Landing pages are a valuable marketing asset that can be used to promote your services, products, webinars, lead magnets, and more. They can help you grow your email list as well as increase sales, which is why it’s crucial that your landing page design follows best practices.
A great landing page design will help you present the information about your offer in a logical manner, build trust with visitors, and ultimately lead to more conversions. To discover some great landing page themes, review this article:
If you’ve been wondering how to design a high converting landing page, you’re in the right place. In today’s post, we’ll explain how you can design a landing page (even if you've got no design skills or coding knowledge) and share tips on what makes a high-converting landing page.
How to Design a Great Landing Page
Designing high-converting landing pages isn't as difficult as it seems. Nowadays, thanks to numerous templates, anyone can design a beautiful landing page that converts. The main benefit of using a premade template is that you don’t have to learn how to code or hire a developer to design a landing page every time you want to promote an offer.
Another benefit of using a template is that landing page templates are easy to use as well as to customize. You can change colors, fonts, and other visual styles which makes it easy to design a landing page that matches your brand. You'll find more examples of great landing page templates in this article:
Lastly, designing a great landing page becomes easier once you know the essential elements of high-converting landing pages. Every landing page should include the following elements:
- An attention-grabbing headline and subheadline
- Visual elements such as pictures
- Compelling copy
- Emphasis on benefits
- Trust signals and guarantee
- A powerful call-to-action (CTA)
Your landing page should also follow a logical flow which helps address customer’s pain points, explains the unique value proposition, and ultimately converts visitors into customers.
Now that we’ve covered how you can design great high-converting landing pages, here are some tips that'll help you with your landing page design.
1. Landing Page Design Tips: Headline and Subheadline
Your headline and subheadline are the first things your visitors will see when they land on your landing page. As such, your headline needs to pique their interest while the subheadline should make them stay on the page and check out what you've got to offer. Those two elements together should make it clear what the product or service is all about and give them a reason to keep scrolling.
Keep in mind the following landing page tips when it comes to the headline and subheadline:
- Keep the headline short and clear. Try to limit it to no more than 20 words
- Put your subheadline immediately below the headline and use it to provide more details
- Your headline will be more effective if you make it emotion-driven or call out an identifying trait of your ideal customer
Consider the example landing page below from MuckRack. Their headline is a rotating question that not only incites curiosity, but also plays on customer’s pain points. The subheadline gives more information, which makes it clear on what the platform does.
2. Landing Page Tips for Pictures
Images are a great visual aid no matter what type of content or page you’re using them on. Not only do we process images faster, but they also help convey the message more effectively because they help us visualize what we're about to sign up for or buy. The following tips will help you ensure that your landing page has attractive and beautiful images:
- Ensure the images are big enough for visitors to see the product or visualize the service without having to zoom in
- Make sure images are relevant to the offer
- Avoid blurry and pixelated images
One option for adding images is to take images yourself and upload them to the landing page. Alternatively, consider websites such as Unsplash if you’re on a tight budget. Otherwise, invest in quality, premium stock photos from marketplaces like Envato Elements.
Take a look at Muzzle’s landing page. Muzzle is a Mac app that silences notifications on your desktop during screen sharing. They illustrate what the app does by showing images of potentially embarrassing notifications, which quickly helps you realize the usefulness of this app.
Another great example of using images comes from Asana. On this page, you can quickly visualize what the software does, how it integrates with your existing tools and different ways to use it.
3. Landing Page Tips for Writing Compelling Copy
A compelling copy will help convert those visitors into customers or clients. The main role of your landing page copy is to explain what the offer is all about, why it should matter to the visitor, and how your offer can help them solve their biggest problem. To learn more about landing page copy study this tutorial:
In other words, your copy should help you convey your unique value proposition for the offer you’re promoting. A great copy sticks to the following rules:
- Clarity above cleverness. While you can make your copy fun and engaging, steer clear of trying to be clever by using industry jargon or puns and jokes that only make sense to you. Aim for clear descriptions and language that gets to the point and doesn’t make the reader feel like they need a dictionary
- Focus on your visitors. Your copy should have a conversational tone and focus on visitors rather than the offer itself. Use your copy to show them you understand their problems or pain points and make them the center of attention by using action words that paint the picture of them using your product, service or app.
