14 Landing Page Optimization Tips & Best Practices​:

What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a stand-alone webpage with a single focus and single call to action designed to get visitors to that page to do something like making a purchase, signing up for your email newsletter, downloading a lead magnet, sharing the content, or any number of other things that your business finds important. Unlike a homepage, which is designed to share information about your business with visitors, landing pages are built to convert. They’re a great place to direct traffic from your paid ads and are a key component of a successful conversion-focused marketing campaign. Here are some landing page examples you can use to inspire your next one!

What Is Landing Page Optimization?

The purpose of landing page optimization is to improve landing page performance. This happens by making improvements to the design, navigation, layout, messaging, and images on your landing page. You can use data about your visitors and customers, and their behavior, to better understand how your landing page is performing and the steps you need to take to improve that performance. Landing page optimization is also the perfect way to make sure you’re getting a good ROI on your pay-per-click campaigns. When you use landing pages that are optimized and customized for your Facebook Ads or ads from any other platform, you’re more likely to reduce your cost per lead.

Why Is Landing Page Optimization Important?

Landing page optimization is important because optimization leads to increased conversion rates, more leads and sales, and better messaging from your brand to your visitors. Through optimization, you can provide a better user experience and make it more likely that visitors will be motivated to take action. While no two landing pages are going to be exactly the same, there are still elements that high-converting landing pages have in common such as attention-grabbing call to action buttons, clear and compelling headlines, and more. No matter whether you’re creating your first-ever landing page or tweaking your 40 existing landing pages, these landing page optimization tips will help you get more value and increase your ROI.

14 Landing Page Optimization Tips

Optimizing your landing pages doesn’t have to be an enormous job but it will bring enormous benefits. With these landing page optimization tips, you’ll be able to create stunning landing pages that continue to deliver.

1. Set a Goal

Before you start creating or optimizing landing pages, you need to have a goal in mind. What do you want the landing page to accomplish? Focus on a single goal, a single action, you want visitors to take when they end up on your landing page, and don’t stray from that goal. Everything on your landing page should lead visitors down your marketing funnel towards that single action you want them to take.

2. Include Social Proof

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon in which people look to the behavior of others as a guide for their own behavior. Essentially, this means that visitors to your landing pages will see social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials, lists of notable clients, and more and will be more likely to convert because they can see that you have other happy customers just like them. Social proof doesn’t just include information provided by other customers but can also include things like trust badges, credentials, guarantees, and a lot more.

3. Write Compelling Copy

Your landing page copy matters. No matter what type of landing page you’re creating or what your goal is, your copy is what makes visitors convert. Your copy should be concise and to the point, conveying your offer and leading visitors down the path to conversion. No matter what your conversion goal, your landing page copy will include headlines, subheaders, body copy, and clear calls to action. You can make your copy easier to read by breaking it up into smaller chunks as you see in this landing page from Moz:

One of the most important things to consider when crafting your copy is “voice of the customer” data. This means steering clear of jargon and buzzwords and, instead, using the words and phrases that your potential customers actually use. One of the easiest ways to do this is to check out reviews that your potential customers have left for your competitors. From those reviews, you’ll be able to find some great copy that is not only based on what your potential customers want and their pain points, but copy that is in their own exact words. You can also find valuable voice of customer data from surveys and other empirical methods of data collection.

4. Make Your Offer Clear

Your offer has to be clear to the customer. Don’t use ambiguous words—tell them directly what you’re offering and how they can get it. If you’ve taken the time to set a goal for your landing page it shouldn’t be difficult to talk about your offer, the benefits it brings to your landing page visitors, and how they can take advantage of the offer.

5. Keep It Simple

Some marketers think they need to add tons of different elements to their landing pages to increase interest but this is actually counterproductive. Remember, your landing page focuses on a single goal and every element on that landing page should lead your visitors towards conversion. If you add too many bells and whistles you’re going to dilute your message and confuse your visitors. You don’t need dozens of images or miles of copy to get your message across. Choose elements for the top of the page that are going to grab visitors’ attention and use just enough copy to get your message across. Sometimes that will mean a long-form sales page, sometimes just a few lines of well-written copy will suffice as you can tell from this Quip landing page:

6. Use Scarcity Techniques

We’ve already talked a little bit about FOMO, but that and other scarcity tactics are common in landing pages so we wanted to take a moment to ensure that you’re doing it correctly. It’s important to note that you don’t need scarcity tactics, some marketers even despise them. However, if you have a limited time or limited supply offer, a well-placed scarcity technique will inspire your visitors to act before they miss out. This can help you front-load your sales and pluck the low-hanging fruit (the people who are ready to convert right away). A little goes a long way with scarcity tactics, so we recommend using them when you’re dealing with a truly limited time or quantity offer. Using this technique too much or too often can turn off visitors or even cause you to lose out on sales because everything seems to be a sale.

