Landing page design tips and examples to increase conversions

What is a landing page?

A landing page is defined as a single page with a specific target—getting visitors to complete an action. The name “landing page” comes from the idea that people will land on it from somewhere else, usually digital marketing, such as an ad campaign.

Your landing page design needs to speak to your target audience and drive them to your call-to-action (CTA). A CTA can be for a visitor to sign up for your newsletter, download an ebook, enroll in your online course, buy a product, or something else. Everything on a landing page from copy and images to layout should support that one goal.

Note: At Teachable, you may sometimes hear us call a landing page a “sales page”. 

Landing page vs. homepage

A landing page is different from a homepage. A homepage is designed to appeal to multiple audiences and convey information to anyone interested in your overall brand. 

For example, Monday.com is a popular work management tool. If you look at its homepage, it speaks to all of its audiences and products from project management to CRM.

However, it also has Google Ads running for its different verticals. If you search for a project management tool in Google, you might see a Monday.com ad. It takes you to a project management-specific landing page. 

Similarly, if you were to search for CRMs, you might see a CRM landing page. With this, you can easily visualize how a homepage differs from a landing page. 

How to write a landing page

To create a landing page, you first need to craft your copy. These tips can help you write a landing page that communicates your brand story, what your product or service does, and why visitors should take action. 

1. Craft your value proposition

These four questions explain what potential customers get from you and why they can’t live without your offer, while also creating a sense of urgency.

1. What is the offer?
2. What are the benefits?
3. Why does your audience need your offer now?
4. How do they get the offer?

When you are first writing a landing page, answering these questions can help you form your outline.

Simply put, these questions are the beginning steps to building your page’s unique selling proposition. Also known as the value proposition, it is a statement that clearly identifies why a customer buys your product or service. 

2. Get to know your audience

When you build landing page, consider your audience and your competition. Your landing page copy needs to be tailored to your audience. 

• What are they getting out of your product?
• How are you solving their painful problems? 

Knowing their hopes, ambitions, and goals will make writing engaging copy much easier.

Try visiting online communities, forums, or websites where your audience hangs out. You’ll discover their desires, problems, and what they enjoy. You can use this information to help tailor your copy to their preferences. 

In addition, do competitor research. Make a list of at least three competitors and audit their landing pages. How do they position themselves? Where do you beat your competitors? 

3. Include power words

The goal of your landing page is to get your audience to convert. The copy of your page needs to be centered around this goal and reinforced each time you write a headline, a subhead, and a call-to-action.

Each of these sections communicates your unique value proposition: why people will buy from you and not your competition.

Your text needs to be captivating, persuasive, and above all else, clear. You don’t want your audience to be confused about what you are telling them or what they are getting from being on your page.

One way to do this is by using “power words”. These specific words evoke emotion and establish a connection with visitors, which can help increase conversions.

Words that work

There are many power words that you can use, but these are three of the most common. 

• You – When you use the word “you”, it feels like your product fulfills their goals, desires, dreams, and interests.
• Because – Because is an indicator of an upcoming explanation of the reason why. Hearing or reading the word “because” cues the brain’s gatekeeper to let the message pass into the subconscious.
• Imagine – The word “imagine” helps the audience envision the outcome of a purchase, not the act of purchasing, which helps lower their purchasing resistance. By feeling like they already have something, buyers will want to keep it, aka make the actual purchase to keep those desires fulfilled.

Use these three words to connect with your audience and entice them to buy your product.

If you are unsure of what other power words to use, get some inspiration from your existing customers. Is there a word or phrase they keep using in emails, on social media, or on online forums when talking about your product? If so, try out that phrase. 

Talk to a friend, peer, or audience member to see if the message you’re envisioning translates correctly to them. You can even A/B test to see if one performs better than the other.

What are the key components of a landing page?

Now that you have a rough draft of your landing page copy, you’ll need to organize it into sections or components. There are six main components that are crucial to landing page optimization. 

1. Headline
2. Subheading
3. Images
4. Benefits 
5. Social proof
6. Call-to-action

These six components need to work in cohesion together to create a high-converting landing page. 

1. Headline

Your headline is the first thing a viewer will see when they come to your page. It needs to be clear and concise, confirm your offer, and include messaging that reflects the audience’s entrance point.

For example, Function of Beauty has a landing page for its line of custom skincare products. The headline is “the world’s most customized skin care”. It highlights that it is made for you, not just a skin type and it also uses a personalized quiz CTA to reinforce the custom skincare value proposition.

2. Subhead

Your subhead is a more in-depth description of your headline. It usually appears just below your headline, and it is in a smaller font. Use the subhead to be persuasive and explain your offer in greater detail. 

Let’s look at Slack as an example. It clearly highlights the value proposition—work faster and more flexibly—when you use Slack. 

3. Images

Include a striking image of your product or a photograph that relates to your message. It is even better if you can show your product or service in action. 

According to The Next Web, our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Captivating images make your page look better and gives your audience a better page experience. They also provide visual cues to entice your audience to remain on your page and learn more about your offer.

As a design tool, Figma needs to have well-designed visuals. This landing page for its prototype features includes examples of what you can create using Figma. It makes it easy to visualize using it for your design projects.

