January 9, 2025
By
Ross Crawford
Joshua Kennedy

“You never get a second chance to make the first impression”.

Whether you are meeting customers, attending an interview or even on a date, the first impression can either make or break that connection and ultimately define the outcome of the situation. That holds just as true for online businesses as well. Because when it comes to the digital world, we all know how fast-paced things can be. You have less than 15 seconds to capture a user's attention before they decide to stay or leave your site. That's where the digital marketing campaign comes in.

The ultimate purpose of any digital marketing campaign is to generate conversions, yeah? A conversion can be the generation of a lead, the sale of a product or service; the click on an ad or a simple email registration.

If you are looking for organic traffic and lead generation, landing pages are where you should pay attention because well-designed landing pages help you build confidence and trust among your visitors. In this article, we would like to give you a comprehensive understanding of landing page optimisation for business websites.


Table Of Contents

  • Chapter 1: What Exactly is Landing Page Optimisation?
  • Chapter 2: When to Use Landing Pages: Maximising Impact Across Campaigns
  • Chapter 3: What Exactly Is Landing Page Optimisation?
  • Chapter 4: How Can Landing Page Optimisation Help Your Business Grow?
  • Chapter 5: Essential Elements of a Great Landing Page
  • Chapter 6: Avoiding Common Mistakes: Ensuring Effective and User-Friendly Landing Pages
  • Chapter 7: 12 Best Landing Page Optimisation Practices
  • Chapter 8: Performance Analysis and Reporting: Measuring Success with Analytics
  • Chapter 9: Becoming an Optimisation Expert: Mastering the Art of Landing Pages
  • Chapter 10: Landing Page Optimisation Tools to Use
  • Chapter 11: The Average Conversion Rate for Landing Pages

Chapter 1: Pre-Build Considerations: Laying the Foundation for a Successful Landing Page

Building an effective landing page starts long before you touch a design tool or write copy. Proper preparation ensures your landing page aligns with your objectives, resonates with your audience, and is built for conversions. Here are the essential steps to take before building a landing page:

1. Understand Campaign Objectives

  • Why It Matters: Every decision you make—design, copy, and functionality—should align with the campaign’s goals.

  • How to Do It:
    • Define the purpose of the landing page (e.g., lead generation, product sales, event registration).
    • Set clear KPIs to measure success, such as conversion rates, click-through rates, or form submissions.

2. Empathise with Your Target Audience

  • Why It Matters: A landing page that addresses the audience’s needs and motivations is more likely to convert.

  • How to Do It:
    • Research your audience’s demographics, pain points, and preferences.
    • Create a buyer persona to guide messaging and design choices.
    • Use tools like surveys, customer feedback, and analytics to gather insights.

3. Define the Primary Call to Action (CTA)

  • Why It Matters: A clear and compelling CTA guides visitors toward the desired action.

  • How to Do It:
    • Decide on one primary action you want users to take (e.g., “Sign Up Now” or “Get a Free Quote”).
    • Ensure the CTA is specific, action-oriented, and prominently displayed.

4. Draft a Brief or Plan

  • Why It Matters: A well-thought-out brief streamlines the design and development process.

  • How to Do It:
    • Outline the landing page’s objective, target audience, messaging, and required elements.
    • Include wireframes or mock-ups to visualise the structure and layout.
    • Share the brief with stakeholders for feedback before moving forward.

5. Assemble Necessary Assets

  • Why It Matters: Having all assets ready ensures a smoother build process and a cohesive design.

  • How to Do It:
    • Collect high-quality visuals, such as images, videos, or infographics.
    • Prepare headline and body copy tailored to your audience.
    • Ensure you have logos, brand colours, and fonts aligned with your brand identity.

6. Plan for SEO and Analytics Integration

  • Why It Matters: Optimising for search engines and tracking performance ensures better visibility and data-driven decisions.

  • How to Do It:
    • Research relevant keywords and incorporate them into your copy.
    • Set up analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to monitor user behaviour and conversions.

7. Create a Pre-Publish Checklist

  • Why It Matters: Avoid mistakes and ensure everything is ready before the page goes live.

  • How to Do It:
    • Double-check for typos, broken links, or formatting issues.
    • Test the page across devices and browsers to ensure a seamless user experience.
    • Validate load times to prevent high bounce rates due to slow performance.

Top Tip: Take a step back and view your landing page plan from a user’s perspective. Ask yourself: Does it address their needs? Is it easy to navigate? Does it communicate the value?

By thoroughly preparing before building your landing page, you set the stage for a high-converting campaign that delivers results from the start.

Chapter 2: When to Use Landing Pages: Maximising Impact Across Campaigns

Landing pages are versatile tools that can significantly improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Knowing when to use them ensures your campaigns are focused, relevant, and conversion-optimised. Here are the key scenarios where landing pages can deliver the most value:

1. For Paid Ad Campaigns

  • Why: Paid ad campaigns, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads, often target specific audiences with tailored offers. Sending traffic to a generic homepage dilutes the campaign’s message and decreases conversions.

  • How to Use:
    • Create dedicated landing pages for each ad to align messaging, offers, and visuals.
    • Ensure the page matches the ad’s promise, such as “Buy One, Get One Free” or “Free Consultation Today.”

2. During Email Marketing Campaigns

  • Why: Email campaigns target specific segments of your audience and often promote exclusive offers or content.

  • How to Use:
    • Link email CTAs to landing pages that expand on the offer or provide downloadable resources.
    • Use segmentation to create audience-specific landing pages for higher relevance.

3. For Short-Term or Seasonal Promotions

  • Why: Temporary campaigns, such as Black Friday sales or holiday discounts, require focused messaging to drive urgency and conversions.

