Last updated on February 18th, 2025 at 07:14 am
Landing pages are a critical part of growing your business online.
Unlike a blog, a website, or a social media channel, landing pages are designed with one specific goal in mind: to get users to take an action.
With a website, blog, or social media channel, visitors are free to click and roam wherever THEY want to go.
Landing pages, though, guide them directly to where YOU want them to go.
That could be requesting more information, purchasing your offer, booking an appointment, or any other number of outcomes but the one thing they all have in common is that they’re simple, straight to the point, and focused on one goal at a time.
In this guide, we’re going to go over the basics of high converting landing pages, how to build and design them, and how to use them more effectively in your online business.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a standalone page on your website or marketing funnel that is designed entirely around driving conversions.
These pages eliminate distractions and focus solely on what’s needed to entice your visitors to take an action — from purchasing a product, subscribing to your email list, requesting more information, booking an appointment, etc.
By creating landing pages instead of sending people to your website or blog, you’re maximizing the number of people that take action which directly reduces your marketing costs, making your business more profitable.
What is the Best Landing Page Builder?
There are a lot of landing page builders out there today.
But over here, we wrote about why we think ClickFunnels is the best. In fact, in the chart below, you can see a side-by-side comparison of all the features we offer here at ClickFunnels that most other websites and landing page builders don’t offer…
With ClickFunnels, you can build landing pages AND…
- Websites
- Membership stores
- Ecommerce stores
- Online courses
…and tons more.
All under a single subscription 🙂
Click below to try us out for free!
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Landing Page Types
If you want to create high-converting landing pages, you have a couple different options.
Text
Many marketers and entrepreneurs opt to keep things as simple as possible and use text-only landing pages to get their message in front of their audience.
There’s no fancy graphics. No video presentations. Just the barebones basics that tell people exactly where they’re at, why they should care, and what to do next.
That means text-based landing pages tend to load faster, require less time for your visitors to process the information on the page, and help them get to what they came for even faster.
If you want to spice up your text-only landing pages, you can include simple imagery that showcases your offer or social proof but, as a whole, this type of page tends to keep the focus on the copy instead of the flash.
Video
Video landing pages are becoming more popular as it becomes easier and easier to record high-quality video content and more people become familiar with doing it.
Video makes it easier for people to understand your offer or hear directly from others who have used your offer and had it benefit their lives in some way.
That means you get the benefits of increased visitor retention, increased trust, and for people who have a preference for video over text, a better connection with your audience.
Ultimately, though, the choice is one that bridges the gap between what your audience wants to see from you and what you want to (or are capable of) delivering to them.
Some audiences will prefer reading text, while others may prefer watching video. It’s up to you to figure out what they want and then make sure they get it.
Long or Short?
Using long landing pages vs short landing pages is another gap that you’ll need to bridge over and comes down to both what you’re offering and what people want to see from you.
For instance, if all you’re asking for is an email in exchange for a free gift, you probably do not need to write 5,000 words of copy to get that conversion.
On the other side of that example, though, if you’re selling a $10,000 offer that has a longer sales cycle, you may want to make sure you’re giving your offer enough credit and using landing pages that are long enough to cover all the benefits, questions, objections, etc.
But, as a general rule, shorter is always better.
That means if you’re selling a $10,000 offer and write 5,000 words of copy to help sell it, it’s worth going back over the copy and making sure it’s as short, simple, and straight to the point as possible.
Likewise, if all you’re asking for is an email, and you’ve written 500 words of copy, it’s worth taking a look at it to figure out whether or not you need all those extra words on the page.
Because, remember, the name of the game with landing pages is giving people a solution to a problem they’re having as quickly and as effortlessly as possible — for both them and you.
Landing Page Benefits
On top of giving you significantly higher conversion rates than a standard blog or website, there’s a few other benefits to using landing pages for your business.
Simplicity
If your goal is to get new subscribers to your email list or new customers for your offer, you want to keep things as simple as possible.
