How To Optimize Your Landing Pages For Conversions

How To Optimize Your Landing Pages For Conversions Free
How To Optimize Your Landing Pages For Conversions Step By Step

Landing page optimization refers to the process of enhancing or improving each element on your landing page to increase conversions. Instead of redesigning the entire page based solely on a hunch, you use data and anecdotal evidence.

Landing pages are your secret weapon.

A great landing page can boost your conversions, grow your audience, and build trust and loyalty with visitors.

We’ve put together a compelling list of ways you can improve your landing pages and conversions. These tips are easy to implement and, more importantly, can start improving your results immediately. Landing page headlines and ad copy should match. Google AdWords determines cost-per-click in part based on the quality of your landing page. For more actionable tips to improve your landing page conversions, read the following blog post: 7 Ways to Optimize Your Lead Generation Landing Pages. Or, contact ZoomInfo today to learn why we are the leading business information company. Don’t wait, our tools can improve your landing page conversion rates today.

And the best part? Great landing pages are easy to design and share. In fact, there's no reason you shouldn't create a new one for every product, service, or lead magnet you launch.

In this post, we'll cover everything you need to know about landing pages: what they are, why they're important, how to use them to grow your audience and business, and some tips for creating great landing pages that convert.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is a single web page where visitors “land” after clicking on a specific ad, promotional link, or search result. Landing pages give visitors more information and sales copy around the offer they clicked, with the goal of getting each visitor to complete a specific action, or conversion.

Every landing page shares the same goal: to get visitors to follow through on a specific call-to-action, or CTA. That action might be:

Requesting a demo of a software tool
Downloading a whitepaper
Starting a free trial of a software product
And much more.

The most successful landing pages focus on only a single source of traffic. You might have one landing page for visitors that click on your bio in a guest post and another for email subscribers who click a link to find out more about a free webinar you're planning.

Because each landing page is created for a very specific audience and purpose, landing pages let you convert a much higher percentage of visitors into subscribers, leads, or customers. In fact, companies with over 40 landing pages generated 12 times more leads than those with only 1-5 landing pages.

Why are landing pages important for online creators?

For busy online creators like yourself, landing pages are a fabulous tool to have at your disposal. A great landing page helps your online business in two specific ways:

Landing pages increase your conversion rates, helping you grow your audience more quickly
Landing pages lower your marketing costs, helping you get the highest return for the least effort

Let's take a closer look at why you should be using landing pages.

Landing pages help increase conversion rates

Every online creator loves to share their links to their website— but most people usually link straight to their homepage. Of course, every link is important— but it's also essential to get the most out of the traffic coming to your site.

By sending visitors directly to a targeted landing page that speaks directly to them, you'll boost your chances that those visitors will convert and become subscribers, leads, or customers.

Back in 2015, Pay Flynn switched the email list for his website Smart Passive Income to ConvertKit and shared a post encouraging his audience to do the same. Instead of sending his readers to ConvertKit's home page, he sent them to a dedicated landing page specifically designed for his audience:

The landing page includes Pat's photo, the Smart Passive Income logo, a quote from him, and a personal recommendation. For readers of his blog, the added trust and personal connection made the offer irresistible, driving conversion rates through the roof.

Landing pages help lower your marketing costs

Landing pages just like the one Pat created are easy to set up, making them the perfect supplement to your other marketing channels. Creating a dedicated landing page for each marketing campaign is one of the quickest and easiest ways to improve the effectiveness of your marketing— without needing to find more traffic.

Landing pages pair wonderfully with paid Google advertising, Facebook ads, email marketing campaigns, and even direct mail flyers. By closely matching your messaging across your entire campaign, you can convert more visitors at a much lower cost than if you were sending visitors to your homepage.

Take this Facebook ad from Shopify Plus:

Clicking on the ad brings up a landing page:

Shopify Plus combines Facebook ads with dedicated landing pages to boost their marketing.

The graphics, color, and messaging on the landing page all match the original ad perfectly, increasing the chances you'll download the checklist and making the Facebook ad campaign much more potent.

So, a great landing page makes your marketing more effective by driving more leads for less time and money invested. Now let's dive into some specific ways you can use landing pages to grow your audience and online business.

What is a landing page used for?

Landing pages are like the superstar salespeople in your online business. No matter what stage of business you're in, landing pages come in handy for a wide range of different marketing purposes. Let's check out some of the most common landing page uses.

Generate leads for your business

Lead generation landing pages make it easy to collect contact information from visitors who are interested in what you have to offer. This might be as simple as capturing a visitor's email address in exchange for a free lead magnet. Or if you're a larger company, you can ask for more details, like phone numbers or job titles. You can also use landing pages to promote an evergreen webinar series, online courses, or meetups you might be hosting.

Once you've captured new business leads using your landing pages, you can nurture them toward becoming customers through direct sales or email marketing.

Promote multiple offers across multiple audiences

Most online creators offer more than one product or service. Creating a specific landing page for each product or service, conversion goal and customer type lets you segment your audience and speak more directly to customers at each stage of the customer journey.

Let's say you're running a webinar series, and you want to offer two different webinars—one for beginners and one for more advanced users. Instead of creating a single landing page for the webinar series, you might create two different landing pages for your two different audience personas. That way, you're always pitching the right offer to the right person at the right time.

