Landing page optimization is one of the fastest ways to get more leads and sales without spending more on traffic.
When your landing pages convert better, your customer acquisition costs drop, your user experience improves, and more visitors turn into subscribers and paying customers. Same traffic. Better results.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about landing page optimization, step by step.
You’ll learn what landing page optimization is, how it works, and why it matters. Then I’ll share practical tips and best practices you can apply right away.
After that, I’ll show you how to keep improving your landing pages using A/B testing, so your conversion rates continue to climb over time. I’ll also cover the tools that make the whole process faster and easier.
What are landing pages?
Landing pages are—as the name suggests—the website pages that your prospects ‘land on’ after clicking a link. That link might be a search result, marketing email, paid ad, or anything else.
The goal of a landing page is to get the visitor to complete a specific conversion action. Or in other words, to do the thing you want them to do.
If the goal is to build your mailing list, the conversion action might be for your visitors to submit an email opt-in form.
If the goal is to generate leads, the conversion action might be to get them to schedule a call with your sales team, or submit an inquiry form.
If the goal is to drive sales, the conversion action might be for the visitor to make a purchase, or add a product to their cart. You get the idea.
Here’s the structure of a typical landing page:
Note: You can learn more about each of these components in my article on landing page anatomy.
When a visitor completes the desired action, it counts as a conversion. And we can calculate the landing page’s conversion rate by dividing the total number of conversions by the total number of page visits.
Conversion rate is the most useful metric for determining how ‘good’ a landing page is. The higher the conversion rate, the better.
What is landing page optimization?
Landing page optimization is the process of improving (or ‘optimizing’) the landing page in order to increase its conversion rate, so that more of your clicks result in conversions.
This usually involves changing different landing page elements and tweaking content, then running an A/B test to compare the new variant against the old one and figure out which one performs best.
We’ll talk more about this later when we discuss testing.
But first, let’s look at some landing page optimization best practices.
Landing page optimization: Tips & best practices
There’s no one-size-fits-all ‘best way’ to optimize your landing pages. And that’s because every business is different.
The needs of top-level C-suite executives are going to be very different from a touring musician, for example.
However, there are some general ‘best practices’ that you can follow as a starting point. And from there, it’s all about running A/B tests to figure out what your target audience responds the best to in order to further improve your conversions.
Some high-converting landing pages might fly in the face of best practice and that’s ok. This is just a baseline for you to start from.
With that in mind, here are some general tips and best practices for landing page optimization that should convert well across most verticals.
1. Personalize your landing pages for different traffic sources
As part of your marketing campaign, you might be driving website traffic through different sources.
For example, some of your clicks might come from paid search ads (e.g. Google Adwords), whereas others might come from social media.
And your visitors are likely to behave differently depending on which source they’ve come from. They might be more likely to be further down the funnel if they already follow you on social media, for example.
As such, it’s worth personalizing your landing pages to best meet the needs of each traffic source.
There are a couple of ways to go about this. One option is to set up multiple dedicated landing pages; one for each traffic source.
Another option is to utilize dynamic content to automatically tailor the content on your landing page based on the behavior, preferences, and interests of the user.
There are tools that can help with this.
For example, the Unbounce landing page builder has a built-in Smart Traffic feature that proactively learns about your page and visitor attributes. Then, it automatically routes your visitors to the best landing page for them based on their location, timezone, browser, etc.
We’ll look at other tools that can help with LPO later in this post.
2. Limit available website actions
Landing pages are supposed to do one thing and one thing only: Get the visitor to take the desired conversion action. And they should be laser-focused on that specific goal.
As such, you should limit the actions that users can take on the landing page so that the only thing they can do is the thing you want them to do.
For example, if you want to get them to sign up for your mailing list, the only thing they should be able to do is enter and submit their email address.
All other navigation elements, form fields, buttons, etc. should be removed in order to minimize distractions.
3. Communicate your value proposition in the headline
The headline is arguably the most important part of your landing page.
It’s the first—and often, the only—thing your visitors see when they click the page. 80% of your landing page visitors will see the headline, but only 20% will bother reading further than that.
A good headline will clearly communicate your value proposition. That is, it should say what value you can offer to your customers/users and the reason they should choose your product/service.
Here’s ours:
Your headline should also be short and succinct: No more than 8 words, ideally.
Note: The headline will usually appear at the top of the page, and other elements like the supporting headline, main offer copy, CTA, etc. will appear further down.
4. Place all the important stuff above the fold
The fold is the bottom of the visible part of the screen—the part that the visitor can see before scrolling.
A good chunk of your landing page visitors won’t bother to scroll down the page, so all the important stuff should be placed above the fold.
That includes your headline, main offer copy, form (if applicable), and CTA.
Remember that the fold will be in a different place depending on the device. Therefore, your landing page should utilize responsive design so that all the important content remains above the fold regardless of whether the visitor opens the page on mobile, tablet, or desktop.
5. Keep copy short and concise
Aside from your headline, your landing page should also usually include marketing copy that explains more about the product/service/offers you’re promoting and encourages the visitor to take action.
But nobody likes reading huge walls of text, so make sure you keep your copy short and succinct. A paragraph or two is usually plenty.
You could also consider using bullet point lists or tables to highlight the main features/benefits of your product succinctly without overwhelming the reader.
6. Include social proof
To encourage more visitors to convert, it helps to include social proof somewhere on your landing page.
Social proof is evidence that other people have already found value in what you’re offering.
The most obvious example is customer reviews and testimonials. But social proof can also take the form of expert accreditations, celebrity endorsements, ratings from review aggregators, etc.
To give you an idea of what this might look like in practice, here’s the social proof section of the Blogging Wizard homepage:
7. Use contrasting colors to highlight your CTAs
Aside from your headline, your CTA (call to action) is the other most important part of your landing page.
Your CTA is how you tell your visitors what you want them to do; it’s how you get them to convert.
So naturally, it needs to stand out. And the best way to make your CTA stand out is to use contrasting colors.
Contrasting colors are those that are opposite each other on the color wheel, like red and green, or blue and orange.
If your landing page uses a green color theme, making your CTA button red will give it maximum contrast so that it jumps off the page and catches the visitor’s eye. Likewise, if your landing page uses a red color theme, it’s better to make your CTA button green.
Look at how VWO have used color to make their CTA pop on their landing page:
There are two CTA buttons here, but the ‘Request Demo’ button is bright pink in contrast to the white background, while the ‘Try VWO for free’ button is white, making it blend in.
Which one do you think VWO wants you to click?
8. Utilize visuals
As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words.
Instead of relying on text alone in your landing pages (yawn, boring), try to incorporate visual elements like images, videos, and animations.
This can help to capture the visitor’s attention, elicit an emotional response, communicate more information about your product/service, and ultimately, boost your conversion rate.
See our complete guide to landing page visuals that convert to learn more about how to use visuals effectively.
9. Keep form fields to a minimum
If you’re including a lead capture or email opt-in form on your landing page, try to keep the required form fields to a minimum.
People are lazy. The more they have to do in order to complete a conversion action, the less likely they are to bother.
So if you make it so that customers have to enter their name, address, date of birth, interests, and a bunch of other stuff just to sign up for your mailing list, they’re probably going to just close the page.
It’s a much better idea to just ask for their email address first. And then if you must ask for more information, make those extra form fields optional.
You might even want to set up a multi-step form so that you can get their email addr