Landing pages help you do that by optimizing the customer journey and giving them a clear path from where they are right now to where they want to be.
They’re easy to deploy and test so you’re not having to mess around with bulky websites or blogs, constantly updating them, hoping you didn’t break something, and making sure traffic flows the way you want it to flow.
First Impression
When someone lands on your site, you have a small amount of time to make a good, lasting first impression. Since landing pages can be deployed fairly quickly, and designed to look great, you’re giving yourself the best chance at making a great first impression.
With them being entirely focused on one specific goal that your visitors have, it also makes it extremely easy to help ensure that goal is satisfied, which makes your visitors remember you as the person who can help them — instead of someone who made them click and scroll around a massive blog or clunky website to find the solutions they need.
Increased Conversions
It should go without saying, but it’s worth pointing out: landing pages convert at significantly higher rates than websites and blogs.
It’s far easier to capture an email or make a sale with a well-designed landing page than it is by sending people to click through your blog posts or find what they’re looking for on a website.
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Critical Landing Page Elements
To make your landing pages as effective as possible, there’s basic elements that you’ll want to include.
Callout
One of the first things your visitors are going to be looking for when they land on your page is whether or not they’re in the right place.
A callout helps quickly let them know who the page is for.
Here’s a great example of a callout used by Russell on Funnel Hacking Secrets:
You can see he spells out who the page is for and then goes into why. He’s specifically saying it’s for entrepreneurs, small business owners, online marketers, and marketing agencies.
Headline
Even though your callout is typically at the top of the page, people landing on the page are usually going to see your headline first. That makes it an absolutely critical part of your landing page.
And a good headline has a few qualities: it’s ultra-specific, it makes people curious, and it stops them in their tracks to get them to keep reading.
But, more importantly, it does all of this without being sleazy or scammy.
To do that, you want to keep it relevant to what they’re going to see on the page while focusing on the value they’re going to get from staying on the page.
A good headline can make or break your conversions so it’s worth spending a bit of time understanding what your visitors are looking for — and then explicitly telling them they’re going to get it if they stay on your page.
Here’s an example of a great headline from the Expert Secrets funnel:
Subheadline
Your subheadline is a bit different.
Think of your subheadline as an extension of your headline.
Since you’ll already have their attention by this point, you can use your subheadline to help build on the claims you made with your headline. Likewise, you can use it to help build more curiosity so they keep reading the rest of your copy.
To get started writing your subheadlines, you’ll want to think about the “big domino”.
You can read more about it by clicking here.
Once you’ve identified the big domino you can tip over to start the chain reaction, it becomes significantly easier to write subheadlines for your landing pages.
Keep in mind, too, that your callout, headline, and subheadline are some of the first things you will split test once you’re driving enough traffic to begin optimizing conversion rates.
This is an excellent example of a benefit-building subheadline from the Secrets Trilogy funnel:
The subheadline helps add an extra benefit to the headline — by offering an additional workbook for free when they purchase the Expert Secrets trilogy.
Bridge
Where are your visitors right now? Where do they want to be?
Inside of those two questions is a gap that you’re going to need to create a bridge for.
You want to show them that you understand what they’re wanting right now along with what they expect to happen after they get it.
To give you an example, let’s say they want to lose weight.
Right now, they may be frustrated with how they look in family photos and they want an offer that will help them lose weight so they can regain their confidence.
Using your copy to bridge the gap between where they’re at right now and where they want to be will help you instill that you understand them and make it easier to keep their attention.
Here’s a perfect example of a bridge from the Own Your Future Challenge funnel:
Offer
A lot of marketers and entrepreneurs believe that the offer is what you’re going to be giving people when they take the action you want them to take.
But that isn’t actually the case.
Instead, your offer is the transformation they’re going to experience or the solutions to problems you’ll help them solve.
Even though what you’re giving them does contain a specific set of deliverables, like a physical product, a series of eBooks, a video course, or maybe an audiobook, what they’re actually buying is getting from where they are right now to where they want to go.