  • How to Use:
    • Build standalone landing pages outside of your regular site structure for agility and quick deployment.
    • Incorporate countdown timers and compelling CTAs to create a sense of urgency.

4. When Targeting Multiple Traffic Sources

  • Why: Traffic from diverse channels, like organic search, affiliates, or social media, may require tailored experiences to ensure relevance.

  • How to Use:
    • Create separate landing pages for each traffic source to simplify funnels and enable channel-specific testing.
    • Customise messaging and offers based on the source’s audience profile.

5. For Mobile or Device-Specific Campaigns

  • Why: Visitors on mobile devices often have different needs and behaviours compared to desktop users.

  • How to Use:
    • Build mobile-responsive landing pages optimised for touch navigation and faster load times.
    • Consider separate pages for mobile, tablet, and desktop users to ensure the best user experience for each device.

6. To Launch Campaigns Quickly

  • Why: Sometimes speed is of the essence, whether it’s for a new product launch or an event promotion.

  • How to Use:
    • Use drag-and-drop landing page builders to create and launch pages quickly.
    • Focus on the essentials: a strong headline, concise copy, and a compelling CTA.

7. For Lead Generation

  • Why: Landing pages are highly effective for capturing leads via forms or gated content.

  • How to Use:
    • Offer valuable lead magnets, such as e-books, checklists, or free trials, in exchange for user information.
    • Optimise forms for simplicity—request only essential details to minimise friction.

Top Tip: Always match the messaging of your landing page to the source that brought visitors there. Consistency builds trust and ensures a seamless user journey.

By strategically deploying landing pages in these scenarios, you can maximise conversions, streamline your campaigns, and deliver a better user experience.

Chapter 3: What Exactly Is Landing Page Optimisation?

Landing page optimisation (also known as LPO) is a process of improving the performance of a website to increase conversions, leads, and sales. Landing pages are specific web pages on your website that are designed for one purpose: to bring visitors to your site and convert them into either sales or leads.

To achieve this, landing page optimisation involves testing different layouts, designs, calls-to-action, images, colours, content and other elements to ensure your landing page meets its intended purpose. Optimising these components can help maximise the chances of a successful conversion rate and ultimately generate more revenue for your business.

A well-optimised landing page makes it easy for visitors to understand the page content and click the call to action. Optimising landing pages includes, but is not limited to, crafting compelling copy, inserting better images, speeding up page load time, updating the lead capture form, etc.


Chapter 4: How Can Landing Page Optimisation Help Your Business Grow?

Regardless of where the traffic comes from, a landing page is often where potential customers make their first interaction with a brand or business. Landing pages are a vital part of your advertising and marketing campaigns as they can convert a visitor into a customer or lead.

Let’s take a look at why you should be optimising your landing pages:


Generate Leads And Increase Conversions

As the landing page drives visitors to take a more specific action, it can be considered an effective lead-generating and conversion tool. It can encourage prospects to take action such as providing contact details, signing up for your email list, requesting a consultation, subscribing to a newsletter or making a purchase. It’s all about awareness, intent and direction.

Key Takeaway: A clutter-free landing page with a clear and direct offer, aided by simple and concise copy and compelling call-to-actions (CTAs) is a good foundation to start pulling in those leads.

Enhance The Customer Experience

Just because a person enters your site, doesn’t necessarily mean they will use your site. So a better user experience (UX) is great for customer conversions and retention.

An optimised landing page provides a positive user experience that makes achieving website business goals a no-brainer. Think of your landing page as the digital face of your business. Learn more about the target audience, user behaviour, and website design trends to enhance customers’ user experience.

To create a landing page that actively enhances the customer experience, create visually appealing graphics, a concise layout, relevant content and effective calls-to-action as we mentioned above.

These elements make it easier for visitors to find what they need quickly without any difficulty or confusion. In addition, providing clear information regarding the product or service being offered helps to build trust and encourages visitors to take action. Additionally, you also need to ensure that the page is optimised for all devices used to access it (desktop computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.). This will ensure that visitors have an enjoyable experience regardless of their preferred device.


   

   


Build Trust

If your landing page doesn’t look trustworthy to visitors, they will most likely exit the tab right away. Trust is a vital element to have on your website which can be easily gained through landing page optimisation. Displaying certification logos goes a long way to building trust. If you have partnerships or associations with relevant and well-known companies in your niche, then display them.



There are many elements to increase the level of trust on your landing page. You need to think of content, design, contact information, testimonials, banner ads, co-branding, etc. We cover that more in-depth in Chapter 3.


Increase Return-on-Investment (ROI)

Let’s say you search for a keyword and find an interesting ad that you can’t stop yourself from clicking through. Once you click on it, you will be redirected to a landing page where you experience a great interface with relevant information that ideally matches search intent. A well-built landing page will intrigue the page visitor to take a desired action such as clicking on the “Buy Now” or “Sign up for our email newsletter” prompts.

Remember, the return doesn’t have to be monetary, it’s all about getting your customers to the next stage in the customer buying journey as well as the sales funnel. But ultimately, optimising your landing page allows you to make the best possible revenue with the same traffic.

Improve Brand Awareness

One of the top concerns among our business owners is a lack of brand awareness. They have so many great things to offer, but no one seems to know they exist. Landing pages can immensely help to increase the brand awareness of your business. Those that have consistent branding complement your brand awareness campaigns. Make sure the design, style, look, feel and copy is consistent with the content that links to it. Consistent brand awareness will help visitors recognise your brand and engage with it.

If you are a marketer or a graphic designer, you might have long known that a colour palette plays a significant part in the successful completion of any brand. Having a unique colour scheme will positively influence customers. To give you a good idea of where to start, check out Mr Digital's colour scheme of Red and Black here.

