs to do it well). So before you plan a fantastic design or write a catchy headline, decide what your page needs to accomplish.

What’s your one goal?

Start creating your goal by considering which audience you’re building the lead capture page for. There are three main types of audiences when it comes to lead capture pages:

  • Leads: Leads are the new people in your audience. They don’t know you well, but they’re intrigued by what they’ve seen and would like to learn more. You’re basically strangers who have just been introduced, and it’s your job to start the conversation and become good friends.
  • Prospects: A prospect is somebody who’s already interested in your product, offering, or service but hasn’t yet converted into a customer. They’re likely in your CRM, nurtured with emails, blog posts, and social media posts. If this were a relationship, you two have been dating but aren’t officially a couple… yet.
  • Current Customers: Current customers need attention and relationship building as well. They may be in love with your product, or else they’re cold and considering churning. An offer created just for them could be the thing they need to pique their interest. Keeping the relationship metaphor going—you’re married, but it’s still important to go on dates to keep the romance alive.

Once you know who your lead capture page is for, you’ll want to decide what it will do. Create clear and measurable targets and conversion goals based on previous campaigns or industry averages. Do you want to generate 50 new leads a month? Or have a 12% conversion rate? Decide what metrics you’re aiming for before you begin, and you’ll better be able to track how the lead capture page is performing.

For example, this lead capture page from Arrive does a great job of choosing one specific audience and clarifying who this guide is for: New Canadian residents looking for help with their finances.

Arrive lead magnet landing oage example screenshot

2. Create a compelling reward

The lead capture page is all about an exchange—they give you information, and you give them content. While that sounds like a no-brainer, most people don’t trust companies on the internet. You have to make the reward or offering so enticing that visitors will trust you with their personal info.

There are many types of rewards, and each appeals to a particular segment of your audience.

  • Free courses: A course showcases your knowledge and expertise while helping your audience. This type of content is so versatile that any of your audience segments could find it intriguing.
  • Reports or whitepapers: A whitepaper is a great B2B reward for prospects and leads, with over 82% of buyers saying they rely heavily on whitepapers to make purchasing decisions.
  • Ebooks: An ebook or a comprehensive guide can help your leads and prospects learn more and take the steps to become customers.
  • Webinars: Webinars are a great way to turn visitors into leads. They provide great value and are another tool for teaching your audience while establishing authority.
  • Product demos: Your product demo can be a great reward for the bottom of the funnel to help you attract interested prospects.
  • Free trials: A free trial lets your prospects and leads try before they buy. Depending on the product or service, they usually last between seven and 30 days.
  • Challenges: A free challenge is another way to give short-term access to your services or product. Nathalie Lussier used a free challenge to grow her list to over 55,833 subscribers in just four years.
  • Newsletters: Newsletters nurture your audience. Ideally, they’re sent out regularly and focus on a theme. Depending on your newsletter’s content, this reward would appeal to all audience segments. Newsletters allow subscribers to become familiar with your brand, voice, and subject matter expertise.
  • Checklists: A checklist can be a simple offer to help beginners. You can quickly design a PDF page using Canva and share it as a helpful resource for your audience.
  • Templates: Later created social media reporting templates to help social media managers and small brands with their social media reports. Visitors find templates like this valuable because they help you save time.
Later social media report lead magnet example

3. Pick the right form fields

The form field is the first place your audience will feel friction. This is where they’ll ask themselves, “Is it worth it?” or “Do I really want this?”

When you ask for a bunch of information in your form, you’ll have some well-segmented data and qualified leads to work with. But how many prospects or leads did you lose by asking too many questions?

Remember, your lead capture page has one goal—convert a visitor into a lead—so figure out the least amount of info you need from visitors to make that goal a reality.

A few examples of what to consider when choosing how many contact fields you put on the page:

  • If your content only targets marketing managers from early-stage startups, do you really need to know the person’s “Title” when filling out the form?
  • If your goal is to increase your list size by 10% each month, do you have to know the person’s phone number or company name?

If all goes well, this won’t be the last time you learn more about your audience. Each email and offer can help you learn more about who they are and what they need.

For example, Morning Brew has been growing its list in the simplest, most direct way possible: It only asks for an email address. No need for names, phone numbers, or addresses yet—after you’ve opted in, they ask a few optional follow-up questions to learn more about who you are and what you do.