7. Optimize for SEO

While great landing pages focus on conversion, it’s still helpful to pay attention to SEO and incorporate keywords on your page so it’s discoverable on search engines by users searching for terms related to your offer. There are several SEO tools available that will help you find the best keywords to use on your landing pages.

8. Use the Right Form Length

If your goal is to grow your email list, you really only need to collect an email address, maybe a first name, too. If, however, your landing page is focused on getting a sale, you’ll probably need a form that’s a bit longer. And, even if you are trying to get more leads, you may not want just any lead but high-quality leads that are more likely to become paying customers. In those cases, asking for more information is a smart move. As you can probably tell, there’s no “right” form length to use on your landing pages. Our recommendation is to consider how much information you really need from the people who convert. Do you need to know what their budget is to segment your list appropriately? Are you accepting payments directly on the page? The goal of your page will have a lot to do with how long your form needs to be.

9. A/B Test Everything

A/B testing (also known as split testing) is the process of showing two variants of a page to different segments of your audience at the same time and comparing which variant drives more conversions. We highly recommend that you test your landing pages to find out which elements work best and get more clicks and conversions. You can test just about everything: headlines, copy, images, colors, layout, length, buttons, and more. For best results, test only one element at a time so you know which element performs best.

10. Make It Mobile-Friendly

Way back in 2016, mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic. That means that most internet users access the internet from mobile devices and tablets. As a result, it’s imperative that your landing pages be mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly landing pages are easy to read and navigate on smaller screens so you’re not going to lose those conversions you worked so hard to nurture.

11. Match It With Your Ads

If you’re using landing pages in combination with paid ads, you’ll want to make sure that your landing pages pick up where your ads leave off. The copy, headline, and visual elements of your ad should continue when the user ends up on your landing page to create a seamless user experience. Your best bet is to create a custom landing page for each marketing campaign and definitely for each ad. This ensures that visitors to your landing page are getting what the ad promises and what they expect.

12. Use a Custom URL

If you’re using a landing page builder, you’ll probably have the option to either host the landing page on your own site or host your landing page using the page builder’s domain. Whenever possible, we recommend using your own domain and a custom URL for each landing page. While it’s more convenient to let the page builder host your landing pages, you’ll increase brand recognition and brand awareness—not to mention getting a little rankings boost—when you tie your landing pages to your own domain.

13. Write a Brilliant Call to Action

Take the time to write a compelling call to action that will get your visitors excited to say “yes.” Don’t just throw “Submit” on a button and call it a day. Instead, take the time to consider your visitors’ motivations and what you want them to do on your page. There’s a really simple strategy you can use to come up with a strong call to action. Just consider your goals and craft a call to action that finishes this sentence: “I want to…” Whatever comes after those three words can be reworked (or used as-is) as a call to action.

14. Add Video

Video is a powerful marketing tactic. You can use video to make complex ideas simple, reinforce your messaging and branding, engage your visitors, and make your content more accessible and understandable. You can create high-quality videos using just a smartphone these days, but there are also some excellent video editing tools to put your video content over the top.

Landing Page Optimization Tools

While landing page optimization isn’t overly complicated, you may still find yourself wanting to streamline the process or make it easier. That’s where landing page optimization tools come into play. Let’s take a look at a few landing page optimization tools that will help you put these tips and best practices to use right away.

UserTesting.com

UserTesting.com connects your brand to a worldwide panel of testers. These testers will provide real-time analyses of your landing page and provide written reports so you can use their insights as landing page optimization tips to improve your conversion rate.

Intercom

Intercom makes it easy for your brand to collect feedback from visitors and customers that end up on your landing pages. You can then use this feedback to create better, more-targeted messaging and even A/B test your landing page elements.

Optimizely

Optimizely is an A/B testing platform you can use to test different elements of your landing pages to better understand—and deliver—what your audience wants.

Sumo

Sumo is a suite of tools that can help you understand the performance of your landing pages so you can get more leads and sales. The tool includes contact forms, sharing buttons, and analytics.

CrazyEgg

CrazyEgg offers heatmapping, snapshots, and recordings so you can see where your visitors are engaging on your landing pages. This information is invaluable when it comes to optimizing your landing pages to increase engagement.