As a marketing agency, we wanted to bring a distinctly vivid colour palette to the table to strengthen the brand identity and build awareness. The iconic combination of the Red and Black logo colour scheme is perfect for a firm which is into branding and marketing.

Executing a great visual font size enhances the aesthetics and readability of your website. We have chosen a font size of 16 px to offer a consistent user experience for readers. Large images slow down your web pages which makes for a less-than-optimal user experience. For our landing page, we keep the image size below 1MB while maintaining the highest quality. Also, we make sure the font size of H1, H2, H3…is consistent throughout the website.

Increase Site Usability

Site usability is all about how easy it is for someone to use and navigate a website and this goes hand-in-hand with the user experience we talked about earlier. Landing page optimisation mainly focuses on the simplicity, consistency, familiarity, relevancy and accessibility of a site – Amazon is a perfect example when looking for a site with good website usability.



Amazon won consumers' hearts by designing the user experience for multiple generations. The eCommerce giant succeeds by offering a minimal, search-oriented user interface (UI) that accommodates both tech-savvy users and internet newcomers.

The desktop version of the site is optimised for both tablets and desktop screens. The flexible layout allows the website to adjust automatically according to the screen size. In addition to this, Amazon.com has almost zero downtime which every user would like to have.


Chapter 5: Essential Elements of a Great Landing Page

Keep It Clean And Easy to Navigate

The look, feel, and overall structure of your page’s design will have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your landing page. Too much information can confuse visitors; a good landing page provides all the necessary information that encourages visitors to convert.

Use headlines and section headings to structure the information on the page as it helps in summarising the information and identifying if the information they are looking for is on the page or not. If users don’t see anything interesting, they can just skip to the next section or proceed to download.

Pictures are also crucial in today’s digital world as they can grab the attention of your target audience. Whether it’s a screenshot, an infographic or a photo of someone using your product or service, an image will surely be more engaging than text. Whatever you use, just remember, that visuals are your best friend.

Point to Ponder: Don’t overload the landing page with too much information, images, and buttons. That just makes it confusing.

For Example, Airbnb’s landing page is proof that clean, simple and more personalised information converts well.

Include a Call To Action (CTA) And Bullet Points

CTAs on landing pages move people further into your site by getting them to subscribe to your newsletter, download your ebook, or follow you on social media. The text for your CTA should be specific and irresistible. Now there are many methods of using CTAs that can work well for your brand, but it varies from business to business. For one, you could use commonly understood, short and action-oriented words in CTAs. You can place your CTAs in appropriate positions that will make them easy to see.

On the other hand, you could go for an out-of-the-box approach with CTAs like "Try Before You Buy", "Your Premium Product is Waiting for You", or "Sign Up Now and Get 10% Off". But whichever method you go with, just make sure that it aligns with the brand image and tone of voice.

Now, If you need to mention certain features or benefits, bullet points are the way to go. Bullet points are great for segregating information into easy-to-digest segments.

Use short paragraphs instead of long blocks of content. Split your copy into easily digestible paragraphs and space it out nicely to make it eye-catching.

What Do Users Want to See from Your CTA?

Readers should feel more connected to your product or service and feel a personal benefit from converting from within your page.

Neil Patel has a very exciting CTA offering two options – a question asks simply: “Want more traffic?” with two options available: “Yes, I want more traffic”, or “No, I have enough traffic”.

No one will ever ignore the opportunity for more traffic. Seeing this popup causes the viewer to stop and think about the opportunity to drive more traffic.

It’s human nature to feel you should choose an option when presented with options, so make the option you want them to take, the only option worth taking.

Don’t Use Too Many Links in Your Copy

If you’re using too many links on your landing page, you need to stop. While internal linking should be part of your SEO strategy, it has no place on a landing page. Any link leading users off-page can serve as a distraction, which is why you shouldn’t include too many links on the landing page.

For marketers, the purpose of using a landing page is generally to generate leads.

If you have links to other interesting articles, sites or pages, you are encouraging users to navigate away instead of converting as desired. Your dedicated landing page should be designed for one purpose only: 

Conversions, conversions, and more conversions.

Feature Customer Testimonials

Seeing is believing. Your visitors want to see if someone has used your product or service and had a great experience. Customer testimonials show the value that your customer base sees in your products or services. Your testimonials should highlight your perfect customers. Also, you need to make sure they are real and relevant.

The testimonials from previous customers on your website make a difference when it comes to converting new visitors into loyal customers because users will always look for other consumers’ comments in advance of making a purchase. Just take Amazon for example, when was the last time you went on there and ordered something without checking the customer reviews first?

Having said that… don’t use testimonials that are too generic and weak.

Avoid testimonials like:

  • “Great work!” – Mike X
  • “Wow!” – John H
  • “Thanks.” – Vicky B

Not only are these testimonials too short, but they seem fake.

Testimonials should describe how your client has benefited from your business. See this example:

Top Tip: You can even use a quote from the review as a headline and include the positive rating the customer gave your product.

Focus on the Offer That You’re Promoting

A landing page usually has a single goal whether that’s to request a whitepaper or to get a lead to sign up for a free trial. You should keep this in your mind when writing the content along with any questions the lead might have about your offer. For a landing page to convert more traffic there is a need for clear, relevant, and compelling offers. Users should clearly understand what you are offering and what action you want them to take next.

Mention a few features about your offer that compels users to make an immediate decision and yield results quickly. Make sure your content matches the offer and your features are written as benefits.

Now as an example, let’s see how Uber uses a benefit-rich headline to highly focus on the offer they’re promoting. Instead of saying “We need a taxi driver” or “Get a job with Uber”, the company focuses on how people benefit from that – earn money!

In this example, we can see that Mailchimp, one of the leading email marketing tools, has a feature-focused headline that directly describes the true purpose of the software.