Morning Brew lead magnet landing page example

So what’s an appropriate number of form fields to ask for in exchange for your content?

Ideally, you would test this to find out what number of fields converts the best, while still getting the data you need to successfully segment and re-market to them in the future.

Here’s a breakdown of the content listed in the last section with an appropriate level of information you should ask for (note these are simple guidelines—every situation will be slightly different).

Email-only

  • Presentation slides
  • Checklist/scorecard
  • Podcast

Name and email
For a more personalized experience over a period of time.

  • Ebook
  • Newsletter
  • Ecourse
  • Report/whitepaper

Name, email, and company information

  • Webinar
  • Consultation
  • Product demo

Company information might include the size of the company and its phone number. It is often used for longer sales cycles. Note that you could ask for a lot more if you want to, but realistically, an email is all you need for most things.

4. Consider your traffic sources

There are multiple ways someone can discover your offer. When you create a lead capture page, think through all the best ways to attract your target audience.

Common traffic sources include:

  • SEO: The people who find your page through a search engine are looking for something in particular but may not know all the solutions. Lead capture pages typically don’t drive a ton of organic traffic, but you may want to do some keyword research to see if there are any opportunities. Consider using a related piece of content (like a long-form blog post on the same topic) to try to rank higher in the search engine results, and then promote your lead capture page by linking from that post.
  • PPC (Pay Per Click): These ads are the first results on Google or the ads you see when visiting a website. When you click on the PPC ad, the business pays a certain amount per click. When using PPC traffic sources, your audience probably doesn’t know much about you or your offer. The rewards that will be the most helpful to an audience are usually educational, like an ebook or webinar.
  • Social ads: Social media ads allow you to use filters and the platform’s demographic data to target the right audience. But even with all of this targeting, your reward must be compelling for prospects and leads who click through.
  • Organic social media: Apart from paid ads, you can (and totally should) post your lead capture page to your own social media pages. This audience follows you already and is interested in what you create, share, write, or build. Traffic from this source tends to be warmer and more likely to convert.
  • Email: Your email list is a powerful traffic source with high conversion rates. Litmus found that for every $1 you spend on email marketing you can earn around $36 in return. You might be able to leverage email as a traffic source if you’re hoping to capture more information from leads already in your CRM.

5. Craft a message-match headline

You’ve done the audience research and quality reward work, and now it’s time to put the lead capture page together. Your headline is the eye-catching phrase that, in a few words, will tell the audience exactly what it is they’ll be getting when they sign up.

Message match is the term used to describe the connection between an ad’s CTA and the destination page’s headline. There are two reasons why this is important:

  • The human factor: When someone clicks a CTA they have a level of intent that must be matched when they arrive at their destination. A bad example would be if they clicked on an ad for used pickup trucks, then arrived at the homepage of a used car business where there was no direct mention of pickup trucks. Immediately the message match has been broken and they would feel like they’d made a bad click. The result is that they either get lost trying to find what they came for, or more likely they just hit the back button and leave.
  • The machine factor:  Poor message match affects more than just people. If you use paid advertising, such as Google AdWords, a bot reads your target page to see if there is a connection to the keywords in the ad. In the previous example, you’d get a lower Google Quality Score for your ad and a higher price.

Keep your messaging consistent across the customer journey from ads and emails to the lead capture page, and ultimately your lead form. A consistent message keeps things simple and clear for your audience. For example, this is how Intercom advertises a webinar for founders about finding product-market fit and getting into Y Combinator.

Intercom product fit lead magnet page example

And here’s the actual lead capture form. Notice how the messaging is clear, descriptive, and consistent.

Intercom lead magnet webinar page example

By staying consistent, you’re signaling to visitors that, yep—they’re in the right place. “This is the ebook you’re looking for.” This simple but important principle will almost always increase your landing page conversion rate.

6. Use social proof

Every lead capture page should use some form of social proof.

A Bright Local survey found that 91% of consumers are more likely to buy when they read positive reviews. Sharing testimonies, partner logos, or even the number of people who have previously signed up will show your audience that your offer is valuable.

This example from Marie Forleo’s B-School does a fantastic job integrating their social proof into the page’s clean design. She has an entire section on the landing page for reviews and customer testimonials, and she’s leaning into the sheer scale of her influence in the sub-copy beneath the heading (14 years and 80,000 students—geez!).