Your offer helps complete the bridge that you built over the gap between those two places.
Check out the offer stack from the Copywriting Secrets funnel:
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Bullets
Bullet points are how you turn features into benefits and benefits into curiosity.
The features, like we just mentioned, are the things your visitors are going to get when they take you up on your offer. Things like eBooks, audiobooks, videos, the physical product, etc.
Benefits are why those features actually matter to the people who are getting them.
To give you an example, let’s assume you’re selling a weight loss program. The features in it could be a 21-day meal planning PDF, a 21-day video exercise routine, and a live coaching session with an online trainer.
Each of those is amazing, right?
The benefits of those, though, are: being able to cook healthy, great-tasting food in less time, knowing exactly which workout to do what day, and having the confidence that comes from a live trainer telling you that you’re doing the right things.
When you’re writing bullet points, you want to keep them short, simple, and to the point, but you also want to make sure they bridge the gap between your features and the benefits those features bring to the table.
Here’s a great set of bullet points from the Funnel Scripts landing page:
Social Proof
One of the easiest ways to increase conversion rates on your landing pages is to inject social proof and testimonials in the right place, at the right time.
It’s how you help complete strangers (visitors to your page) know they can trust your brand because other people just like them trust you.
Many times, it can be the difference between someone leaving the page and someone deciding that now is the time to take action.
But don’t just dump a bunch of testimonials onto your page and hope for the best.
Make sure it helps move the conversation forward instead of just injecting it all onto the page as an afterthought, hoping people read through it and that it helps make a buying decision.
Here’s a great guide that breaks down how to use social proof in your sales funnel.
Then, here’s a solid example of using social proof from the Copywriting Secrets funnel:
CTA
Don’t assume that your people know what to do when they land on your page. Especially if you’ve captured and kept their attention to get them reading to the end of the page.
Instead, make sure you spell out very specifically how to take the next steps and what to expect once they take the step you’re telling them to take.
This can be as basic as telling them to “click here” or something more advanced that includes a feature and a benefit like “click here to download your free 21-day meal planning guide to do healthy meal prepping in less than 20 minutes per day.”
Check out this example from List Building Secrets:
It specifically tells people to start watching the videos now.
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4 Steps to Create High Converting Landing Pages
To help create your landing pages as efficiently as possible, there’s a specific order of operations you’ll want to work through.
Step #1: – Research
Nothing can move forward until you know your audience, what they want, why they want it, and how you can give it to them.
Spend some time mapping out their customer journey — where they are right now, the roadblocks standing in their way, where they want to go, objections they’ll have around making the transition, and how you can help them pull it all together.
When you understand your customer on a deeper level, it becomes so much easier to build landing pages that specifically target that customer and get them to take action.
In terms of market research, half the time you spend building your funnel will be spent understanding your audience, why they want what you have, and the best ways to show them you can truly help them.
The other half will be spent on design, copywriting, and optimizing conversion rates.
Step #2: – Copywriting
The copy you write is going to do the heavy lifting in the conversion process.
And, if you’ve done enough research on your audience, it should be significantly easier for you to write high-converting copy.
Your copy is something that’s going to evolve over time, though. As you get more subscribers and customers you’ll also get more feedback.
You’ll notice, too, that it’s the second step in the process, with design being the third.
In an ideal world, you’ll design your landing pages AROUND your copy, instead of writing your copy to fit into the design you’ve already chosen.
When you design around your copy, you’ll have an easier time making sure the page flows from top to bottom than you will try to write copy to fit into a design you’ve already made.
If you struggle writing copy, click here to check out Funnel Scripts.
Step #3: – Design
Design is something that can part the waters. One camp will tell you it doesn’t matter at all and ugly landing pages are the best landing pages. While another camp will tell you that design can make or break a good landing page.
What I’ll tell you is that, while design is important, what’s more important is making sure your design makes it easy to read the copy you want people to read and look at the visuals you want people to look at.