Stay Above the Fold

Back in the day, this idea of 'above the fold' was used by news publishers as they put important headlines and images in the area above the fold to attract readers, you know, so it's the first thing that readers see. When somebody visits your landing page, they are there for a reason: to get the offer or asset they’re looking for and maybe grab some additional data along the way.

So, keep your landing page elements above the digital fold, meaning that you need to put the most important things, i.e. what you want or need them to see, at the very top and work your way down. Following this visual hierarchy will allow users to get what they came for (which boosts user experience and satisfaction). However, if they do need more information, they only need to scroll further.

Important Note: Most of your visitors just scroll the page and then proceed to the form. If you need to drive a lead, make sure everything that’s of value is visible upon accessing the page. Make it engaging by adding a compelling headline and a CTA that stands out.

Take a look at Ahrefs’ above-the-fold approach:

The headline and subheadline indicate what the service does, while the CTA communicates and entices the user to sign up. Also, they have listed satisfied customers at the bottom, right before the fold to provide that credibility and, much-needed, customer confidence boost.

Be Consistent

Make sure there isn’t any mismatch between what the ad promises and what the landing page delivers. Visual consistency can make a huge difference in conversion rates. The font, text, imagery, colours, spacing and other elements of your ads should look similar visually and present the same offer or your potential customer will be confused or irritated.

Details will not only contribute to great design but also provide a positive experience for your users. Landing pages are the key to keeping potential customers engaged and closing them in under a minute. Plus It helps to create trust by presenting the same message and information from page to page, giving your visitor a sense of familiarity that inspires confidence in your product or service. Establishing a consistent look and feel also creates a more professional appearance, which helps to boost your brand identity.

Top Tip: When you run a Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) campaign, make sure your promotion remains the same throughout your entire advertising process.

Chapter 6: Avoiding Common Mistakes: Ensuring Effective and User-Friendly Landing Pages

Landing pages are critical to converting visitors into leads or customers. However, even small mistakes can negatively impact user experience and conversion rates. By recognising and avoiding these common pitfalls, you can ensure your landing pages perform effectively.

1. Lack of Focus

  • The Mistake: Trying to include too much information or multiple offers on a single landing page.
  • The Fix: Focus on one clear objective per page. Use concise messaging, and a single compelling CTA, and avoid overwhelming users with too many options.

2. Sending Campaign Traffic to Your Homepage

  • The Mistake: Redirecting ad clicks or email links to a generic homepage instead of a dedicated landing page.
  • The Fix: Create targeted, campaign-specific landing pages tailored to the messaging and audience of the traffic source.

3. Inconsistent Design and Messaging

  • The Mistake: Mismatched design, tone, or messaging between ads, emails, and landing pages can confuse or alienate visitors.
  • The Fix: Ensure visual and textual consistency across all touchpoints, from ad creatives to the landing page, to maintain user trust and engagement.

4. Overloading the Page with Links

  • The Mistake: Including multiple outbound links that distract users and reduce the likelihood of conversions.
  • The Fix: Limit links to essential actions that support the page’s goal, such as a single CTA or a lead form.

5. Asking for Too Much Information

  • The Mistake: Include unnecessary fields in your lead forms, such as age, phone numbers, or detailed demographic data.
  • The Fix: Keep forms short and only request the information critical to the offer. A name and email address are often sufficient.

6. Aggressive Use of Popups

  • The Mistake: Using excessive or poorly timed popups that disrupt the user experience.
  • The Fix: Use popups sparingly and ensure they provide real value, such as exit-intent offers or lead magnets, rather than interrupting the user’s journey.

7. Ignoring Mobile Optimisation

  • The Mistake: Designing landing pages that don’t render well on mobile devices.
  • The Fix: Ensure your pages are responsive, with mobile-friendly layouts, touch-optimised buttons, and fast load times.

8. Neglecting Quality Assurance

  • The Mistake: Publishing pages with typos, broken links, or other errors.
  • The Fix: Test your landing page thoroughly before launching, reviewing copy, links, and functionality across devices and browsers.

9. Skipping A/B Testing

  • The Mistake: Assuming your initial design is perfect and neglecting to experiment with variations.
  • The Fix: Regularly test different headlines, CTAs, layouts, and visuals to identify what resonates most with your audience.

10. Overloading Page Elements

  • The Mistake: Using too many visuals, heavy scripts, or unnecessary plugins that slow down page load times.
  • The Fix: Optimise images, limit animations, and remove non-essential elements to ensure fast and smooth performance.

Top Tip: Maintain a list of lessons learned from past campaigns and share them with your team. Documenting common mistakes ensures they are not repeated in future projects.

By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can create landing pages that are user-friendly, goal-oriented, and designed to maximise conversions.

Chapter 7: 12 Best Landing Page Optimisation Practices

Optimising your landing page can improve marketing campaigns and increase the number of leads. More leads for your business means more ROI for your bottom line. To accomplish this, you need to follow landing page best practices to make sure you’re developing a high-converting page.

1. Craft Catchy Headlines

Want to see a 10% lift in conversions? Try modifying your landing page headline. Your headline is the first thing your visitors see when he or she lands on the page, so it needs to grab their attention and encourage them to take action. Attractive benefit-rich headlines capture your audience’s attention faster and entice them to stay on the page. The best headlines are short, and simple and focus on the outcome of what you’re offering, not the features or the services.

Here’s an example from a landing page on our website:



The headline shown here actually offers visitors clear-cut solutions to solve their problems. It highlights the benefits of our services and tells them we can help them achieve the outcomes they are looking for… like first-page Google rankings, more leads and ultimately more sales from their marketing activity.

