Selling online begins with a website, but your online marketing campaign starts with a landing page.

Not all types of traffic should be directed to your website. Sometimes, you need to direct visitors to a targeted standalone page that provides the specific information your audience needs.

Landing pages serve unique marketing purposes and are the backbone of any online business, whether you're a coach, solopreneur, ecommerce store, SaaS provider, or other small business owner.

This article explains the importance of using landing pages for your business and highlights the many benefits for your customer base.

What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is a standalone page designed to capture the contact information of visitors (also known as potential customers). An effective landing page targets a specific audience and persuades visitors to take a specific action.

The primary purpose of a dedicated landing page is to offer visitors something of high value (known as a lead magnet) in exchange for contact information (name, email address, and phone number, among other potential fields).

For example, you can create a landing page for an advertising campaign where you offer a free trial of your consultation services.

Visitors fill out a short form to get their free trial (value) and you get a lead (via contact information).

There are different types of lead magnets that you can offer on a landing page such as:

  • Free trials
  • Coupons
  • Digital content in the form of eBook, whitepaper, case study, PDF, etc.
  • Exclusive offers

Here is an example of a landing page:

This landing page offers a free eBook that visitors can get in exchange for their email address. Notice the landing page has no navigation and distractions – a simple design with no links to external pages adds clarity to your specific offer.

All the content and a clear call-to-action (CTA) are above the fold and instantly visible to website visitors.

Types of Landing Pages

There are different types of landing pages, each with a different purpose:

  1. Squeeze pages: A short landing page that is aimed at capturing (squeezing) the email address of the visitors.
  2. Lead generation landing pages: Lead capture landing pages, also known as lead gen landing pages, are designed to generate leads. This means that the form is more detailed, and the copy is slightly more robust.
  3. Click-through landing pages: A type of landing page that has a CTA and sends the traffic to another page.
  4. Long-form landing pages: A landing page with significantly longer copy as opposed to general shorter, single-page landing pages.

Home Page Vs Landing Page

Landing pages are often confused with home pages, and businesses tend to use them interchangeably. It’s important to note the home page is different from a landing page.

Here are the key differences between home pages and landing pages:

  1. The home page is the face of your company website, while a landing page is a standalone web page with a specific value proposition.
  2. The home page targets a wider audience and links to other internal pages of your website. A lead capture page is highly targeted with no external links.
  3. Your home page gives an overview of your products and services to all new customers. A landing page offers a lead magnet to entice potential high-value leads.
  4. A home page has navigation and a menu. Landing pages don’t.
  5. You only have a single home page of your website. You may have multiple landing pages with different goals and purposes.

Start your Subkit and create your first landing page in under 5 minutes. Engage your audience today! 🚀✨

Why a Landing Page is Important

Here’s why landing pages are important for your business and digital marketing campaigns:

1. Generate New Leads

Lead generation is a top priority of businesses of all sizes. A survey reported that 91% of marketers say that lead generation is the most important marketing goal.

But generating leads isn’t easy.

A whopping 61% of marketers rate lead generation as the number one challenge they face and 53% of marketers spend at least 50% of the marketing budget on lead generation:

Landing pages solve this problem.

You can generate leads cost-effectively by creating and using good landing pages. The purpose of landing pages is to generate leads and it can generally do so in a way that is cheap and effective, especially compared to alternatives. This is a key reason why they’re important for your business.

2. High Conversion Rate

Landing pages have an exceptionally high conversion rate which can go as high as 23%.

The average conversion rate of a landing page with 3 form fields is 10%. The lowest conversion rate for landing pages is around 3%.

Now compare this with the average conversion rate of a website which stands at 2.35%:

The lowest converting landing page still has a higher conversion rate than the average website conversion rate.

Read that again.

Importantly, optimizing the conversion rate of a landing page with A/B testing is much easier than optimizing a complete website. This is because a landing page has minimal variables to test as compared to a website with multiple pages and potential CTAs.

Landing pages convert better due to targeting with a free offer.

According to HubSpot, 55% of landing page submissions on its platform are generated via eBook offers:

When you add it all up, the unique characteristics of a landing page make its conversion rate much higher than traditional product pages.

3. Collect the Contact Information of Your Potential Customers

Landing pages allow you to collect personal information from your target audience, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses. This information helps you better understand your ideal customers and significantly improves targeting and the performance of advertising campaigns.

You can use this information to update your buyer personas, which are the backbone of any marketing campaign. The more up-to-date and current your buyer personas are, the better your marketing campaigns will be. Lead capture pages make it easier to collect information that would otherwise require market research and primary data collection, which can be expensive.

You can collect all of that information at a fraction of the cost with the help of landing pages.

In other words, generating leads for your business isn’t the only benefit. The data collected in the process is also extremely valuable and useful, and you can use this to validate your idea or add additional products and services.

4. Better Performance of Marketing Campaigns

Landing pages play a crucial role in advertising campaigns. To increase the conversion rate, traffic from PPC campaigns (pay-per-click) should be directed to highly targeted and customized landing pages.

To improve the performance of marketing campaigns, send paid traffic to a dedicated landing page where you can guide visitors on the next step of the conversion process.

According to HubSpot, the more landing pages you have the better. Having 40 or more landing pages generates 12x more leads:

How?

Landing pages help you create personalized, standalone pages that are relevant to your ad. Relevancy is that important as we’ve covered previously.

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Here is an example:

Without a landing page, you have to send traffic to your company website or a web page that might not be relevant to the ad. This leads to high click-through rate (CTR) with low conversions for your advertising campaigns – this negatively impacts ad performance and ad quality score.