Bright local lead magnet landing page example screenshot

Throughout the page, she has CTAs that bring up this “join the waitlist” pop-up form:

Join the waitlist lead magnet landing page example

Of course, there’s more forms of social proof you can use beyond just testimonials and reviews. Depending on what type of landing page you’re building, you could use any of the following:

  • Customer logos: If you have an impressive client list, take advantage of this by prominently showing them on your page.
  • Registrant count: If you are running a webinar, list the number of registrants to encourage a herd mentality (if that many people are going, it must be good). Note: only start listing the number when it gets to an impressive count.
  • Download count: Similarly, show how many people have downloaded your ebook.
  • Share count: The social share numbers show how many people find your content valuable enough to tell others about it. The best place to put this is on your confirmation page when they’ve already expressed interest.
  • Anti-spam statement: Next to the email form field, put a simple statement that says you won’t spam them ever.
  • Media mentions: You’ve seen these before. It’s the list of logos from CNN, NBC, FOX News, TechCrunch, etc. If you’ve been lucky enough to be mentioned in big publications or on TV, make sure to show off.
  • Security badges: If you’re asking for sensitive data, include these to show that you use security best practices, such as a secure server. Examples would be McAfee or Symantec.
  • Content previews: Leverage people’s desire to “Try before you buy” by including a preview of your content such as a chapter of your ebook. Amazon has perfected this with its “Look Inside” concept.
  • Past content examples: If you ask someone to sign up for a newsletter, show them an archived example so they know what they are signing up for.

7. Keep your copy short and clear

You want every word and phrase to have a purpose. Your copy has a short time and space to convince the reader to sign up. Make sure your copy is benefits-driven, meaning you’re telling the reader exactly how signing up will benefit their life. Show precisely what they can expect after they hit the call to action button.

This Designlab course on Figma is a perfect example. They’re using a strong headline that couldn’t be clearer about the outcome—learn Figma for free.

Designlab lead magnet page example

Clicking the “sign me up” CTAs on the page brings up a simple one-field email opt-in form. Generally speaking, shorter forms typically mean higher conversion rates.

Designlab landing page example for lead capture

Beyond the headline itself, your opening paragraph or subcopy should be a short and succinct extension of your headline, which serves as an introduction to some bullet points describing the product or service you’re promoting.

Let’s look at an example from a webinar registration:

Join us at 2pm EST for a special webinar about lead gen landing pages, featuring [insert star name], hosted by [insert another star name]. We’ll be talking about best practices for generating leads using webinars (how meta), and we’ll be covering the following:

Insert bullet points…

  • Point 1
  • Point 2
  • Point 3

The star power and time-limited component give it a persuasive edge, while the details and bullet points give it the descriptive clarity it needs to answer your questions and convince you of the benefits of attending.

8. Write an actionable call to action

This one’s conversion 101.

Your CTA should describe exactly what will happen when you click on it.

The call to action is the page button inviting the reader to take the next step in the process. This little button’s copy may not seem important, but the right tweaks to CTA buttons can increase your CTR by up to 90%. Your CTA needs to invoke action and provide clarity about what comes next. ‘Learn More’ might be fine, but ‘Get Your Ebook’ tells the reader exactly what clicking that button will get them.

 In our landing page templates gallery, we have tons of actionable CTAs for any campaign or lead capture type.

If your page is for a SaaS product, ‘Choose Plan’ or ‘Sign Up’ could be the best option for your CTA. Webinars require actions different from ebooks or checklists. Each offer should have a unique CTA that guides the reader to action. To make it more actionable, use persuasive copy with urgency or benefit statements. Even simple words like “Get,” “Try,” “Now,” or “Today” can work.

9. Apply conversion-centered landing page design principles

Conversion-centered design means thoughtfully positioning every aspect of your funnel, from the ad to the form on your lead capture page. You want to guide the prospect toward conversion and retention.

Here at Unbounce we have a seven-principal framework that will help keep your campaigns focused and successful. The conversion-centered design framework goes deep on each principle, so if you need a more comprehensive lesson, we encourage you to check it out.