Validate new product ideas

No-one wants to waste time building a product or service that won't sell. Landing pages are wonderful for validating ideas for new products or services before you sink your time and effort into creating the product.

Social media automation tool Buffer used this tactic to validate demand for their product before investing the time and effort needed to build the product:

You can use a landing page to describe the product and the problem you're solving. If visitors are interested, they can let you know by giving you their email address to receive more details once the product launches.

Thank new subscribers

After a new subscriber joins your email list, you're probably sending them to a custom thank you page to say “welcome.”

Your thank you page is a landing page in disguise—by directing new subscribers to a thank you page with another pitch and offer, you can multiply your sales and build customer loyalty. It's a win-win!

Two types of landing pages

Landing pages come in two unique and delicious flavors, and both of them are equally useful in helping you grow your audience and business.

Lead generation landing pages are transactional. Every lead generation landing page includes a form to capture contact information, like visitors' names or email addresses. This information can then be shared with a sales team for follow-up or added to an automated email sequence to nurture subscribers toward becoming customers.

Product landing pages—also called click-through landing pages or post-click landing pages—aim to inform. These pages present specific information about the product or service on offer, along with a CTA button where users can click through to another page where the actual conversion occurs. Product landing pages are frequently used in ecommerce to introduce an offer or product, warming up potential customers without pushing them to click the “buy” button before they're ready.

If your visitors need more reassurance before you making an offer, a click-through landing page will be the best choice. Or, if your audience members are already primed and ready to accept your offer, then a lead generation landing page will help get you the most conversions.

Your landing page vs homepage

Your homepage and your landing pages serve two very different purposes.

Think of your homepage like a hub. Your homepage likely includes information on your brand and business, links to all your different services, maybe a list of your latest blog posts, and navigation to all the other pages on your site.

That's exactly what should be on your homepage—but your landing pages should be the opposite.

Each landing page should be designed with a single purpose: to convince visitors to convert. This means eliminating anything that could be distracting like navigation menus and other unrelated or distracting content. Landing pages with multiple offers generate 266% fewer leads than those with a single offer, so it's worth keeping your visitors focused.

Since each landing page stands alone, you can even host your landing pages directly in ConvertKit and link to each landing page from your site. In fact, while building and designing your own website can give you a central home-base for your business, for your landing pages, you might not even need a website at all.

A quick guide to landing page best practices

Designing a landing page might seem simple on the surface, but designing a landing page that converts can be tricky. There are many pieces that all need to work together to reach your goal, and many of them need to change to suit different audiences or offers.

The most successful landing pages all share a few common elements. You can read more about how to design winning landing pages in our guide to landing page best practices, but here's a quick overview:

Create a new landing page for each offer. Landing pages with more than one CTA see dramatically lower conversions, so keep each landing page focused on a single offer.
Keep your design clean and simple. The best landing pages are aesthetically pleasing, easy to read, and have clear messaging.
Attract visitors with pictures and video. Great imagery evokes emotion, and emotion helps drive landing page conversions.
Write enticing and persuasive copy. Focus on the pain your audience is experiencing and how your offer will help solve that pain.
Add social proof and testimonials. The power of storytelling is mighty. Testimonials and case studies from existing customers build credibility and boost customer loyalty.
Answer your visitors' burning questions. Your copy should leave no stone unturned, answering the most common questions and concerns your audience might have.
Include a strong call-to-action. Your CTA is crucial to your conversion rate, so it needs to be crystal clear.
Track and optimize for conversions. Understand what success looks like to you, measure your results, and work on improving your landing pages over time.

Create your first landing page in under 10 minutes

We've shared everything we know about landing pages that convert—now it's your turn to create your own landing page.

It only takes 10 minutes to create a great landing page in ConvertKit, so you should create a page for each offer.

Start by choosing your goal—you might want to offer a free incentive to build your email list, gauge interest in a new product or service, or attract people to a webinar you're hosting.

Choose a template from our collection of pre-made landing page designs and customize it to match your brand.

Craft a strong CTA for your offer and write your copy including the headline and description.

Once you have your incentive emails and other email marketing sequences connected to the landing page, you'll be ready to drive some traffic to your landing page. You can share your landing page on social media or use paid advertising like Facebook ads to generate leads.

Once visitors begin signing up, you can leverage email automation to nurture them toward becoming clients or customers. Deliver your incentive to each subscriber automatically, and build trust using automated email sequences.

Now you know the process, it's easy to create a new page for every offer, driving more subscribers and leads for your business!

Build your next landing page in ConvertKit

If you’re already a ConvertKit user, jump on into the landing page builder to get started.

If you’re not a ConvertKit user, you can try out our landing page builder for free. Just click the button below and you'll be on your way to growing your audience and business with landing pages in no time!

Create one ad set per landing page

Know your USP and align that with your landing page

Be consistent with keywords and message

Know your target market

Images help

Headlines should have an impact

Express intentions clearly with the CTA

Show what others have to say

Keep design simple

Make sure that the page isn’t loading for too long

Decide between short and long landing pages

SEO Keyword Optimization

Test landing pages

Optimize the page for mobile

Use Analytics to make strategic decisions

Final Thoughts

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