Using landing pages for marketing campaigns is essential. Especially for paid ads.

5. More Traffic from Search Engines

Landing pages are a great source of organic traffic, too.

A study reported that 48% of top landing pages rank in Google Maps and organic search results:

Even if you are not actively using landing pages for lead generation, you can still use them to drive traffic from search engines. This, of course, requires creating search engine optimized landing pages.

Subkit, for example, lets you create mobile-friendly and optimized landing pages free of cost with a few clicks. These types of responsive landing pages work both ways:

  1. They help you generate leads
  2. They drive organic traffic

If you are struggling to generate traffic, using long-form landing pages is a great way to drive targeted traffic.

The landing page copy must be optimized for search engines. Search engine optimization is its own process, which we’ll cover separately in a future article, but in the meantime know that Subkit builds SEO-expertise in from the start.

Note that squeeze pages or short-form landing pages are the least likely to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

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Landing Page Best Practices: How to Create a Good Landing Page

A good landing page has a high conversion rate, generates leads, and drives organic traffic.

Follow these best practices to create a good landing page for your business:

1. Target One Specific Action

One of the basic rules of designing high-converting landing pages is to keep them highly specific and target one action per landing page.

Whether it’s a micro conversion or a macro conversion, your landing page should target one conversion action with a highly targeted call-to-action. All the CTA buttons must be consistent and should have the same purpose and outcome.

For example, if you promote multiple offers through a single landing page (hoping one of them will convert), it will create confusion and friction leading to a low conversion rate overall.

When you have to use multiple CTAs on a landing page, make sure they are consistent and promote the same offer.

Stick with the rule: One landing page, one offer, one conversion action.

2. Improve Load Speed

The load speed of a landing page impacts conversion rate. According to a report by Unbounce, 81% of marketers believe page speed impacts conversions:

And a study found pages that load quickly have the highest conversion rate:

You can create the best landing page with a killer headline, hero images, optimized copy, social proof, and an amazing offer, but if it has poor load speed, it won’t matter – it will have a high bounce rate, as people generally don’t wait for a page to load.

Your landing page should load in roughly 1-3 seconds. If it takes longer, you’re losing leads.

Follow these best practices to improve landing page load speed:

  • Use PageSpeed Insights to inspect load speed for mobile and desktop – you’ll get detailed instructions on how to improve speed and what actions you can take for optimization
  • Reduce image size
  • Use a content delivery network (CDN) improves website speed
  • Minimize resources or eliminate them
  • Optimize JavaScript and CSS
  • Use browser caching
  • Switch to a reputable host and dedicated hosting plan

3. Optimize Copy

Landing page copy plays a major role in conversions.

It must be optimized for both visitors and search engines.

Copy consists of 3 elements:

  1. Headline
  2. Description
  3. Benefits

The headline is the most crucial part of the copy as it hooks the readers.

Research shows that 8 out of 10 people read the headline, while only 2 out of 10 read the rest of the copy.

People will only read the description if your headline is persuasive and hooks them.

David Ogilvy said:

“When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Don’t rush through the headline.

Keep headlines simple, use a power word, and connect with your target audience emotionally.

Then move to the description.

Your description should further explain the headline and give a glimpse of what to expect from the lead magnet. Here is an example of a powerful headline and description:

Finally, list the benefits of grabbing the lead magnet. Highlight benefits and link them to pain points. Clearly tell your audience why they should fill out and submit the form now.

Ensure that the headline, description, and benefits are consistent, with no mismatches at any level.

4. Reduce Form Fields

The landing page form is crucial for conversion. Prospective customers need to fill out and submit the form in order to convert. Research has shown that the form fields can have a significant impact on conversion rates.

In fact, research shows conversion rate is highest when you use 3 form fields:

As the number of form fields increases, the conversion rate decreases. Nobody likes filling out forms.

Also, more form fields mean asking for more personal information of the potential customers, and people are reluctant to share too much personal information online.

To achieve higher conversion rates, it’s best to limit form fields to three and only collect information that you intend to use. Typically, asking for a person's first name, last name, and email address is sufficient.

Here are some best practices to follow when designing forms and form fields:

  • Keep form fields to a minimum
  • Switch to multi-step lead form as it increases conversions by 300%
  • Remove unnecessary form fields
  • Keep forms simple and make them easy to fill
  • Use form validation and predictive search
  • Enable browser autofill

5. Add Social Proof

Not all landing pages have social proof, but using it can increase the conversion rate and make your lead magnet more credible and trustworthy.

For instance, if you are offering a free trial of your services, consider adding social proof in the form of reviews or testimonials to your landing page. This can make decision-making easier for potential customers, as people tend to take word of mouth seriously.

Research shows that 88% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Additionally, testimonials can increase the conversion rate of sales pages by 34%.

Why not give your landing pages every chance to succeed?

Adding social proof on the landing page is a great way to improve conversion rate and make your lead magnet trustworthy.

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Create Professional Landing Pages with Subkit

Landing pages are important for every business and this is a reason Subkit lets you create your own landing page in minutes. You can create a professional, high-converting, responsive, and fully customizable landing page for your business free of cost.

You can create an email list and set up an autoresponder to engage with different audiences. This allows you to stay in touch with your subscribers and build a relationship with them. Additionally, if you have products, you can offer free trials to your target audience by creating personalized landing pages that showcase the benefits of your products.

Start your Subkit and create your first landing page in under 5 minutes. Engage your audience today! 🚀✨