It can be as simple as black text on a white background with no images. Or as advanced as a full video background, copy, high-level graphics design, and capable of winning awards.
But, what ultimately matters here, is that your design appeals to the people who are going to be landing on the page. If they prefer simple, give them simple. If they prefer elegant, visual, and visceral, give them elegant, visual, and visceral.
Step #4: – Conversion Rates
After you’ve collected enough data from the traffic you’re sending to the landing page, it’s time to start optimizing it based on the feedback you’ve received.
Split testing your landing pages against different versions will help you increase your profitability by driving more customers with the same amount of traffic.
There are two ways to do it, too.
The first is the slow and methodical method, where you’re split testing one element on the page at a time. This could be testing one headline against another and going with the winner.
The second way is based on testing your current page against a completely different angle, headline, subheadline, offer stack, bullet points, etc.
Both are incredibly effective strategies.
The goal, though, is to take the feedback you’ve received from subscribers and customers and use it to adjust the copy that is on the page so you’re converting a higher percentage of visitors into taking the action you want them to take.
This is a great guide that goes deeper on how to increase your conversion rates.
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11 Quick Tips for Building Landing Pages
To help make your landing pages even more effective, and convert even higher, here are some basic tips you can implement as you’re designing and building them.
Tip #1 Match Your Message to Your Ads
This is a big one.
When you’re driving traffic to a landing page, you really only get one shot at the conversion.
You can retarget visitors to your pages with retargeting ads but to make sure your conversions are as high as possible you want to make sure the ads you use to drive that traffic match the message you’re using on the page.
You want to make sure the ad you’re using to attract visitors actually matches the message you’re using on the landing page, though.
To give you an example, if you’re writing an ad for people who want to make money online but you send them to a product like ClickFunnels, they’re going to be really, really confused.
Even though ClickFunnels can help them make money online, sending them to a landing page that shows them how to make money online with ClickFunnels would be far more effective.
Tip #2 Work Above the Fold
“Above the fold” comes from the days of newspapers where the best real estate in the paper was found above the first fold in the paper itself.
It’s what people see when they look inside the newspaper stand and start glancing over the headlines to see if they want to buy the paper, or not.
In terms of landing pages, it means all the digital real estate that’s above the place on your page where people have to start scrolling.
This is extremely valuable real estate that you want to make the most use of.
That means keeping your headline, subheadline, bullet points, and call to action front and center without people having to scroll is critical to keeping your conversion rates high.
Don’t try stuffing a bunch of extra stuff above the fold but, instead, make sure it includes only what’s necessary to let people know they’re in the right place and how to take action.
Tip #3 Direct Their Eyes
It’s going to be pretty rare that you’re able to get everything you need above the fold.
That means people will typically have to start scrolling down the page in order to see everything else you want them to see.
As they’re scrolling, though, you want to make sure you’re directing their eyes where you want them to go.
You can do this with something as simple as bright red arrows pointing at what you want them to look at.
Or you can get as advanced as using heat mapping and tracking services to tell you exactly where people are looking and clicking on your landing pages.
When you’re just getting started, you may not necessarily have the budget available for those services, so the best thing you can do is make sure that what you want people looking at is standing out on the page.
Using contrasting colors, arrows pointing to important parts, circles around things you want them to look at, or even flashing images are all great for directing their eyes on your page.
Tip #4 Show Your Offer in Action
If you want a visitor to take action, you also want them to take ownership.
Part of getting them to take ownership is showing your offer in action.
For physical products, that’s easy enough. Showcase the product in all its use cases and tell people how they’re going to benefit from it.
For digital products or services, though, things are a bit different.
To show your offer in action, you can use something like Funnel Images that helps you turn your digital products into physical-looking products.
As an example, you can grab a video screenshot from your offer and overlay it onto an image of a monitor, tablet, or phone, then use that image on your landing pages so your visitors can get an idea of what to expect when they take you up on the offer.
The key here is to avoid relying only on text to help showcase your offer.