Conversion Centered Design Guide by Unbounce

Here are the three key takeaways of conversion-centered design:

  • Consistent design: Make sure you’re giving your prospects all the information they need to decide and convert. Your messaging, design, and copy must flow seamlessly from pre-click (your ad, email, or social post) to post-click (the lead capture page).
  • Keep the design simple: Stay focused on your one goal, and you’ll see a higher conversion rate. When in doubt, follow the principles of Conversion-Centric Design.
  • Credibility: To be seen as a credible business, you need to show as many sources of credibility as possible. Certificates, testimonials, reviews, and privacy policies are all effective ways to convey your trustworthiness.

In the following examples, we’ll show how you can transform a basic lead capture landing page using three core principles of CCD: encapsulation, color contrast, and directional cues. The end result is a stronger lead gen form designed for conversion.

Using encapsulation: Notice how the form stands out more in the version on the right, due to the use of an encapsulation container. This is often done simply by placing the form in a box to provide a contrasting background.

encapsulation vs no-encapsulation

Using color and contrast: Now the form is starting to pop. Notice how there are two primary areas of the form that are brought forward by the use of color and contrast: the form header and the CTA. the reason for using the same contrasting color for both is to provide a sense of correlation. The header should contain pertinent information that describes what you are getting by submitting the form, and the benefit of doing so. For example: “Download our free ebook to master the art of conversion.” Using the same color as the CTA will naturally allow your eye to follow the trail down to the CTA after reading the contents of the header.

colour contrast in design

Using directional cues: Notice the use of two arrows in the example on the right. By taking the previous version and adding some extra visual persuasion to the form, the first arrow brings your attention from the introductory copy to the form header (which as described above, should contain the description of the purpose of your form) and a second arrow from the form header down to the CTA.

directional cues in design

10. Optimize your lead generation form

To optimize your lead capture page, consider every tiny detail and ask if there is an easier way to achieve the same result.

Any tweak you can make that reduces the amount of work or thinking your prospect has to do will help increase your conversion rate.

One easy example—auto-filling form fields.

Enabling auto-fill fields helps reduce the number of things your prospect has to do before clicking the CTA. So, do the heavy lifting for them and use auto-fill fields for name, email, and credit card number.

In fact, the Unbounce team decided to practice what we’re preaching on our A/B testing ebook lead generation landing page. If you have an Unbounce account or have previously downloaded something, we’ll try to pre-fill the info on hand for you.

A/B testing ebook download lead capture page example

Multi-step forms may sound like an oxymoron to optimization, but experiments have shown that using multiple forms can increase conversions by 300%.

Multi-form best practices say:

  • Only ask one or two questions on a page.
  • Provide a visual for where the lead is in the process, like a page/question count.
  • Don’t ask more than 10 questions in total.
  • Provide immediate value after they submit the form.

11. Create an incredible post-conversion experience

Your post-conversion experience is your prospect’s interaction with your brand/company after they click the call to action. When you create an incredible experience that meets your customer’s needs, they tend to stick around longer and purchase more.

post-conversion strategies workflow

Remember our relationship metaphor? The post-conversion experience would be like going on a fun date and then ghosting the person. (Rude.) You both had a great date and now’s the time to build a real long-term relationship.

You want to take advantage of that magic moment directly after the customer says “Yes, I like you” to keep them in your sphere of influence while they’re “in the mood”. You can do this by focusing their attention on the first thing they see after submitting your lead gen form—the confirmation page.

The lead generation confirmation page could be considered the digital equivalent of a supermarket candy shelf. Admit it, you’ve fallen victim to those shelves of sweet goodness stacked by the checkout as you wait in line—aimlessly throwing extra stuff into your basket.

Here’s how to create an incredible post-conversion experience:

  • Set up an automated email campaign: If your lead magnet teaches new gardeners how to grow giant tomatoes, you know your prospect wants to learn more about gardening. You could create an automated campaign that sends them a tip of the week. This tactic helps them build their trust in you.
  • Explain the next steps: Let your prospects and customers know what to expect next. Will they get their download in their inbox or will the reward open right after they click? Are they subscribed to a newsletter, or will you only email them once with the reward?
  • Build their trust: Trust and relationships have become the cornerstone of the post-conversion experience. Your prospects want to trust you before becoming customers, so to build their trust, be reliable and honest with how you use their information. If you say you only need an email address to send the reward, don’t automatically add them to every newsletter.
  • Test and iterate: The best way to ensure your lead capture page serves your audience is to test and improve. Consider your one goal and the metrics you want to meet and ask yourself, “Is the page performing the way I wanted?” Where are there improvements to be made? Consider tiny details such as button color, or swapping all the “I”’s for “You.”