Take Action: So ask yourself, what are your benefits? And how can you present those within your headlines?

2. Utilise Multimedia Elements

Using multimedia elements on a landing page can help improve user interactions in several ways. First, multimedia elements such as videos, animations and GIFs can capture users’ attention and make the message more impactful. This can be especially important for pages that are trying to convey complex information or ideas quickly. Furthermore, these elements can inject some personality into the page, making it more engaging and memorable to visitors.

Additionally, they can also be used to add interactivity to the page by prompting users to engage with certain features or take action in a specific way. Finally, using multimedia elements helps keep users coming back for more by providing visual stimuli and an enjoyable user experience overall.

3. Make Your Offer Clear and Compelling

There is one thing no brand can exist or thrive without – a compelling offer. It’s a vital part of any business's success and a driving force that keeps the entire business moving seamlessly ahead. All you have to do is understand and implement the offer. No matter who you are or what you’re selling, when people come across your offer, they’ll need to be convinced. Develop and deliver a very clear and easily understood offer if you want people to purchase.

This is why we have included the best offer on our SEO page i.e. GUARANTEED PAGE 1 GOOGLE RANKINGS IN 90 DAYS OR WE WORK FOR FREE. We have proven expertise and experience in SEO services so we guarantee the best results. Our talented team will get your business on page 1 of Google’s SERP in 90 days or we will deliver our service for FREE!

4. Responsiveness

Responsive design has gone from being a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must-have’ component in the landing page design strategy. That’s because the number of smartphone users is increasing at a fast rate. And that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Ensure your landing pages are fully optimised for mobile devices, considering the increasing use of smartphones for online browsing. Google's Mobile-Friendly Test tool can help you identify and fix mobile usability issues.

You should deliver users the same experience while browsing the web on their smartphones or computers without sacrificing any of the quality or ease of navigation. The idea is simple – great responsive design leads to more visits, resulting in more conversion and sales.



Point to Ponder: are your landing pages compatible with any device and viewable on any screen size?

5. Improve Your Call-to-Action Button

You may be confused by what a Call-to-Action can do for a landing page. But the secret is that people expect relevant CTAs from the page they visit.

Improving CTAs in the landing page can prompt your leads, potential prospects and customers to take a specific desired action.

If you are running an e-commerce company, you will definitely want people to purchase your product. So, you will often go with the CTA of ‘Buy Now!’ or ‘Add to Cart’.

Likewise, there are other CTAs that you can consider using such as:

  • Register Now!
  • Call Today!
  • Request a Free Quote
  • Find Out More!
  • Download the Book

Check out how MOZ used clear, concise, and obvious CTA to drive visitors to try the free version of the tool.

6. Keep The Contact Form Simple

The contact form is a vital component of every landing page. If the form is too long, asks unnecessary questions or contains too much information, the chances of conversion are less.

You want to gather as much information as possible about your lead, but only ask what you need! A name and an email are more than enough to drive a new lead. In essence, take a minimalistic approach.



Top Tip: Let’s say you don’t want to call the prospect after they fill out the form. Then you don’t have to ask for a phone number. Are you planning on qualifying them with the career? If not, you don’t need their employee details.


7. Make Sure Your Page Loads Quickly

This is an important part of optimising your landing page. Every millisecond does count when it comes to loading a page! Google is all about good user experience nowadays.

To evaluate your page speed, open up Google’s PageSpeed Insights and enter your website URL into the bar:



This is great. You don’t have to worry about achieving 100%, but you want to aim for the green (90+). Websites can get cluttered by a lot of unnecessary features and purposeless functionalities. Site size especially, image size makes a huge impact on your site speed. The larger your content/image, the slower the site.

So How Do We Fix This?

The ideal loading time for a landing page is 2-3 seconds. Anything slower than that can cause user frustration and lead to an increase in bounce rates. The goal should be to ensure users have access to the content and features they need quickly and seamlessly. This can be achieved by optimising images and code, taking advantage of caching, using an appropriate hosting provider, utilising Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) where applicable and more.

8. Optimise Your Landing Page For SEO

A landing page that doesn't rank well in terms of SERPs is pretty much useless when it comes to driving conversions because it's invisible to the average viewer. If you want to get targeted traffic to your landing page, then you need to optimise for search engines.

Utilise the latest SEO tools like Ahrefs and Google's Keyword Planner for comprehensive keyword research. Ensuring your content is optimised with relevant keywords will improve your page's visibility in search results.

The next step is to incorporate your keyword throughout your landing page.

This includes:

  • Headings (H1, H2 and so on)
  • Body text
  • Image alt text
  • Page title, description, URL

Here is what we did to optimising our website landing page:

9. Include Contact Information

Having contact information on your landing page is important because it allows visitors to reach out directly if they have any questions or comments. This can help build trust between the visitor and the brand, leading to increased engagement and participation.

Additionally, having visible contact information makes it easy for visitors to get in touch with support quickly and easily. This can help improve customer satisfaction, since customers don't need to hunt for contact information when needed, making them more likely to return again in the future.

Everyone has his/her preferred way to contact a company, some will like to make a phone call while others like sending an email or leaving a Facebook message. That’s why, it is important to give as many options as possible to contact you – You can put your phone number or email address on your landing page, or you can use a contact form. Better yet, to streamline the process, you can just offer potential clients the option of booking a quick 15-minute call with you, at their convenience, like we did here.

10. Use an effective Exit Popup

An exit popup is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the final effort to keep your users on the page when he or she attempts to leave the site. The visitor must land on your page, and then scroll down to check out the content. Then, finding nothing of interest, they move the mouse pointer towards the X button in the corner of the browser. At that point, the exit popup appears.

