Best Practices for Landing Page Success

Landing page best practices are the best way to overcome a barrier that might be keeping you from achieving your full potential: for someone to become a subscriber, they have to consciously submit their personal information and agree to accept your emails. This is a tough decision for many people.

Sometimes the job of a landing page is to convince the user to part with their money and make a small purchase (often knowing that you may soon be selling bigger ticket offers).

A strong landing page focuses like a laser on getting potential readers to perform just one action. The best landing page practices will help you get more signups and grow your business.

Boosting the performance of a landing page is always important, especially if you’re using paid ads to drive traffic to the page.

We’ve written about how to create landing pages in the past, but now we’re going to focus on best practices.

What Are the Best Practices of a Landing Page?

There are different opinions about the best landing page practices, but here are seven that almost everyone agrees about.

Your Messaging Should Match Your Ads

If someone clicks on a link about investing in stocks, and they arrive at a landing page that talks about crypto, they are going to be put off.

This isn’t just true for ads. The message on your landing page should match the email, the social media post, or the blog article that links to your landing page.

Use More Than One Landing Page

The only thing worse than not having a landing page is having just one.

You probably have more than one offer, or easily could, when you think about all the premiums, downloads, webinars, and products your business produces.

Since a landing page is single-mindedly focused on one action, you need at least one landing page for each offer. In fact, you should probably have more than one.

If you have multiple ad groups, then users will click through the link for different reasons.

For example, a 26-year-old programmer will click on a link in Instagram for an entirely different reason than a retired lawyer who clicked through an email. You need a landing page that appeals to the needs and interests of each demographic you serve.

Companies with 15-20 landing pages have conversion rates 55% higher than companies with fewer than 10 landing pages. And those with 40 or more landing pages have rates 500% higher.

Remove Distractions

You’ve invested time, and maybe money, to get a user to your landing page. Don’t let them get away without signing up.

Your landing page should not have any of the navigation that may be on the rest of your website. The only clickable item on the page should be a “Submit” button that works after they put their name and email into a form.

Every pixel of content should draw attention to the button and the form. Do not give visitors any opportunity to wander off.

Only Ask For What You Need

You may be tempted to survey a new reader, to get their phone number so you can text them, collect information such as their company name and job title, or ask them about their biggest challenge.

Don’t.

A long-form will look like too much work for many users, and they will navigate away.

All you need is the user’s email, and ideally their first name. You can ask for all the other information later, once you’ve captured their email and permission.

If you need more information, you can usually get it through methods such as these:

• Their sign-up triggers an automated email sequence that asks for additional information

• Signing up leads them to a thank-you page where they are offered an incentive to fill out a more detailed form

• Signup leads to a special quiz or survey, which allows you to capture more information

Stay Above the Fold

If you’re not familiar with the term, “above the fold” means a part of the screen that visitors can see without scrolling.

A potential reader should never have to scroll to see the form where they can enter their name and email. If they can’t see it, they may not use it.

Use Responsive Design

Responsive design adapts to any device that is being used.

Whether your reader is on a tablet, laptop, or phone, your landing page will adapt to their parameters so it’s easy to view.

Mobile landing page best practices are the same as for other landing pages, but responsive design is a non-negotiable.

Fortunately, most email service providers, such as beehiiv, include responsive design. It’s built into all the landing pages created on their platforms.

Use A/B Testing

Another best practice for landing pages is to compare two landing pages that have the same goal.

We recently told you all about A/B Testing for emails, but it’s a powerful tool for landing pages, too. Here’s how it works.

Create two landing pages that are identical except for one specific detail. Send equal amounts of traffic to both pages, and see if one converts significantly better than the other one.

Some of the details you may want to test include:

• The headline

• The main picture or image

• The color of the submit button

• The color of the background

• The font

• The wording on the opt-in form

Ideally, you will run multiple tests and eventually develop the best possible landing page for your goals.

How Do I Create a Landing Page for Email Marketing?

The best way to start is to use a service that follows landing page best practices.

For email marketing, it’s best to use a platform that also provides email service. We recently did a comparison of several email platforms. Most of these also provide landing pages.

If you’re good at coding, or willing to hire someone, you could customize your own landing page. However, this is an expensive and time-consuming option. We don’t recommend it unless you need specialized features that no other platform offers.

What Are the 5 Essential Elements of the Landing Page?