4. Benefits

You need to sell your audience first on why they need your product, and how it solves their problem. 

The benefit statement section is where you can address the pain points you’ve found for your audience. Use a bulleted list to explain how your offer directly solves their pain problems. Make sure to focus on the benefits of your product, not solely on the features. 

Adding in all of the features at this point may confuse or complicate their decision, which can lead to them not buying at all. 

Semrush’s landing page for its free trial highlights six benefits of using the marketing tool. It focuses on what you can achieve within seven days of trying its product, including signing new clients and learning about your competitors. 

5. Social proof

Social proof shows your audience that others have taken your course or used your products and would recommend it. It is a necessity to design landing pages that convert. The more a visitor sees that others like and benefit from using your product, the more likely they are to convert.

You can leverage different types of social proof, including testimonials, reviews, and press features.

Usually, social proof will appear many times on a landing page, primarily right after the above-the-fold section. Going back to our Semrush example, you can see how they include top companies that use its product, leveraging their brand equity and creating credibility.

6. Call-to-action

Your call-to-action is the reason you have a landing page. You want someone to sign up for your offer. What it looks like, how it reads and where it is placed will impact your conversion rate.

Remember, you want to have just one CTA. This way, it is clear to potential customers what you want them to do. Plus, you’ll increase your chance of conversion if you are driving them to one goal versus dividing their attention between more than one. 

Be brief but clear. Avoid “submit” and “send” CTA buttons, because they are vague. You need to describe exactly what you want from your customers or the next steps—what will happen when they click. 

Another element you can capture in your CTA is urgency. For example, this landing page for Nom Nom highlights a special offer to get 50% off and free shipping. 

CTA landing page design tips

• Enclose CTA text in a box. This makes it look like a button, and people want to click buttons.
• When the mouse hovers over the button, have it change colors or shade. It entices people to click and shows them that it is clickable.
• Color doesn’t matter. Contrast matters. Your CTA button should stand out from everything else on the page. First, find the main color of your site, then look at the color that is directly opposite it on the color wheel. That is the best complementary color for you to use for your CTA. For example, if your page background is blue, use an orange CTA to stand out from the rest of the site.
• Size is important. Make the button larger than the other text on the page. You don’t want your ultimate goal to get lost.
• Include white space around your button so it clearly stands out from everything else on the page.

Sun Basket has a CTA button that pops off the page. The bright yellow stands out from the background and it has enough white space around it to draw your attention.

Bonus page: Thank You

Once your audience completes your CTA, you have one more page to keep their attention and inspire further conversion: the Thank You page.

The Thank You page is the perfect place to introduce your audience to other products you have since you’ve already captured their attention. This could be another CTA asking them to share the content they just signed up for, subscribe to your blog, sign up for your newsletter, attend a live training webinar or even give them a bonus piece of content.

For example, when you download a template from one of Hubspot’s resource landing pages, the Thank You or confirmation page looks like the below. It includes a CTA to learn more about Hubspot software.

How to create a landing page

Landing page builders

You don’t need to be a web designer or developer to create high-converting landing pages. In fact, there are many do-it-yourself builders, offering an easy user interface plus hundreds of landing page templates to choose from. You can plug these into your existing website and maintain the same user experience site-wide. 

Here are a few user-friendly platforms to design a landing page:

• Instapage 
• Unbounce
• Hubspot

If you sign up for Teachable, you can create a landing page for your first course in as little as 10 minutes. 

5 principles for landing page design

Next, we’ll discuss some simple landing page design elements (color, typography, images) to think about when you’re creating your page to make it even better.

Whichever path you choose, there are still a few things that you need to think about when building your landing page: color, fonts, and images.

1. Choose meaningful colors that contrast

It’s the great marketer debate: Does color affect conversion in terms of landing page design? 

To keep it as simple, we’re going to discuss a few elements to consider when thinking about colors for your landing page design (and brand).

Every color has psychological implications associated with it. When choosing your landing page color palette, consider what characteristics you want your brand to portray.

Colors have meaning

Pick colors that are associated with the characteristics you want to exude. If you want to portray luxury and trust, blue and black would be good options. If you want to hint at optimism and health, use yellow and green.

Complementary colors

Contrast is important. When two complementary colors are placed next to each other, their contrast is the strongest, and actually makes the colors appear brighter.

When choosing the palette for your site, make sure to include a color complementary to your page’s main color.

Here are some sites for palette inspiration:

• Adobe Color
• Colour Lovers
• Coolors

Make sure the colors that you pick are readable. You don’t want a green background with blue text. A helpful hint is to use a light background with dark text.

2. Pick typography

If you’re designing your own landing page from scratch, you have to pick your own fonts. The best practice is to stick with commonly used Google web fonts like: 

• Georgia
• Verdana
• Geneva
• Arial
• Helvetica
• Tahoma
• Trebuchet MS
• Monospace
• Lucida Console
• Monaco

Using these fonts ensures that the majority of browsers and operating systems render your text correctly. Plus, it’s much easier when sending newsletters and dealing with different email service providers. 