- Stress the benefits, not the features. Your visitors are more interested in how your offer can make their life better or easier. This means you should focus on stressing the benefits over the features and your landing page should clearly answer the question of “What’s in it for me?”.
For example, this landing page from Synopsys clearly states how you’ll benefit from downloading their eBook.
4. Landing Page Design Tips: Address Customer's Pain Points
We’ve mentioned earlier that great copy on your landing page will help them see you understand their pain points. However, you need to address those pain points by mentioning them and then providing a solution for them.
Due to the nature of human psychology, we’ll do anything to avoid pain. Any product that helps us avoid the pain we're currently experiencing is pretty much a guaranteed sale. Don’t be afraid to make your visitors feel a bit uncomfortable at first, before offering the solution that'll take that discomfort away. Early on, you can do this by reminding them of how they feel right now and then paint the picture of how they'll feel after they sign up for your offer.
Another way to address customer pain points is to remind them what they stand to lose if they miss out on your offer. This can be closer to the bottom of your landing page, just before you make the final call-to-action.
5. Landing Page Design Tips: Trust Signals and Guarantee
Before your visitors convert, they need to trust you. That’s why your landing page needs to instill trust in them. Here are a few landing page tips to help you build trust and credibility:
- Showcase reviews and testimonials from past buyers. One of the best and most obvious ways to build trust with your visitors is to show testimonials and reviews from past buyers. You can feature a block of testimonials in one place but you can also sprinkle them throughout the page, especially close to your call to action buttons
- Another way to build trust is to display a money-back guarantee. A money back guarantee is a great way to overcome price objections because it makes the entire purchase risk-free. It also makes visitors feel more confident about their purchase because a money-back guarantee signals that you stand behind your product 100%.
- Provide visitors with a way to contact you. Adding a live chat option or linking to your support section makes it easy for visitors to get in touch with and ask additional questions before signing up for your offer. You can use this opportunity to address any last-minute objections and help them say yes to your offer.
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Publication logos and trust badges. Lastly, don’t forget to include other trust signals such as logos of any publications your product, service or brand has been featured as well as secure payment links and badges.
6. Landing Page Design Tips for a Powerful CTA
The last element for your landing page is a call-to-action or CTA for short. This is the button visitors click when they’re ready to sign up or buy so you need to make it highly visible.
Your button should stand out from the rest of the landing page, which means you should use a contrasting color for the button itself. There's no clear answer on what the color of your button should be, although a study by HubSpot found that a red button converted better than a green button. Keep in mind that the color you use should still be in line with your brand colors.
If your landing page is on the long side, you’ll want to repeat your call to action several times to ensure visitors have multiple chances to sign up. If your landing page is short, one call to action is all you need.
Lastly, keep in mind that the copy on your button matters just as much as the rest of the copy on your site. Avoid using generic words such as Send or Submit. Instead, use action-oriented words like these examples from the WishPond blog: "Grab Your Copy," "Give Me My Report," or "Save My Seat."
In Slack’s example, the landing page uses a powerful, yet simple call-to-action: Get Started.
How to Create a Landing Page Design With a Logical Flow
Your landing page should make the visitors engage with the page right from the start. As such, you need to ensure your landing page has a logical flow which takes the visitor on a journey from finding out about your offer, discovering what it is, and finally achieving the conversion.
To achieve this, your landing page should be structured like this:
- Engage curiosity with an attention-grabbing headline.
- Provide an explanation with the subheadline.
- Continue with the benefits.
- Address the pain points.
- Build trust with testimonials.
- Finish off with a call-to-action.
How to Make Landing Pages That Convert: Improving Your Landing Page
After your landing page is up and running, you need to monitor how well it’s converting. After all, the success of your offer depends on the number of visitors who opt-in for the offer or make the purchase. Once you know the conversion rate, you can then start optimizing your landing page.
To do this, you'll need to set up an A/B test with a variation of your landing page. You can implement an A/B test by using a platform like Optimizely. It's recommended to make small tweaks first as that'll allow you to see what performs better rather than making a completely different version of the page. You can then implement the changes on the original landing page and get a better conversion rate. To learn more about A/B testing, study this course:
Design High-Converting Landing Pages
Designing high-converting landing pages isn't as difficult once you know which elements your landing page should include and how to structure those elements in a logical way. Start working on your landing page today by finding the perfect landing page template on Envato Elements and then follow the landing page tips in this article to ensure your landing page converts.
