Best Practices for Increasing Conversion Rates on Your Landing Pages

Your website is one of the most important touchpoints in the customer journey – it is a place where buyers can learn more about your brand, browse your product offerings, and engage with your associates.

However, you need to optimize your landing pages yourself, or with website optimization services if you want to boost your success and drive revenue.

This guide will cover everything you need to know about the best practices for increasing conversion rates on landing pages.

From improving your copy to keeping your offers relevant, this guide will give you all the tips you need to put your marketing plan into action.

Keep in mind, when optimizing conversion rates, best practices can sometimes be worst practices depending on the guide you read, luckily, we have already thought of that!

Let's get into it. 

What is the Purpose of a Landing Page?

Landing pages are a standard part of building your company page. They include crucial links like your About Us, Contact Us, Subscribe, and Get started pages. The idea is to use these specific pages on your website to convert users into paying customers.

Generally, your landing pages ask the user to provide some personal information in exchange for an offer or discount. They are designed to encourage visitors to make a purchase and drive sales – but people tend to be very selective about what information they share, and when they do so. 

With that said, an effective landing page can be all that is standing between you and your next sale. The structure, formatting, and language used on your site can help you learn more about your customers and improve your conversion rates.

Keep reading to learn about steps you can take to see better results from your landing pages:

Landing Page Responsiveness is Key

One of the first things you need to address to improve your conversion rates is the responsiveness of your landing pages. If you want to enhance the customer experience and ensure they find your website valuable, it needs to be responsive.

What does a responsive landing page look like, exactly? The key is to ensure that the website loads and renders properly on any type of device.

It shouldn't matter whether your users are browsing your site on a mobile phone, tablet, or laptop – the screen size should fit appropriately and not look distorted.

While fitting the device the landing page is viewed on seems like a basic requirement, many businesses have features and tools on their sites that only work well on desktop computers.

That means if a customer is shopping on their smartphone, they may not get what they need from your landing page. This is a missed opportunity for a conversion!

Likewise, Google and other search engines will rank your landing pages higher if they can adapt to various devices and are optimized for responsiveness. They only want to share sites that maximize engagement and the viewer experience.

Plus, with so many people preferring to shop on mobile devices, you need to build mobile optimized websites with fully responsive landing pages if you want to succeed.

Choose your Headline Carefully

Our next tip is to choose your headline carefully. The headline on your website is the first thing that a user sees, and you only have one chance to make a first impression!

If your headline doesn't highlight the benefit your brand provides – and why the user should continue to share their information – they will immediately bounce.

Landing pages can have bounce rates as high as 80%, which means almost 8 out of 10 people will close out your webpage without interacting with the site or taking any action at all. 

You only have a few seconds to capture their attention, so let them know right away what they are looking at and why they should stay.

It should be concise, catchy, and accurate if you want to make the most out of each opportunity to convert a prospect.

Optimizing the Layout and Design

Another action you can take to increase conversion rates on your landing pages is to find a website optimization strategy with your layout and design.

It’s no secret that your customers want to shop on visually appealing websites, so if your landing pages are cluttered, distracting, or look outdated, they will simply move on to the next site. 

So, where should you start?

First, get rid of any distractions that take away from your headline or call-to-action.

While you want your landing page to contain essential information, you don’t want the user to be overwhelmed with text, competing links, or other distractions that will get in the way of the ultimate goal: a successful conversion.

Maintaining the focus on your call-to-action and your value proposition will ensure that the viewer knows exactly what you are asking them to do on that landing page.

Again, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention, so keep it neat and to the point! 

You can also use images to create a more aesthetically pleasing design and minimize clutter on your site.

The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is true – you can use this to your advantage to convey feelings, emotions, and more to engage with your users. 

Think about the last time you visited a landing page that was filled with text and had no images, branding, or other visual elements. It didn’t keep your attention for very long, right?

We live in a world where people want immediate answers, and customers don’t want to spend twenty minutes reading paragraphs of text to figure out what your brand is offering. 

The images you select should align with your branding and fit seamlessly into the website. It also makes sense to do AB testing to determine which images help drive the most conversions.

Have a Visible Call-to-Action

If you take anything away from this guide let it be this: your landing page needs to have a visible call-to-action.

Your CTA is perhaps the most essential element of an effective landing page, as this is the button that actually gets your customers to convert.

The call-to-action should stick out from the rest of the page – you don't want it to blend in or get lost in all the text and images!

Consider using a color that contrasts the rest of the page or outlining it in a border that helps draw viewers' attention to it. 

Similarly, use words like these to be direct and get your point across:

• Act Now
• Submit
• Get Offer
• Order Now

The key is to make this lead form visible and easily accessible. If users have to work too hard to find it or scan through several landing pages to complete the action, your bounce rates will be higher, and your conversion rates will decrease.

That’s why you should place it above the fold and ensure it is visible as soon as they open your landing page. It should also resize to adapt to mobile devices and tablets so users have a consistent, seamless experience across the board.

Focus on SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is essential if you want your customers to find your website. It is very simple to make SEO mistakes, but luckily, we have another guide with our top 5 SEO mistakes and how to fix them!

By carefully selecting keywords and phrases in your content and site map, you can ensure that Google and other search engines will display your website when a user enters the appropriate query. 

While SEO is also key for organic growth, it is especially important if you are using paid ads to drive traffic to your landing page.

If you are using this marketing strategy, you need to use those phrases and words throughout the website to boost relevancy and increase your ranking on the search engine results pages.

Keep your Content Relevant

Keeping content relevant is also a best practice for increasing conversion rates on your landing pages.

Once you catch a viewer's attention with your headline and images, you need the right content to keep them engaged. 

In other words, the messaging you use on your landing page will guide visitors to take the action you need them to complete.

Whether that is making a purchase, providing their information, or subscribing to your content, you need a compelling copy to get the job done. 

For example, choosing words like your or you in the messaging can help create a more personal tone and make your users understand that they matter.

Likewise, the offer you provide to encourage them to sign up or buy now should be relevant. 

Not only should the offer apply to what is being discussed on the landing page, but it should also align with your overall business and provide value to the consumer.

No one wants a discount code to something they weren’t looking to purchase in the first place!

Continue to Nurture the Relationship

These tips and tricks for boosting conversion rates through your landing page should help your marketing team get started – but your effort should not stop there.

Once you get the user's information and a commitment to purchase or subscribe, you need to continue to nurture the relationship. 

Start slow and ask for their name and email, as you don’t want to overwhelm them too much. However, the next step is to send them custom offers and marketing to build trust and develop your relationship.

This will help you build brand loyalty and encourage them to make additional purchases in the future!