5 Landing Page Best Practices to Include on Your Website

Any marketer can attest to the effectivity of landing pages. With consumers’ attention span getting worse, you need to lure them with compelling advertisements. And landing pages are marketing tools that are built for conversion. 

Unbounce evaluated 10 landing pages across 10 various industries. And the average conversion rate was surprisingly high at 4.02 percent! Although the conversion rate does vary according to your industry, one thing is for sure, though. Landing pages can rake in sales — provided you do these five landing page best practices. 

1. Reassure and entice prospects

Users land on your landing page after clicking an ad, email link, or other digital advertisements. And the reason why they clicked on the ad is that it piqued their interest. Once they see that your landing page doesn’t give them what they were looking for, they’ll leave in a jiffy. In turn, this will increase your bounce rates, which we all know isn’t good for SEO.

There are three things you can do to capture your audience the moment they end up on your landing page:

• Match your message with your ads. The first obvious tip is to make sure your message matches your ads. Whatever you promised on your ad, ensure that your landing page’s message is similar. The last thing you want is for your ads to be perceived as spammy or worst — a scam!
• Entice them with an irresistible offer. Once you capture your audience with your heading, the other landing page elements such as graphics, copy, and selling proposition will work their magic. Make them count! Offer them something they can’t refuse. 

2. Establish scarcity and urgency

When using landing page best practices, it’s crucial to integrate marketing psychology to forge your message forward subliminally. Scarcity and urgency are two of the most famous psychological triggers that marketers use to entice their audiences. Let’s start with urgency. 

The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice conducted a study that involved participants divided into two groups. They were asked that if the U.S. were to prepare for a disease outbreak and kill 600 people, which of these options would they choose? 

• Program A will save 200 people
• Program B means there’s a ⅓ probability that all 600 people will survive and ⅔ probability that all 600 people will be killed

The result shows 72 percent of participants chose Program A because of risk aversion. Saving 200 lives seems like a better option than putting all 600 lives at risk. And this is due to the human loss aversion or otherwise known as the “Fear of Missing Out.” 

Urgency is instilled deep in our veins. People naturally hate to be left out from fads, trends, or current events. We don’t like to risk being left out as this might cause regret, fear, or being ostracized. 

When creating your landing pages, make sure to put a sense of urgency on your offering. For instance, if you’re selling your products at discounted rates, indicate a limited time offer to make your audience act. 

On the other hand, scarcity is another psychological trigger that will work in tandem with urgency. Because people find gold in scarce items such as limited-edition merchandise, we tend to act due to the fear of running out. 

When applying scarcity on landing pages, try to make your audience feel like they’re going to miss out if they don’t grab the offer. You can try these:

• Limited-edition items up for grabs
• Only two stock left!
• By invitation only
• Free gift every hour
• In high demand — only three seats left!

Overall, combining both urgency and scarcity on landing pages can hasten the consumers’ buying decisions. 

3. Exhibit exceptional value

When we say value, we don’t only mean irresistible offers or huge discounts. One of the top landing page best practices is something that converts due to the unique selling proposition and brand credibility. 

Value, in this sense, could pertain to a couple of things such as social proof, rewards, exclusive offers, or freebies. You want to make your audience feel that your offering is unlike any other. Moreover, social proof also ups your brand value by showing other happy clients. In turn, this incites likeability as well. And this is also another crucial factor for consumers to perceive a brand positively. 

Aside from exclusive offers and freebies, you can also use another psychology in marketing called Operant Conditioning. This means consumers have to perform an activity to get the message content or receive a reward for their effort. To do this, you can create interactive landing pages that let prospects perform a quiz. In turn, this increases their engagement time, which is an excellent metric in digital marketing. 

4. Make it free from distractions

The stark contrast between websites and landing pages is the sole purpose. While websites are channels that can also convert leads, it has way too many distractions. Plus, sites are also employed to cater and connect with consumers for inquires, demos, or awareness.

On the other hand, landing pages have one goal only. And that is to convert leads. That said, landing pages should be free from clutter and distractions that deviate leads from the primary goal. 

Always be straightforward with your offers and place a clear call to action. If you have a couple of offerings, ensure that you limit them to avoid overwhelming your audience. 

5. Test and improve your landing pages

A/B testing is exceptionally vital in marketing. Marketers do this to get to know their audience more, make changes to future marketing campaigns, and of course, increase sales. 

One pro tip when A/B testing is to make tweaks to one variable at a time only. Instead of changing a couple of variables, do one at a time, so you know which element urged leads to purchase. Here are a couple of elements you can test on your landing pages:

• Layout
• Headline and copy
• CTA position
• Images
• Videos

Once you know what works with a particular audience, you can craft better and high-converting landing pages.