Anatomy of a Landing Page: Designing Your Landing Page for Conversions

Lauren Owens - December 11, 2014

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times – your digital marketing campaign is only as good as your landing page. With that in mind, we thought we’d break down a conversion-optimized landing page to help you see how the elements come together to encourage users to follow-through.

1. Use Compelling, Benefit-Focused, Imagery

Imagery helps to “show” users the benefit of the thing you’re trying to sell them. It also helps to break up text, keeping the landing page from being overwhelmingly text-focused.

2. Content Should Be Concise, Scan-able and/or Scrollable

Contrary to popular opinion, your landing page doesn’t have to be brief. But it does have to be easy on the eyes – and readable. This is why H1s, H2s, brief paragraphs, and bullet points reign supreme.

3. Content Should Be Benefit-Focused

In many ways, you’re not selling a product, you’re selling an outcome. Keep this in mind when creating your landing page and include benefit-focused, user-focused content with a clear value proposition.

4. Include a Clear Call to Action

This could be a form, or a “Buy Now,” “Download,” or “Learn More” button. It doesn’t really matter what your call to action is, so long as it’s clearly defined and focused on the desired outcome.

5. Organize Information Hierarchically

On a landing page, you have very little time to convince the user to stay and read, or convert. Use this time wisely by including the most important information first, and by keeping pages as simple as possible. Eliminate distractions.

6. Make Checkout as Easy as Possible

How many users “back out” because they’re overwhelmed by unnecessary form fields, or get mired in the checkout process? Make sure your forms include only the most vital information and require as few clicks as possible.

When in Doubt, Test

Of course, this is just a general guide for landing page design. Landing pages are far too important to the outcome of your campaigns to change them before running tests. Before you make drastic changes, conduct A/B or multivariate testing to ensure you’re making changes that will have a positive impact on conversions.