When choosing fonts, stick to one font to reduce the clutter on your landing page. Each of the fonts above has bold and italic styles, which are simple ways to differentiate text. Also, make sure you have the proper licenses to use these fonts for your business.

3. Use the proper font sizes

Another way to differentiate text is with size. A study by Wichita State found that body text is best at 12pt because it’s the easiest to read in the least amount of time. If your audience is older, bumping up the point size to 14 may make it easier on the eyes. Headlines look best at 17 to 25pt.

In that same Wichita State study, it was discovered that any font, larger or smaller than 12pt, decreases readability. If you want someone to spend time reading your copy, try enlarging the size in the testimonial section or reducing the size for the money-back guarantee statement.

The last size factor to consider is line spacing. Make sure there is enough space between each line to give the text room to breathe and be read easily.

4. Select clear images

Earlier, we explained the importance of having an image of your product. Now we’ll go into more detail on how to choose an image and its importance to landing page design. 

Most importantly, you want the image to add to your landing page, not detract from your message. Include a clear, high-quality image that is not busy. 

Think about how the text will look on top of the image. If your image has a lot going on, consider darkening it up with Photoshop. This way, the text will be easier to read. 

A quick hack is to add a dark rectangle over the photo and reduce the opacity. The image should be dark enough for the text to be readable.

5. Check all devices

Once you’ve created a landing page, be sure to double check it on mobile devices, which is often where traffic comes from.

With these landing page design tips, you’ll be well on your way to understanding how to convert customers. Test out a few different landing page designs first and A/B test each to see how it performs. Your first version can always be refined after you have some data to understand how users interact with your page. If you are creating a landing page for a course, you can get started easily with Teachable’s sales page template. 

Landing page examples

Now that we’ve explored what a landing page is, as well as how to write and create a landing page, let’s take a look at different types of landing pages.

Product landing page

This landing page (below) was quite long. The top “above-the-fold” section offers an easy way for customers to sign up (the CTA), alongside descriptions of what exactly is included in the online course. Further down the page are video testimonials (social proof), an overview of the modules, and buttons to reinforce the CTA.

Ecommerce landing page

As you’ll see on Kourtney Kardashian Barker’s new online shop of herbal vitamins, this landing page has bright, eye-catching images and a few different CTAs—the dominant invitation being to “Shop All”. As you navigate to individual products, you’ll find social proof, more easy-to-digest information about ingredients, and more.

Real estate landing page

When it comes to real estate, the images are often front and center. You’ll notice this example doesn’t even have a heading or subheading. The benefits are the features of the home, which can be found in the descriptive paragraph and the charts above the CTA button.

Event landing page

Here is an example Unbounce recognizes as effective because of how it speaks to a specific target audience (women entrepreneurs in the digital space). Meanwhile the design treatment above the CTA bar highlights incentives to sign up: watch anytime, many experts featured, and free.

Lead generation landing page

Popular website builder Wix uses a pop-up to capture visitor information, while all of the benefits remain in the background on the landing page. The CTA button clearly indicates that there is no harm, risk, or commitment to trying: “Start for free.”

Webinar landing page

While this webinar, hosted by Mailchimp, doesn’t have a main image (just headshots of the speakers), the branding is consistent with the email and marketing platform. From the headline (and lack of subheading), it’s clear that the intended audience is MailChimp users. Meanwhile, the landing page offers two actions: to sign up or spread the word.

Coming soon landing page

Whether you’re about to launch a course or enrollment has already closed, you can still track interest and capture site visitors’ information. Here’s an example of Kris Carr’s membership container, Thrive Bootcamp.

SaaS landing page

SaaS stands for “software as a service” and allows customers to access applications over the internet through cloud-based delivery. This landing page example features the six key components in a fluid (and effective) way.

FAQs

What’s the difference between a landing page vs. website?

A landing page is different from a homepage. A homepage is designed to appeal to multiple audiences and convey information to anyone interested in your overall brand. A landing page, on the other hand, is defined as a single page with a specific target—getting visitors to complete an action. The name “landing page” comes from the idea that people will land on it from somewhere else, usually a digital ad or another marketing campaign.

Your landing page design needs to speak to your target audience and drive them to your call-to-action (CTA). Everything on a landing page from copy and images to layout should support that one goal.

What should a landing page include?

There are six main components that make a landing page successful. These six components need to work in cohesion together to create a high-converting landing page:

1. Headline: the first thing a viewer will see when they come to your page; should be clear and concise, confirm your offer, and include messaging that reflects the audience’s entrance point
2. Subhead: a more in-depth description of your headline
3. Images: striking graphics of your product or photographs that relates to your message
4. Benefits: why audience needs your product, and how it solves their problem(s)
5. Social proof: shows your audience that others have taken your course or used your products and would recommend it; could be testimonials, reviews, or press features
6. Call-to-action: the reason you have the landing page/action you want visitor to take

What should not be on a landing page?

The elements of a landing page, including copy and graphics, should be intentional and specific to the goal (CTA) or offer. Your text needs to be captivating, persuasive, and above all else, clear. You don’t want your audience to be confused about what you are telling them or what they are getting from being on your page.