7 Elements of a Successful Landing Page (And How to Create One)

Digital marketing has evolved rapidly over the past two decades. Business leaders have more ways than ever before to connect with their target audience and grow their brands.

Landing pages are easily one of the best strategies that have emerged from this modern marketing era. For those asking “What exactly is a landing page, and how can I create one for my business?” keep reading! 

A landing page is simply a standalone page on a website designed to drive conversions. 

Properly optimized landing pages can help marketers across all industries improve engagement, grow their email list, boost sales, and drive traffic to other marketing channels, like social media. 

Today, we will explore seven key elements that make up a high-quality landing page and give you plenty of actionable strategies you can use to put these tips into practice. We will also help you create a landing page for your website. 

Let’s dive in!

How Many Landing Pages Should I Have?

Before we discuss the benefits of building landing pages, let’s make something clear: it’s not uncommon for a website to have 10-20 landing pages. Businesses can sometimes have as many as 40 or more landing pages. In fact, research shows that websites with 40 or more landing pages generate an astounding 1,200% more leads than brands with only one. 

Marketers choose to create so many landing pages because they each have a unique purpose. For example, a simple homepage is designed to help first-time visitors understand your brand and guide them to content or a product that matches their needs. 

A product landing page can help prospects understand the benefits of a specific product or service, which could result in them becoming customers. 

Other landing pages include event registrations, coming soon pages, download pages, and email registration pages. Depending on your industry and product selection, there are countless ways to use landing pages, so don’t worry about having “too many.”  

Benefits of Building Landing Pages

Now, let’s talk about some of the benefits that come with building landing pages for your website. Here are a few highlights that will show you why this digital marketing strategy offers a wide range of solutions for business owners and marketers. 

• Understand audience segments: Landing pages are usually not designed for everyone who visits your website. For example, an online pet supply shop would likely create two landing pages for their latest flash sale, one for cat owners and another for dog owners. Reviewing on-site analytics and understanding how audience segments engage with your landing pages can help you create better content and offers in the future.

• Generate leads: Landing pages are one of the best ways to grow your email list. Marketers can create a standalone landing page that invites users to subscribe to their email list in exchange for a lead magnet or delayed benefits (like subscriber-only discounts).

• Boost sales: Another noteworthy benefit of landing pages is they can help boost sales. Product landing pages are an excellent way to show visitors your value proposition and convince them to take action. 

• Improve social media engagement: If you host social media events, like webinars and giveaways, landing pages can help improve traffic and engagement on these channels. Nearly 5 billion people have at least one social media account. If someone discovers your webinar or giveaway landing page, there’s a good chance they will follow you on social media and participate in your next event. 

• Enhance brand awareness/SEO: A well-optimized landing page is far more likely to appear in one of the elusive top spots on Google. If you’re interested in improving your search engine optimization strategy and boosting brand awareness, a few well-made landing pages can help you find success. 

• Improve your next marketing campaign: Landing pages can help visitors learn about your latest promotion or product launch. Instead of hoping they find the product page, create a landing page to draw users’ attention when they land on your site.

7 Elements of a Successful Landing Page

Now that you better understand the versatility of high-quality landing pages let’s look at seven vital elements all landing pages need to succeed.

1. An Eye-catching Headline

Choosing the right headline for your landing page can make or break your campaign. When visitors discover your page for the first time, their eyes will immediately dart to the headline so they can figure out what the rest of the page is about. 

It doesn’t matter how much value is within the post; if visitors can’t figure out how reading your content will benefit them, there’s a slim chance they will click through, let alone take action on the page. 

There are a few ways you can improve your landing page headlines and attract more users. 

The key point to remember is your headline should be clear, concise, and offer value to your readers. People should be able to take one look and understand what they stand to gain by clicking the link and opening your landing page. 

Using complicated language may confuse or alienate your audience, resulting in fewer conversions and less engagement. 

We suggest keeping your headline short, informative, and engaging. If you’re not sure which headline to use, consider running A/B tests so you can find the version that results in the most clicks. 

2. A Singular Purpose

The second element a landing page needs to succeed is a singular purpose. In other words, ask yourself what single thing you want readers to do after reading your landing page. 

For example, if your goal is to get more email subscribers, you need a landing page specifically designed to convince people that subscribing to your email list is worth their time. 

Imagine what would happen if your goal was to get more subscribers but you also spent time talking about how users should buy your products, follow you on social media, and check out your next live webinar. 

Odds are, readers would feel overwhelmed, which could cause choice paralysis. Readers won’t do anything at all because they don’t know what next step they should take.

We recommend deciding on each page’s purpose before you start building. When you understand your goals, creating a targeted landing page that does exactly what you want is much easier. 

3. Mobile-responsive Design

Did you know that over 68% of people own a smartphone or similar mobile device? This startling statistic highlights the importance of creating landing pages with mobile-responsive designs. 

If a visitor clicks on your landing page from their smartphone and is greeted with a jumbled mess, they will click the back button without a second thought. There’s a good chance people in this position won’t come back either. 

Instead of losing out on potential sales, engagement, and subscribers, optimize each of your landing pages for desktop and mobile devices. 

The best way to make sure your pages are responsive is to use a landing page builder that comes with mobile templates and a detailed preview option. Use these tools to make sure your landing pages look great across all devices. 