It might look something like this:

Wordstream uses its exit popup window as a way to increase the number of downloads of their e-guide “Beginner’s Guide to PPC”. If you pay attention, you’ll see plenty of similar exit popups all over the Internet, from retail and SaaS businesses to blogs and local service business sites.

11. Testing. Testing. Testing

A lot of businesses set landing pages and forget about them. Landing page A/B testing is a must if you want conversions. It’s the only way to know whether your current landing page is the best you can do and you can determine which version of a landing page results in more clicks, conversions and reduced bounce rate.

So, how can you conduct successful A/B testing?

  • Identify the goals and objectives of the test: Before beginning any AB testing, it is important to clearly define the objectives of the test. This will help you identify what elements to test, how to measure success, and when to stop testing.

  • Break down the different elements of the page into individual components that can be tested: Breaking down your landing page into its components helps you isolate specific elements and determine which one performs better under certain conditions.

  • Create several variations of each component and test them against each other: Once you have identified the different components to test, it's time to create multiple versions of each element and compare their performance against one another in a live experiment.

  • Track and analyse data throughout the process to identify any patterns or trends in user behaviour: Collecting and analysing data is essential for AB testing to ensure accuracy and results that are truly representative of your target audience's behaviour.

  • Regularly monitor and tweak each variation to see which performs better in real-time conditions and adjust accordingly if needed: Once you have launched your AB tests, monitoring performance regularly will help you identify which variations perform best in real-time conditions, allowing you to make changes quickly before any potential impact on revenue or ROI can occur.

  • Re-evaluate your test objectives after a time and draw conclusions on what works best for your project or goal: After collecting all relevant data from an A/B test, review your original objectives and draw meaningful conclusions based on what worked best for achieving those goals.

That’s not all! You can test the offer, page layout, header, CTA button and more…

By continuous testing, you can refine your landing page over time. The more AB tests you run, the more precise your data becomes resulting in more audience engagement.

12. Use Data to Improve the Landing Page Performance

You can use Google Analytics to track how well your page is doing. Integrate your landing page with Google Analytics to test landing page performance metrics and fine-tune any element if needed.

To get started, set up specific conversion goals or e-commerce tracking on your landing page.

Remember what counts as a conversion differs from company to company. If you are running a blog website, then conversions could mean users subscribing to an email newsletter, downloading an eBook, or filling out a form. And, if you have an e-commerce store, conversions would be the number of products bought by visitors.

Once it’s done, head to Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages

Find the following information:

  • Conversions: The "Conversions" column in the Landing Page section of Google Analytics indicates the number of times a specific page on your website has resulted in a desired action, such as a purchase, form submission, or download. 

This metric helps you understand which pages are most effective in driving conversions, allowing you to focus your efforts on optimising those pages for even greater success. 

By analysing the data in the "Conversions" column, you can gain insights into user behaviour and preferences, which can inform your marketing strategy and help you improve overall conversion rates.

  • Sessions: The "Sessions" column in the Landing Page section of Google Analytics indicates the number of times users have visited a specific page on your website during a given period. This metric helps you understand how many times individual users are interacting with your website and which pages are receiving the most traffic.

  • Users: The “Users” column indicates the number of unique visitors who landed on a specific page of your website during a given period. This metric helps you understand how many individuals are visiting your site and which pages are attracting the most traffic. By analysing the data in the "User" column, you can gain valuable insights into user behaviour, preferences, and interests, which can help you optimise your website to improve user engagement, conversions, and overall performance.

  • Revenue: The "Revenue" column in the Landing Page section of Google Analytics indicates the total amount of revenue generated by a specific page on your website during a given period. This metric provides valuable insights into which pages are driving the most revenue, allowing you to focus your efforts on optimising those pages for improved performance and profitability. By analysing the data in the "Revenue" column, you can identify opportunities to increase conversions, improve user experience, and ultimately boost your bottom line.

  • New Users: The "New Users" column in the Landing Page section of Google Analytics indicates the number of unique visitors who are visiting a specific page on your website for the first time during a given period. This metric helps you understand how many new users are discovering your website and which pages are attracting the most new traffic.

  • Average Engagement Time Per Session: This column in the Landing Page section of Google Analytics indicates the average amount of time users are spending on a specific page during a session. This metric provides valuable insights into user behaviour and engagement, allowing you to identify which pages are keeping users on your website for longer periods of time.

Additionally, you should also be using data such as customer feedback, web analytics, or heatmaps to inform page design decisions or track performance metrics over time.

Chapter 8: Performance Analysis and Reporting: Measuring Success with Analytics

Landing page optimisation doesn’t end at launch. Analysing performance and reporting on key metrics is essential for understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns and making data-driven decisions for improvement. Here’s how to effectively analyse and report on landing page performance:

1. Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • Why It Matters: KPIs help you measure whether your landing page is achieving its objectives.

  • Essential KPIs to Track:
    • Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of visitors completing the desired action.
    • Bounce Rate: Indicates the percentage of visitors leaving without engaging further.
    • Time on Page: Reveals how long users are spending on your page.
    • Click-Through Rate (CTR): Tracks the number of users clicking on your CTAs.
    • Cost Per Conversion (CPC): Calculates the cost of acquiring a single conversion.

2. Use Analytics Tools for Insight

  • Why It Matters: Analytics tools provide detailed data to assess your page’s performance and pinpoint areas for improvement.

  • Recommended Tools:
    • Google Analytics: Track traffic, user behaviour, and conversion goals.
    • Crazy Egg and Hotjar: Use heatmaps and session recordings to visualise user interactions.
    • Google PageSpeed Insights: Evaluate and improve your page’s loading speed.
    • Kissmetrics and HubSpot: Provide advanced reporting and detailed user journey insights.