Any landing page service that follows best landing page practices should make it easy to include these five essential elements. Together, these elements are sometimes called the Hero.

Here they are:

The Headline

When someone arrives at a new web page, they will often leave within a few seconds unless something grabs their attention.

The headline is the first thing most visitors will see. It should make a big promise, arouse curiosity, or address the emotion that caused the visitor to click a link to the page in the first place.

The goal of the headline is to keep the visitor on the landing page and get them to pay attention to the content on the page.

A Compelling Image

Along with the headline, it’s usually a good idea to have an image that suggests the thing the reader wants.

If it’s wealth, the image might show money or rising stock charts. If it’s weight loss, the image might show a healthy-looking person in a bathing suit. For dating, the image could be a good-looking couple enjoying a meal at a nice restaurant.

The image has the same goal as the headline, and should also get the visitor thinking about the next element, which is…

The Offer

The offer is simply an explanation of what you want the visitor to do, and what they will get in return:

“Subscribe to NFT Mania, and get a free guide to choosing the best wallet”

“Subscribe to Virtual Dating, and save 80% on your first romantic evening with one of our seductive AI companions”

“Signup here and get a 30-day trial for $1”

If you don’t have an offer, just describe the benefits of reading your newsletter.

For example, readers will stay informed, laugh for 30 minutes a day, or receive actionable tips to help them achieve their goals.

The Call To Action

The call to action is a set of explicit instructions, and is usually tied in with the offer. This is where you tell the visitor exactly what to do:

“Just enter your name and email and smash that ‘Subscribe’ button!” or “Fill in your email and when you click ‘Submit,’ you’ll gain full access.”

The Submit Form

The submit form is the mechanism by which the reader will carry out the call to action. It usually involves entering information on a form and clicking “submit.”

In some cases this could be an order form where they enter a credit card number and make a purchase.

Is Mailchimp Good For Landing Pages?

Mailchimp is one of the leading email service providers that also provides landing pages. We recently did a side-by-side comparison of Mailchimp and beehiiv.

While a few users have noted that Mailchimp doesn’t offer a wide variety of landing page templates, it’s a good service, especially for e-commerce sites and in-person businesses.

What Are Three Types of Landing Pages?

There are different landing pages for different purposes.

You could probably sort them in different ways, but it’s useful to think of a landing page based on its purpose.

Squeeze Page

The squeeze page is the one that most closely follows landing page best practices to boost newsletter signups.

The entire goal of a squeeze page is to convince a user to provide their personal information, using all the elements we described above. If you’re using landing pages to grow your newsletter, a squeeze page is probably the most common type of landing page you’ll use.

Thank You Page

A thank you page is probably the most underutilized type of landing page.

When someone opts in from a squeeze page, they might be sent to a new page that confirms they’ve signed up successfully (although many opt-ins don’t even do this!).

Usually such a page will thank the user for subscribing. Maybe the page has information about downloading a premium.

But there’s an opportunity to accomplish much more on the thank you page. For example, a thank you page could also provide extra “bonus” content to reward the new subscriber and help cement the relationship.

The page could give instructions of how to whitelist the new email, how to login, or other next steps.

A thank you page is also a useful place to make an additional ask or offer. You’ve safely captured the user’s email. They’re excited to join, and you are top of mind. Your thank you page could ask for additional information, such as a phone number, job title, or current challenges or interests.

New subscribers are more likely to comply, especially if the thank you page offers some additional incentive to give this information.

For the same reason, a thank you page is an effective place to make a sale. Someone just “bought” a free subscription, but maybe they would like to upgrade or purchase a related product.

Information Page

A third kind of landing page is less broadly useful, but it might have a place in your business.

An informational landing page could contain tips, shipping information, a welcome video, or training on the use of a product that was just purchased.

Some people don’t consider an information page to be a true landing page because it’s not built to get the user to carry out a specific action.

However, it’s a page that someone “lands” on as a result of taking previous action, and in this sense it acts like a landing page.

Best Landing Page Practices For Email Marketing (Closing Thoughts)

The easiest way to follow landing page best practices is by using a service that carries out these practices for you.

We recommend beehiiv because the platform was built with growth in mind. We provide templates that make it easy to build customized landing pages that follow best practices.

We also have several tools for growth, scaling, and monetization. Some of these tools, such as our automated referral program and recommendation network, are not available on any other platform.

If you want to be certain you are using best practices to grow your subscriptions, start a beehiive newsletter.