You should also make sure that forms, visual content, and buttons are all clearly visible and easy to use, regardless of how someone decides to engage with your brand. 

It’s also important to check your loading times, especially for mobile. According to Google, users expect a web page to load in two seconds or less. If it doesn’t load within that small window of time, you may experience a high bounce rate and see minimal engagement.

For context, a one-second delay results in an 11% loss in pageviews. That number will steadily increase for each extra second your landing page takes to load. 

4. Benefit-focused Copy

Next, let’s talk about the copy within your landing page. If you managed to attract a reader to your landing page with a captivating title and value proposition, you need to expand on that idea within the text on the page. 

The way you accomplish this task will vary based on the type of landing page you’re promoting.

For instance, if you want people to place an order via your sales page, you should explain to users in simple terms what they stand to gain by investing in your product or service. A list of direct benefits will help people visualize themselves using what you’re offering, which will likely increase conversions. 

Similarly, if you create an email registration landing page, users should know how they’ll benefit from joining your list. Explain the perks of signing up, and you can expect to see more subscribers. 

This same principle can be applied to virtually every type of landing page. Before you publish a page, ask yourself, “If I was a visitor reading this page, what’s in it for me?” If you can’t answer this question, consider revising your copy and focus on presenting value to the people who interact with your landing page. 

5. Engaging Visual Content

Visual content is a necessity for high-converting landing pages. People expect to see pictures and videos when they visit your site. If they are instead greeted by a wall of text and no visual content, many will leave without taking action. 

The key to putting engaging visual content within your landing pages is to consider the context. Let’s revisit the sales page example we mentioned earlier. Which option do you think would be more compelling for readers?

Option 1: A sales page with a list of benefits. 

Option 2: The same landing page with benefits, except there’s a 15-minute video demonstration that shows users how your products work. 

In almost every case, a page that follows option two would see more conversions. We found that landing pages that include video content see 80% more conversions than those without. 

Static images can also help you connect with readers, provided the content is relevant, engaging, and demonstrates value to your audience. 

6. Trust Signals

If you want to boost landing page conversions, trust signals are a must. 

Trust signals can help build social proof, a psychological trend where people follow others based on their actions. There are many different types of social proof worth including on your landing pages. 

Reviews are often seen as the holy grail of trust, and for a good reason! Research shows people trust reviews 12x more than product descriptions and sales copy. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. 

Here’s an example so you can see what I mean. Let’s say a new Italian restaurant opened in your town. The company decides to put up billboards around the city that exclaim, “The best spaghetti in town!” You see them around but don’t think much of it. A few days later, your friend calls you and says you need to try the new Italian restaurant down the road because they have the best spaghetti in town. 

Whose review would drive you to take action? The person who actually paid money to try their food, or the company that stands to gain money if you go to their restaurant?

Thanks to the evolution of digital marketing, reviews from complete strangers can be just as helpful as reviews from close friends. 

The best way to use this strategy is to include reviews from real customers on your product landing pages and event registration pages. If users can see that other people have invested money or time with your brand and are happy with the results, they may follow the same path. 

Another subtle yet powerful way to build social proof is with trust badges. We found that adding trust badges from reputable companies like PayPal or Mastercard improved conversions by 42%. People are more likely to trust your company if they see other well-known and respected businesses have faith in your brand. 

7. Compelling Call to Action

Finally, all successful landing pages have a prominent call to action (CTA). Your CTA is the button (or another element) on your page that encourages readers to take action. As we discussed, this will vary greatly based on how you use this marketing tool to connect with your audience. 

A business that wants users to join their email list may use CTAs that say things like “subscribe now” or “join and save today.” 

Meanwhile, a company hoping to secure event registrations may choose CTAs that say “secure my spot” or “save my seat.” 

We strongly recommend using A/B testing when creating CTAs for your landing pages. Experiment with different options until you find messages that resonate with your target audience. 

This piece of the puzzle is so important because your landing page will be a dead end for readers after they’ve finished reading your landing page unless there’s a clear and logical next step they can take. 

How to Create a Successful Landing Page

Over on the Torque blog, we’ve discussed in great detail how you can create a landing page from scratch or with the assistance of a page builder. 

Of the two options, I suggest using a drag-and-drop page builder. SeedProd and ThriveThemes are two solid options that make it easy for first-time business owners to quickly build their first landing page. 

Outside of using a page builder, here are a couple of tips to keep in mind if you want to create a successful landing page: 

• If you have the urge to add multiple CTAs, consider breaking your content up and creating separate landing pages for each CTA. 
• Test your landing page on various devices to ensure your audience is getting the best experience possible. 
• Use split testing to experiment with different CTAs, headlines, layouts, and offers. Testing can dramatically improve conversions. 
• Review on-site analytics so you can make pages geared toward your audience segments. 
• Continue monitoring your analytics and user feedback so you can gradually optimize each landing page. 

Final Thoughts

As you can see, a lot goes into creating a successful landing page. Very few business leaders quickly create a page and watch conversions and engagement soar. 

The best marketers know that this digital marketing strategy requires patience and persistence. You have to learn what works and where you can improve. 

Continuously testing, tracking, and improving your landing pages will help you reach your goals and find success.