3. Analyse User Behaviour

Understanding how users interact with your landing page can help you optimise for better results:

  • Heatmaps: Identify the most engaging areas of your page and refine layouts accordingly.
  • Scroll Maps: Determine how far users scroll and ensure key content appears “above the fold.”
  • Session Recordings: Observe how visitors navigate your page to identify friction points.

4. Create Professional Reports

Reporting on your landing page performance is key to gaining buy-in from stakeholders and guiding future campaigns.

  • Steps to Create Effective Reports:
    • Highlight key metrics and trends.
    • Compare performance to benchmarks or previous campaigns.
    • Include actionable recommendations based on findings.

  • Tip: Use visual aids like charts, graphs, and heat maps to make reports more engaging and easier to understand.

5. Refine Your Strategy Based on Insights

Data without action is meaningless. Use the insights from your analysis to iterate and improve:

  • Adjust underperforming CTAs, layouts, or headlines.
  • Test different design elements through A/B testing.
  • Address bottlenecks like slow load times or unclear messaging.

Top Tip: Regularly review your landing page metrics, especially after significant traffic changes or new campaigns. Continuous monitoring ensures timely adjustments and sustained performance.

By leveraging analytics and reporting tools effectively, you can measure the success of your landing pages, demonstrate ROI, and make informed decisions to improve future campaigns.

Chapter 9: Becoming an Optimisation Expert: Mastering the Art of Landing Pages

Becoming an expert in landing page optimisation requires a combination of continuous learning, practical experience, and a mindset geared toward experimentation. Here’s how you can embark on and excel in your journey to mastering landing page optimisation:

1. Embrace a Testing Mindset

  • Why It Matters: Optimisation isn’t a one-time task; it’s a continuous process of improvement. Regular testing allows you to identify what works best for your audience.
  • How to Start:
    • Conduct A/B tests to evaluate headlines, layouts, CTAs, and other page elements.
    • Experiment with different design variants to understand user behaviour.
    • Use analytics tools to track performance and adjust strategies based on data.

2. Stay Informed with Industry Trends

  • Why It Matters: The digital marketing landscape evolves rapidly. Staying updated ensures your strategies remain effective.

  • How to Start:
    • Follow thought leaders and blogs like Unbounce, Crazy Egg, and Neil Patel for the latest insights.
    • Enrol in online courses and certifications on topics like CRO (conversion rate optimisation).
    • Attend webinars and industry events to learn best practices and network with other professionals.

3. Leverage Tools and Resources

  • Why It Matters: Tools simplify complex tasks and provide actionable insights, making optimisation more efficient.

  • How to Start:
    • Use platforms like Google Optimize, Optimizely, and Crazy Egg for testing and analysis.
    • Invest in heatmap and user session recording tools to understand how visitors interact with your page.
    • Incorporate customer feedback to refine your designs and messaging.

4. Build a Portfolio of Results

  • Why It Matters: Demonstrating your ability to drive measurable improvements builds credibility and positions you as an expert.

  • How to Start:
    • Document your optimisation projects, including before-and-after metrics.
    • Highlight key successes, such as improved conversion rates, lower bounce rates, or increased revenue.
    • Share your findings through case studies, blog posts, or presentations.

5. Foster a Growth-Oriented Mindset

  • Why It Matters: Expertise is as much about attitude as it is about knowledge. A growth mindset encourages innovation and adaptability.

  • How to Start:
    • Stay curious and open to feedback.
    • Treat failures as learning opportunities to refine your approach.
    • Continuously challenge your assumptions and strive for incremental improvements.

Top Tip: Combine technical skills with creativity. Great optimisation is about understanding data while creating compelling, user-centric designs that resonate with your audience.

By committing to ongoing learning, testing, and sharing your expertise, you can establish yourself as a go-to professional in landing page optimisation. Remember, mastery is a journey, not a destination—so never stop refining your skills.


Chapter 10: Landing Page Optimisation Tools to Use

Here are the top five, best landing-page optimisation tools that can save you hours and skyrocket your conversion rates.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg offers several features to help you optimise your landing page. Heat maps allow you to visualise how users interact with elements on a page, while scroll maps show what sections of the page are most frequently seen by visitors. 

With A/B testing, you can create multiple versions of a page and compare different scenarios for better performance results. It’s the most effective way to get a look at how users actually interact with your site and what you might be able to improve for better conversions.

It is amazingly easy to use. Once you sign up, you can start running user behaviour reports instantly. Crazy Egg lets many customers discover that website visitors are clicking on elements of the webpage that aren’t even links! Solving these design mistakes will improve your landing page’s engagement and conversion rates.

Optimizely

Optimizely is one of the most advanced A/B testing platforms that provides powerful personalisation capabilities to help you deliver tailored experiences to targeted audiences. It offers an intuitive visual editor tool that allows marketers and developers to easily configure experiments without coding skills and run them in multiple environments such as web or mobile apps. 

The platform also comes with reporting and analytics tools that provide insights on experiment performance along with data-driven optimisation recommendations based on user engagement metrics.


VWO Landing Page Analyzer

The Landing Page Analyzer tool tests the effectiveness of your landing page based on 21 questions. All you need to do is submit answers about your landing page, with questions inquiring about the number of offers on your landing page, the availability of product screenshots, landing page length, and more. In the end, you will get a personalised report with actionable recommendations to uplift your conversion rate.

With VWO Landing Page Analyzer, you will get a comprehensive analysis of your page on the following key parameters:

  • Relevance
  • Propensity to take action
  • Persuasiveness
  • Motivation
  • Focus on the goal



(Image source: https://help.vwo.com/hc/article_attachments/900001872123/A_BTestsDashboard.jpg)

Google Optimise

Google Optimise is a free tool that offers basic A/B testing features and real-time analysis of test results within its integration into Google Analytics. It includes features such as multivariate testing, split URL testing, advanced segmentation, and detailed analytics for an in-depth understanding of visitor behaviour on your website or app.

