Keys to a high-converting landing page (+ case study)
Your landing page can be the reason a visitor becomes a paying customer, or the weak link that costs you the sale. Applying landing page best practices can help you motivate folks who’d benefit most from your offer to take you up on it.
Drawing insights from serving 300+ businesses, and a recent landing page review I recorded for a business friend, I’ll walk you through a few critical components to high-converting landing pages in this blog post.
The importance of a high-converting landing page
Your landing page is often the last touchpoint a lead has before they commit to taking an action with your business.
The call to action could be anything from signing up for a demo of your software, booking a call, or signing up for your paid membership program.
As such, it’s a crucial part of your sales funnel, and can nudge browsers to become buyers.
Since a landing page has to do a lot of heavy lifting for your marketing, every word, image, and formatting choice counts. Where you put your pricing, how you structure the content “above the fold” (what visitors see at the top of their screen when they land on the page) and what you say make all the difference.
But here’s the catch: most landing pages don’t convert as well as they could.
Sometimes, it’s the small things that cost you conversions such as awkward image placement or distracting links, other times it’s something more significant like a hook that misses the mark or body copy that doesn’t speak to your ideal customer in terms they understand.
Whether you're offering coaching, consulting, or any other professional service, your landing page should clearly communicate the value you provide and give visitors a seamless path to take the next step.
Common landing page mistakes that hurt conversions
Before we get to the landing page review, and optimization checklist you can use for your landing page, let’s take a look at some common pitfalls that might be costing you conversions.
1. Too many distractions
Ever heard of the “rule of one?”
It’s a core principle in conversion copywriting which states that you should always have a singular focus with your copy.
If you’re sending an email newsletter, there should be one main message and one CTA. If you’re cooking up a Meta ad, focus on one ideal customer profile with one clear outcome.
The same applies to landing pages, if you have too much going on in your landing page, you’ll scare some folks off.
Imagine this: you’re reading chapter one in a fiction book, and you’re just starting to get familiar with a set of characters and settings. Halfway through the chapter, the author throws a location change, a cast swap, and a tonal shift at you - expecting you to keep up.
While this may work in some cases, most of the time, you’ve just lost your reader.
With landing pages, there are various elements that can pull your reader’s attention away from what’s important, including:
Cluttered navigation menus
Various buttons and CTAs
Images that distract from, rather than complement the copy
2. Misaligned messaging
Consumers in many ways are simple: speak to them about their problems and how you solve them, and you’re onto a winning formula.
In practice, though, this is a lot more complicated than it at first seems.
But it doesn’t have to be.
The biggest reason landing page messaging misses the mark is a lack of research.
Sure, you might know your ideal customer in the sense that you know your neighbor that lives a few doors down, but how much do you really know them?
One thing I’ve noticed in more than 6 years of copywriting is that a lot of business owners can’t answer the question above convincingly. You’d be surprised how many folks are taken aback when I offer to conduct customer interviews before working with them - as if it hadn’t occurred to them.
The USP of your service or product can carry your conversions to some degree, but if you don’t truly know who you’re talking to, writing to them is going to be 10x more difficult.
3. Underusing testimonials
Social proof is one of the best tools you have to tip someone off the fence, and show them that your offer is a safe bet.
Yet for all the hard work they do on a landing page, they’re often wasted due to:
Awkward placement - Your testimonials shouldn’t be scattered randomly throughout your landing page, they should serve to reinforce points you make in your copy, so place them strategically
Hard-to-digest formatting - The best testimonials communicate the thrust of the message straight away. Pull the most convincing quote and turn it into a header at the top of the testimonial to cater to skimmers.
Lack of credibility - Use a headshot whenever possible, as it adds an extra level of credibility and assures readers that they’re reading a quote from a real person - not something made-up.
Landing page best practices (with examples)
When my friend Kelly approached me for a landing page review, she had two goals:
Convert visitors from her social media into coaching clients.
Showcase her expertise and build trust with potential clients.
While her landing page was solid, we identified a few opportunities to tweak the copy to improve the chances for conversions.