12. Define your target market and campaign goal

Before you start building anything you need to know who you are marketing to. Chances are you’re creating a campaign for one of the following targets:

  • Existing customers: You might think that having a customer means you don’t need to continue marketing to them. Sometimes a customer is inactive so your goal is re-engagement, through exposure to new content or product demos that may turn them from a fence sitter back into an active customer.
  • Leads in your email or CRM lists: Once you’ve established a list of leads, your goal should be to nurture them with more content and events to turn them into customers. Perhaps you get them to register for an e-course using autoresponders to drip content into their inboxes, slowly building a rapport that eventually moves from a soft sell content marketing strategy, to a request to sign up (potentially with a special offer).
  • Prospects: This is the purest form of lead capture, where you are chasing entirely new prospects through content marketing.

Lead form tip: If you are marketing to customers or leads, pre-populate as many of your lead capture landing page form fields as you can to reduce the friction involved in filling out the form and create a sense of personalization.

13. Bullet point the key benefits of your solution

Given how little time most people spend on most pages—you have maybe 5 seconds to garner their interest.

Most of this is done via your headline grabbing their attention, but assuming this has already happened, you need to dig into some simple benefit statements rather than ramble on in a long paragraph like this one. If you can turn your text into about 3-5 bullet points, each explaining why they should fill in your form, your lead gen page will be more effective.

As an exercise, let’s break down what we’ve just said into bullets:

  • You have 5 seconds to convince someone to stay
  • Don’t use a rambling paragraph
  • Use 3-5 bullet points
  • Focus on the benefits
  • Explain why someone should complete your lead gen form

See how much easier that was to read?

Point made.

14. Decide on image/video requirements

This is a classic A/B test—whether to use images or video on your page, or none at all. The decision often comes down to the purpose of the page. Let’s run through some of the rewards you are giving away (from step #2) and see what would be most appropriate:

  • Ebook: An image showing the cover and the authors is the most appropriate choice here.
  • Course: A personal video describing what the course is about is typical, and most likely the most persuasive method.
  • Webinar: Photos of the participants are the most powerful choice here.
  • Podcast: Here you’d want a short audio clip.
  • Slide presentation: A great idea here is to embed a Slideshare or Lightbox gallery presentation with a sample of the full version.
  • Online product demo: A video showing the context of use (the product in action) is the best way to showcase a product.

15. Create urgency factors

The key to creating a sense of urgency is to create the illusion of a pain point in the visitor’s mind to your page. To understand how this works, let’s first look at a couple of examples from the world of ecommerce.

  • Amazon delivery deadline: Amazon preys on the fear of not getting Christmas presents delivered on time (who wants crying kids on Christmas morning?). They do this by helpfully telling you the last day that you should order to guarantee delivery by the date in question. They’ve taken this even further (as shown in the example below), applying urgency to any date—no doubt to capture last-minute present buying for birthdays, which can occur on any given date.
amazon urgency
  • Expedia seat limitations: Expedia uses a live seat count for its flights to encourage immediate bookings. Looking at the best flight for your journey and seeing that only two seats are left is a great way to add urgency to the booking process. Note that they only do this when a couple of seats are left—not when there are 200 left.
Expedia lead capture landing page example screenshot

We can apply both of these principles to our lead generation pages as follows:

  • Ebook/report—free for a limited time: You can say that an ebook download is free for a limited time only and that it will cost $14.95 after a certain date, for example. This will increase the number of downloads before the date you choose, which, of course, can be continuously extended.
  • Webinar—limited seats: If you are running a webinar, you can increase the urgency and exclusivity of the session by stating how many virtual seats are still available. For example: Register now—only 20 of 100 spots left.

Essentially, anything you can do to create a sense of urgency by utilizing a pain point will increase your lead gen form conversions.

16. Architect for the 6-point punch

You’re probably wondering what the 6-point punch is. It’s a concept based on the primary elements a successful lead gen page requires to be effective. Essentially, it acts like a checklist of the important elements already discussed, reminding you that you must create a page with all these aspects working in concert to be conversion-focused.