Unbounce

Unbounce is an intuitive drag-and-drop builder with features such as popups, sticky bars, and dynamic text replacements all of which can be used to optimise your landing pages for higher conversion rates. Its interface allows you to quickly build customised web pages without any technical knowledge required, while its A/B testing feature helps you identify the best-performing pages among different variations to drive more conversions from each visit.


Chapter 11: The Average Conversion Rate for Landing Pages

The ultimate goal of any landing page optimisation is to convert prospects into customers. To put it simply, the landing page conversion rate shows the number of people who completed your call to action out of everyone who landed on your page.

A “conversion” could be almost anything like:

  • Submitting a form (contact us form, lead gen form, etc)
  • Making a purchase
  • Calling your business
  • Registering on the site
  • Signing up for a subscription (either paid or free—like a newsletter)
  • Upgrading their service
  • Engaging with your site in some way (time on site, repeat visits, number of pages visited)
  • Downloading something (software trial, eBook, mobile app, etc)
  • Engaging with your online chat

The average conversion rates for landing pages can vary wildly depending on what industry you’re in. For instance, if you’re into construction service, a conversion can look very different from a company in the Health industry.

The average conversion rates of the top landing pages currently vary depending on the industry and type of page. Generally, conversion rates tend to be highest for pages designed to drive direct sales or inquiries, while they are typically lower for pages optimised for branding or awareness. As of 2024, average conversion rates with e-commerce landing pages average around 3.76%, while B2B pages typically see rates between 2% and 5%. On the other hand, high-performing pages often achieve conversion rates exceeding 10%.

But, as mentioned before, your conversion rate will still vary due to the type of industry you’re in, the offers you put out, and your audience’s behaviour.

Some industries, niches, and sectors convert leads more easily than others. That’s common. Instead of comparing yourself with other benchmarks, consider how other sites in your niche are performing to discover whether you’re ahead of the competition or not.

If you are not satisfied with your current landing page conversion rate, there is always room for improvement.

Why settle for average if amazing is attainable?

Post-Campaign Actions: Maximising Learnings and Refining Strategies

The end of a landing page campaign is not the finish line—it’s an opportunity to evaluate performance, draw insights, and prepare for even greater success in future campaigns. By conducting a thorough post-mortem analysis and implementing strategic follow-up actions, you can ensure continuous improvement and maintain campaign momentum.

1. Perform a Post-mortem Analysis

A detailed analysis of your campaign’s performance is essential for understanding what worked and what didn’t.

  • Steps to Follow:
    • Gather Metrics: Collect data on KPIs such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and ROI.
    • Review Elements: Analyse the effectiveness of your headlines, CTAs, layout, and offers.
    • Identify Gaps: Determine what underperformed and hypothesise why.

  • Collaborate with Your Team: Hold a post-mortem meeting to share findings, align on learnings, and agree on improvements for future campaigns.

2. Document Successes and Learnings

Recording what went well and what didn’t ensures your team can replicate successes and avoid past mistakes.

  • What to Document:

  • Campaign objectives and whether they were met.
  • High-performing content, designs, and audience segments.
  • Feedback from team members and stakeholders.

3. Maintain Campaign Momentum

Keep the customer journey seamless even after the campaign ends.

  • How to Continue Engagement:
    • Follow up with leads generated during the campaign using email marketing or retargeting ads.
    • Create related content (e.g., blogs or newsletters) that nurtures leads and keeps them engaged.
    • Ensure consistency between campaign messaging and subsequent communications to build trust.

4. Benchmark Performance

Compare your campaign results to previous efforts and industry standards.

  • Why It’s Important: Benchmarking helps you understand where your campaign stands and sets the stage for improvement.

  • Key Metrics to Benchmark:
    • Conversion rates.
    • Cost per lead or acquisition.
    • Engagement metrics like click-through rates.

5. Plan for the Future

Use insights gained from the campaign to inform your next efforts.

  • What to Plan:

  • Optimisation ideas based on what underperformed (e.g., A/B test alternate headlines or CTAs).
  • Opportunities to scale successful tactics to other campaigns.
  • A timeline for the next campaign, incorporating lessons learned.

Top Tip: Regularly refine your processes based on post-campaign findings. Treat every campaign as an opportunity to learn and improve.

By conducting thorough post-campaign actions, you not only maximise the value of your current efforts but also set the foundation for more successful campaigns in the future.


To Sum Up

Optimising your landing page is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure your business’s success. By optimising the user experience, you can improve the overall performance of your website and increase conversion rates. A few key takeaways include ensuring that your landing page loads quickly and looks great on both desktop and mobile devices, as well as making sure that it communicates concise messages and includes clear calls to action.

Additionally, A/B testing helps to identify successful elements of your website, while personalisation allows you to deliver tailored experiences to targeted audiences. Taking advantage of these tools can help you get the most out of your website or app and maximise conversions.

And lastly, the more visually dynamic the landing page is, the better your odds are of making those conversions. Now, give it all a try! If you're still struggling with all of this, get in touch with us and we would be more than happy to help you!

Ross is the Managing Director of Mr Digital, bringing over 15 years of experience in digital marketing and business strategy to the company. He has a proven track record of driving growth and achieving exceptional ROI for clients. Ross's leadership and expertise in the digital landscape make him a valuable resource for businesses seeking to thrive online.

Joshua is a Senior Content Writer with a diverse background in journalism and storytelling. He has a passion for crafting engaging and informative content that resonates with target audiences. Joshua's experience in writing and his understanding of digital marketing ensure content is both captivating and effective in achieving marketing goals.

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