When running an advertising campaign, a landing page is an important aspect. It helps you communicate the product or service you’re selling while simultaneously encouraging the user to make a purchase, leave their contact details or sign up.
What’s a landing page?
A landing page is a webpage you direct customers to when promoting your site via marketing campaigns. A landing page can be part of your website but it does not necessarily have to be so.
Landing pages are calculated by taking the number of conversions, dividing by the number of page visits and multiplying by 100. WordStream estimates that the average conversion rate across industries is 2.35%. The top 25% convert at a rate of 5.31%, and the top 10% organisations convert at a rate of 11.45%. Here’s how you can be part of the 10%.
How to Create a Landing Page
Think of a landing page as a conversation with a single goal. It's a room with only one door, and that door is the action you want the visitor to take.
Here is how you build a high-converting landing page:
Step 1: Decide the One Goal
Before you do anything, you must answer one question: What is the single action you want someone to take on this page?
- Do you want them to download a guide?
- Do you want them to sign up for a webinar?
- Do you want them to buy a product?
- Do you want them to book a call?
Choose only one. Every word and image on your page must support this single goal.
Step 2: Assemble the Essential Parts
A good landing page has five key parts, in this order:
- The Headline: This is your big promise. It should clearly state the benefit the visitor will get. It must perfectly match the ad or link they clicked to get there.
- A Supporting Image or Short Video: Show what you're offering or the result they'll get. A visual makes your promise more real.
- The Benefits (in bullet points): Quickly list the top 3-5 ways your offer solves their problem or makes their life better. Don't list features; list outcomes.
- Proof: Show that you're trustworthy. This can be a short quote from a happy customer, logos of companies you've worked with, or a simple star rating.
- The Call to Action (CTA): This is your final instruction—the "one door." It's usually a button or a simple form. Use clear, action-focused text like "Get My Free Ebook" or "Start My 7-Day Trial."
Step 3: Build and Connect It
You don't need to be a coder to build a landing page.
- Use a Tool: Services like Leadpages, Unbounce, Carrd, or even Mailchimp make it easy with drag-and-drop templates. Choose a simple, clean template.
- Add Your Content: Fill in the template with the headline, benefits, and proof you prepared in Step 2.
- Publish and Link: Once published, take the URL (e.g.,
yourwebsite.com/offer) and use it as the destination for your ads, social media posts, or email links.
That's it. The key is simplicity and a relentless focus on that one single goal.
How to Increase Your Landing Page Conversions by 500%
Let the value resonate
Your landing page should amplify and continue the message that led to the page. If you’re acquiring visitors via ads, tweets or sponsored posts, your landing page should be in relation with the campaign content. For example, don’t create ads about a specific service you’re providing and link to a page with information on all the services you provide. Visitors clicked your ads, or followed the link based on what you promised. Deliver on that promise.
Have a clear message
Keep away from buzzwords and terminology your customer won’t understand. State what your value proposition is or what problems you’re solving. You can also highlight features of your product in bullet points so they’re easier to read.
Use Multiple opt-in or call to action button
Include multiple call-to-action buttons on your page. Start by including an above the fold button and also the visitor scrolls down the page. This is to maximise the reader’s attention span and encourage them to carry out the desired action as fast as possible.
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Optimise for mobile
Many internet users around the world are mobile-first users. Design your landing page to be responsive from the start so visitors don’t have to zoom in and out to read your message. This could be annoying and would lead to drop-offs.
Design for Focus
Your landing page should be focused on getting the reader to do one thing. It’s important to remove links to your other content on your site that’s not relevant to the landing page content.
It’s advisable to completely remove your website’s main navigation. This is to prevent your customer from ‘leaking’ to other pages.
If your landing page has popups, email newsletter forms or any other form of clutter, you should also remove them.
Show Trust
Prospective customers want to know if they can trust you. Include social proof from Twitter mentions or Facebook comments about your service. To help, link back to those posts so your visitor can see they’re from real people.
You should also include any other proof elements that will make your company trustworthy. If there’s an industry certification badge you have or popular website you’ve been featured on, you should include the logos and links where necessary.
Make forms straightforward
We advise you only include forms where necessary. When you include forms to collect information, only request for what you absolutely need. Anything else will seem like an invasion of privacy to your visitors and they will leave the page.
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Make your calls to actions simple and decisive
Let your call to action buttons explicitly describe what you want the visitor to do. Do you want the visitor to submit a form, sign up for a newsletter or create an account? State that right within the button.
Include imagery and video
If you’re selling software or a product that’s visible, show visitors a glimpse of what the product looks like and what it can do. This would help the reader visualise your product. To make visualisation easier, include a video to show your product in use.
With these tips, you’re sure to be among the top 10% of marketers with great conversion rates. Remember to design the page with your goal in mind and let the page be a guide to achieve that goal for the reader.
Your Landing Page Converts, But Can Your Engineering Team Handle the Scale? A CTO's Guide
The marketing team is celebrating a 15% conversion rate. For the CTO, this is not a metric; it is a high-priority alert. It is the sound of a thousand new users hitting your signup endpoint simultaneously. A successful landing page does not validate a product; it stress-tests the entire technical infrastructure and the team that supports it.
Before you celebrate marketing's win, answer these questions:
1. Where is the API Bottleneck? Your landing page is a stateless façade. The real work begins when a user clicks "Sign Up." Can your user authentication and account provisioning services handle a 100x spike in traffic for 30 minutes without failing? The cost of that failure is not just lost signups; it's the total customer acquisition cost (CAC) for every user who sees an error page.
2. Is Your Database Architected for Velocity or Volume? A successful campaign changes the write-patterns to your database instantly. Will this sudden velocity trigger lock contentions, cascade failures, or a degraded experience for your entire existing user base? A marketing success that takes down the core application for paying customers is a net loss for the business.
3. Have You Accounted for Onboarding Debt? A conversion is not a success until the user is activated. Does your backend job queue for welcome emails, data enrichment, and provisioning have the throughput to handle the spike? A two-hour delay between signup and a welcome email is a churn event. You have acquired a user only to demonstrate operational incompetence.
4. Is Your Headcount Scalable? Success requires resilience. The greatest risk is not that the system will fail, but that you lack the specialized engineering talent to fix it—or to have architected it correctly in the first place. The true measure of a technical leader is not building a product that works, but building an organization that can sustain success. When the traffic comes, you don't have time to hire. You either have the team, or you have an outage.
FAQs
- What is a good conversion rate for a landing page?
- Answer: Conversion rates vary by industry, but a good benchmark is typically 2-5%. Top-performing pages can exceed 10%. The goal is continuous improvement.
- How do you structure a high-converting landing page?
- Answer: A standard structure includes a compelling headline, a clear value proposition, benefit-oriented copy, strong social proof, and a single, unambiguous call-to-action.
- How does page speed affect landing page conversions?
- Answer: Every second of delay significantly increases bounce rate. Faster pages lead to better user experience and higher conversions, making speed a critical optimization factor.
- What are the most important elements to A/B test on a landing page?
- Answer: Start by testing high-impact elements: the headline, the call-to-action (CTA), the core offer, and the primary hero image or video.