  1. Headline with strong message match: As discussed in step #5, the clicked ad should closely match the headline.
  2. Intro with bullets: Remember to keep your intro short, and simplified by using bullet points.
  3. An appropriate media choice: Show a chart from a report, an ebook image, a sneak peek of the contents, or something relevant to the page.
  4. Conversion-centered design-influenced lead gen form: The form area shows the conversion-centered design principles described in the last step.
  5. Urgency factors: Remember to add some kind of time, price or space-limited statement to your page.
  6. Trust factors: A good addition to this would be a preview of the ebook to let the visitor know what they are going to download.

17. Create a wireframe for your page

Before you start designing your page, you should grab a marker and use a whiteboard (or an online whiteboarding app) to lay out a wireframe. This saves you design time by getting the layout right before you start building a page you might need to deconstruct and rebuild. It also allows you to run a few initial tests using your sketch.

Before you run the tests we’ll mention below, ensure your wireframe is quite detailed and includes some real copy and some CCD elements such as color and contrast.

The 5-second test:

This is a fun one to do with a whiteboard (or piece of paper hanging on the wall if you decided to sketch it that way).

Here’s how it works:

Get a lineup of people who’ve not seen the page before, and one at a time, position them right in front of the page with their eyes closed. Then ask them to open their eyes and look at the page. After 5 seconds, tell them to close their eyes again and tell you what the page is about. If they can’t tell you after 5 seconds of exposure (the typical time a visitor will stay if your page isn’t clear), then your core value proposition (headline) isn’t clear enough. If this happens repeatedly, rewrite and start again. Do this until you have a very clear page.

The 6-foot test:

For this one, you need to stand 6 feet away from the sketch and see the most dominant areas on the page. If the CTA doesn’t stand out enough, consider adding more contrast, size, and white space around it. Similarly, if the headline is buried, apply the same concepts to make it more easily readable.

Once you’re satisfied with your page, it’s time to do the final landing page design and prepare for launch with a landing page builder like Unbounce.

18. A/B test your lead capture landing page

The real fun starts here: running an A/B test on your page. But first, you need to publish it and start driving traffic to it (from PPC, social, email, display, etc.).

When you start seeing conversion results from your landing page, you’ll undoubtedly come to the correct conclusion that it could be better—every page can be. This signals the time to run an A/B test, and it’s also when the classic question of what to test comes up.

Before jumping into testing, you need to know a few of the fundamentals involved in the A/B testing process, and then some techniques for figuring out what to test.

What insights do you need before testing?

Before you know why you will run a test, you need to get some actionable insight into what could make your test effective. One of the best ways to do this is by using visitor feedback. This can be done in a number of ways:

  • Using live chat on your pages so that you can talk to people at the point of conversion and figure out why they are sitting on the fence, or what they need to become a converted customer.
  • Sending an email to your customers or email list to find out what made them sign up.
  • Use online usability tools to see where people are dropping off.
  • Connect heatmap software like Hotjar to your page to see where the most clicked and focused areas of the page are.
  • Have a brainstorm with people from different departments in your company.
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Why are you testing?

A big mistake is trying to test something without a real purpose. This is where a test hypothesis comes in—a statement of what you will test and your theory behind why it will be a success. As an example:

“The page does not have a clear call-to-action, and prospects spend too long trying to understand what to do next. Adding a large orange button right under the main benefits will help them identify the CTA and perform our desired action.”

Once you have a hypothesis, you’re better positioned to create a test page to compete against your original page in an A/B test.

How to test:

Now that you’re ready to run a test, you need to follow a few rules to ensure your experiment is clean:

  • Each page in your test should receive at least 100 unique visitors, although the actual number of visitors you should target will vary. You can use a free sample size calculator to get a better estimate.
  • The test should last at least a week to account for different daily behaviors
  • The statistical significance of the experiment should be over 95% to remove the potential that your results are based on chance. This is a measure of confidence that your experiment is valid and can be ended, knowing that the results are trustworthy.

Ready to build a high-converting lead capture page?

Building lead capture pages on your website from scratch can be tedious and limit your creativity and choices. That’s why Unbounce has a ton of high-converting templates to help you build and customize quickly.

These tips and best practices lead to success, so we’ve baked them into each template design. Choose the templates that best serve your needs, then filter by tool, campaign, type, or special features.

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