So here’s what we did, and how you can optimize your own landing page:
Lead with the problem, not the solution
One of the first suggestions I made for Kelly’s landing page was to reorder the content so that the copy started by speaking to her ideal customer’s struggles.
Instead of jumping straight into the coaching offer, we discussed adding an empathy-forward section that would speak directly to her audience’s pain points.
The goal here is to meet the reader where they’re at, so that when you eventually present your offer further down the page, they’ve been convinced on how your solution relieves them of the relatable problems you’ve walked through with them.
Most folks when they land on a website page are a little weary - whether consciously or not - about being sold to, so that’s why it’s important to start on ground that feels familiar to them.
Introduce yourself and establish credibility
Directly following up from the introduction section where you’ve met the reader where they’re at in their customer journey, you want to add a key piece of the puzzle - empathy.
They might feel as if you have captured their experience in your words, but anyone can say that, right?
Here’s where you need to back up your words with your lived experience: think about what makes you qualified to talk about the reader’s experience as you introduce yourself.
In your introduction, you can hail back to a time when you were in the reader’s exact position, whether that’s from a financial perspective, a health perspective, or something else related to your offer and the problems you solve.
What makes you uniquely positioned to solve the reader’s problems?
Streamline the CTAs
Where you place your CTAs and the wording you use to get readers to take action can have a big impact on your conversion rate.
For Kelly’s landing page, one CTA was placed under an image to the right of the page, above three social media links. When positioning your CTAs, it’s important to consider the reader’s experience - is it clear what you want them to do?
There’s a common design principle that states users are more likely to engage with CTAs in places they’ve seen them before. If you’re used to seeing a certain type of CTA button at a specific place on a landing page, you’re almost conditioned to want to click it.
Using this knowledge, place your CTA button somewhere prominent and familiar to your readers.
In this case, it’s also a good idea to move the social media links further down the page as they can distract the reader from taking the action we want them to take.
Leverage social proof effectively
If you have testimonials from past clients, use them strategically.
Kelly’s landing page collected a few testimonials from her coaching program and displayed them at the bottom of the page.
While this is fantastic social proof, it’s best to use testimonials throughout the page to reinforce specific benefits about your course or program. That way, the reader can feel as if the claims you’re making are backed up by evidence.
Headshots can also help you improve your conversion rate, if you can get them. Professional photos next to your testimonials help readers feel as if they’re reading words from real people.
Follow up questions about the landing page
Here’s a couple of follow-up questions Kelly asked after the landing page review, and my exact responses.
“Am I selling myself as the solution, or my services?”
Infuriating answer incoming: Both, neither, and it depends. Let me try and explain.
The literal offer: SEO/blogs/ads. It’s important for people to know what they’re getting, but this is not what they’re basing their purchasing decision on.
Unique selling point: YOU. If people can get SEO/blogs/ads from lots of service pros, YOU are a major USP/differentiator. Since your socials are a primary source of leads, I’d assume your story and your personality are big drivers of why they buy. People want to like and trust who they work with. So your page should help them do that by introducing you and weaving your transparent, relatable voice throughout. But you’re still not what people are buying either.
Outcome: THIS is what people are buying. What will their life look like with you implementing this marketing support? And this isn’t an answer you guess in your head. It’s something you should ask past clients who you’d categorize as ideal fits for this offer. My guess is that they bought for a reason like:
Relief – They’re overwhelmed by marketing and want someone to take it off their plate.
Growth – They want to expand their business, reach more people, and increase revenue. Marketing support feels like a path to meaningful growth.
“Should I assume they already know what SEO is? What blog strategy is?”
Again, I’d look at what your ideal buyers have had in common. Are there any patterns as to whether they did or did not understand SEO and blog strategy before coming to you?
For example, if your best clients typically understand these things when they come to you, I’d write the page speaking to someone who already understands these things too.
Wondering how your landing page stacks up?
The best landing pages work hard to connect with your ideal customers, and guide them toward taking action.
Remember to lead with empathy, establish your credibility, and keep things simple.
If you’re wondering how your landing page stacks up, feel free to reach out!
