Design Landing Pages That Convert: Your Go-to Guide

A horde of landing pages is nothing less than a full-fledged sales team.

They can speak for you to your customers and literally run your business even when you sleep.

But there is a catch (there always is).

Just like the efficiency of a sales team depends on the quality of training and the sales cadence it follows, landing pages are not just about getting the message right. The manner in which the message is delivered also plays an equally important role (sometimes even more, but we may be biased).

Designing a high-converting landing page takes a lot of work. As a designer, you need to understand the psychology of your audience, their digital habits, and engagement history. 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So how can you get past the hurdle of high bounce rates and deliver a landing page that is powerful enough to replace your sales team?

What Is A Landing Page?

A landing page is your first point of contact with a prospective customer. It often functions as a standalone web page that is centered around the goal of making the visitor engage with the Call-to-Action (CTA).

CTAs often exist as intuitive forms that gather information about site visitors. This makes them the last stage of your digital conversion funnels, commanding the entire ROI of your campaigns!

Why Is Landing Page Design Important?

Marketers love landing pages. So much so that about 48% of them craft a new one for every campaign. Here’s why:

• Better Hooks: They promote a positive first impression to visitors who just take merely two-tenths of a second to form opinions about your brand!
• Easier Conversions: Well-designed landing pages are better at capturing email leads as compared to a typical blog or web page.
• Trust-building Opportunity: Landing pages give more room to wiggle and provide opportunities for using a plethora of trust-building elements such as testimonials and relevant visuals.
• Testing and Optimization: Being goal-focused, landing pages produce tangible results that can be optimized with A/B testing, improving the ROI even further.

Anatomy Of A Perfect Landing Page

There is no fixed recipe to create a landing page that converts well.

But there are certain starting points and best practices that can help you reach the answers quicker. Here are the elements to focus on during the construction process:

1. Zero Navigation

Landing pages are usually post-click design assets. This means that prospects would arrive at them by engaging with a campaign on an external marketing channel.

This is different from a website UX UI design where prospects can come from various sources and you would want them to navigate through your blog, services, and company profile. But including any navigation functionality into the landing page UX UI design would only create distractions that your conversion strategy does not require. Take a look at this landing page from Muzzle.

Not only is it minimalistic, but it also cuts down on any navigational clutter and focuses on a single goal – making the prospect click on the CTA. Which brings us to the next point…

2. Conversion Orientation

To be categorically defined as a landing page, it needs to be centered around a single conversion goal. Buttons and CTAs are all the rave here and optimization is the end-game.

Some handy practices here include:

• Steering clear of bland words such as ‘Contact’ or ‘Submit’. Instead, convey the exact value proposition that your visitors would be getting. ‘Free Trials’, ‘Download Demo’, or ‘50% Off’ would work much better.
• Don’t include too many fields in forms. The length of any form is inversely proportional to the number of leads it captures.
• A/B test everything. Not only does this include the text of your CTA but also its shape, color, and even size. Most marketers are generally surprised by the results they find with A/B testing. Ensure that it comes sooner rather than later.

3. Engaging Typography

Everyone always talks about how important headlines are. But how important is its design? It is literally the first element that a reader notices on a landing page. This makes it even more important to focus on typography elements such as UX UI design, kerning, and leading.

The same stands correct for any subsequent text on the page. If the typography is not synced with other visual elements on the landing page, there will forever be a gap of design perspective between elements that the prospects’ minds will fail at bridging.

Some factors while selecting the typeface include:

• Evoking positive emotions
• Providing easier readability
• Industry of operation
• Casual Vs. Professional tone
• Modern Vs. Traditional branding

For instance, consider the Cadillac logo that uses the Script font to depict elegance and sophistication. Interestingly, this stands poles apart from Slack that uses a bold and modern typeface to signify a tech platform and capture attention.

4. Captivating Visuals 

The best landing pages include a perfect blend of images and engaging videos that are just enough to capture attention. Why? Simply because a human brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text! This practically means that they can potentially shape the visitors’ experience even before they read your copy!

While finalizing the images: 

• Ensure that they are relevant to the product/service and brand.
• Demonstrate the real value of your offering and command attention.
• Include high-quality images while avoiding stock photographs.
• Relate the image to the page copy to keep the message consistent.

Take a look at the Yuyiii website. The website was recently revamped by Divami. Notice how they use an exotic image that is consistent with their brand positioning, shows the value proposition in action (hand-picked stays), and instantly sets itself apart from its competitors with a clear differentiating factor.  

5. Negative Spaces

Recall the last time you landed on a cluttered web page that frustrated you out of your wits. What did it lack?

Breathing space.

Negative (or white) spaces that are clear of any visual or copy element may not seem like much on paper. But they do more than marketers initially realize. They bring out the page elements and make their hierarchical relationships clear to visitors, turning their attention to the CTAs.

To achieve this, follow these practices:

• Focus on a single user journey and embed white spaces accordingly.
• Limiting navigation and using white spaces instead.
• Excluding exit-links to reduce drop-offs or distractions.
• Limiting the size and number of images and videos.

Notice how this landing page from Viola Wallet (one of our clients) gets the job done by achieving all this and more.

6. Color Psychology

Depending on the message, industry, and tone of your landing page, color psychology plays a leading role in converting visitors. The right pick can make them comfortable and draw them in, while the wrong one can scare them away.

Here are how different colors can dictate the tone and influence user actions:

• Yellow: Optimistic, energetic, youthful, and attention-grabbing
• Purple: Calming and soothing. Best for trust-building
• Orange: Aggressive and enticing, making it fit for CTAs
• Black: Powerful and elegant, often used for luxurious brands

For example, consider the case of Neil Patel who hits home by pairing a powerful value proposition with a tempting Orange CTA. 

7. Above the Fold

It is the first section of your landing page that every visitor sees without having to scroll through. Naturally, this is also where all the action should (and does) take place. 

Take a look at the homepage of KennedyBlue, for instance.

It uses a minimalistic approach above the fold by depicting the product, its price, the CTA, and the brand. And all this with a single image and just 7 words!

Steps To Create High-Conversion Landing Pages

For an ideal design, it is imperative to keep the web page copy in mind. They both go hand-in-hand, impacting the UX UI design process more than an amateur designer ever realizes.

Here’s the blueprint of an ideal landing page design:

• Know Your Audience: You should have an intimate knowledge of your target audience, their digital behaviors, and all possible rejections before the design process even commences.
• Update Brand Guidelines: Based on this knowledge, revisit your brand guidelines to create a compelling story that conveys to your audience why they should care. Ideally, this would be the step to finalize the logo, typography, CTA, and page element colors.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Next, create a page structure that showcases your product or service in action with the right visual cues. Instead of merely listing out the features, make them watch a short video or refer to a well-designed image.
• Break It Down: Get the marketing message right, select the right visual content, and break down the tasks and subtasks that your service/product can deliver.
• Additional Info: Add any other relevant information that can contribute to your CTA. If the pricing is on your side, mention it clearly. If you already have a list of delighted customers, include social proof in the form of testimonials.
• Optimize: Changing even a single image or headline can have an everlasting effect on your conversions. Keep A/B testing every element, the color of CTAs, the hero images, product images, and more to arrive at the perfect recipe that works for you.

Looking Forward

Anybody can create landing pages. But to design one that converts well is no less than an art. It requires just the right amount of experience and panache that is intriguing enough to hold the attention of visitors. The tips and examples in this blog aim to help you see this in action and gather key takeaways that you can implement right away.

To know more about how we achieve all this (and more) at Divami, head to our portfolio page and check out our past projects.