Tip #5 Eliminate Distractions
This is especially true if you’re paying for traffic from Facebook, YouTube, etc.
A good, high-converting landing page is going to make sure its sole focus is on the one action you want people to take when they land on it.
Any action that could take visitors off the page, like links to other websites or navigation links to other pages on your website will keep them from taking the action you want them to take.
That means you’ll want to resist the urge to give them an opportunity to check out everything else you’re doing and, instead, do everything you can to keep visitors on your landing page.
That means no extra calls to action for different offers. No links for them to check out your blog. No links taking them back to your homepage.
The only actions on your landing page should be to take you up on the offer or close the page altogether if you want it to convert at a higher rate.
Tip #6 Include Social Proof
Social proof can often help entice people who are on the fence to jump in and buy your offer.
There’s a caveat, though: you do not want to use fake social proof.
Don’t start doctoring up screenshots, faking testimonials, or getting people who have never used/seen your offer to start recording testimonial videos for you.
Today’s audiences are smart enough to see through that stuff.
Instead, make sure your testimonials and social proof are from real people who can be found online because a lot of people will search for them especially if it’s a high ticket offer.
And if you don’t already have social proof, consider giving out free or discounted copies of your offer to help start building your testimonial vault.
The goal, though, is to make sure your visitors can see that other people have used and have benefitted from using the offer you’re convincing them they need.
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Tip #7 Use Clear, Simple Copy
Less is more when it comes to the copy you use to entice people to take you up on an offer.
In the case of your landing pages, some will require more copy than others but, as a general rule, you want to keep it as simple as possible.
For instance, if you’re giving them a free offer, and all you need is an email in exchange, you don’t need 2,500 words of copy to help make that conversion.
All you actually need is usually 50 to 100 words that include a headline, subheadline, bullet points, and a call to action.
Check out this landing page from Traffic Secrets Masterclass.
It’s less than 50 words total and converts incredibly well. It works because Russell is only asking for an email and giving something extremely valuable in exchange for it.
If you want to help keep your copy short, simple, and to the point, check out Funnel Scripts.
Tip #8 Make it Load Fast
We live in the age of fast internet and nothing makes that more apparent than the frustration we feel when a website takes too long to load.
If your page takes more than 3 seconds to load, chances are you’re going to have a significant portion of your visitors closing the page before they ever get a chance to view it.
And if you’re spending money on paid advertising to drive traffic to that landing page, you’re going to be losing all those advertising dollars AND all those potential customers, too.
That means you’ll want to keep your page light so it loads quickly and doesn’t leave people looking for the close button because they’re waiting forever for it to load.
Avoid using unnecessary elements that can slow down your page load speed then use a tool to check your page load speed to ensure it’s loading in under 2 seconds if you want to keep your conversion rates high and avoid wasting your marketing dollars.
Tip #9 Design for the Devices They’re On
One of the best aspects of landing pages is that they’re quick to design and deploy.
But there’s also a downside: a landing page that was designed for mobile devices isn’t going to function the same for people viewing it on a desktop computer, or a tablet, for example.
With software like ClickFunnels, it’s easy to solve this problem. You can see what the landing page looks like on each type of device before you publish it.
Without designing for each device, though, you’ll be serving your mobile visitors a desktop version of the page, forcing them to zoom in, limiting their interactivity, and typically slowing down their page load speeds.
Each of these is bad for conversion rates.
Rather than forcing your mobile or tablet visitors to deal with those headaches, spend time making sure the page functions as well on mobile devices as it does on desktop devices.
Tip #10 Test Your Pages
Just because your page converts once you start driving traffic to it doesn’t mean that’s the end of the road and you can move on to other projects.
As you begin getting subscribers, new customers buying the offer, and feedback from customers after they’ve taken you up on the offer, you’ll want to go back into your copy and start testing new hooks, headlines, subheadlines, call to action, etc.
Rather than relying on gut instincts to determine if the updated landing page is going to convert at a higher rate, you’ll want to use software to track the changes, automate the split tests, and show you the proven winner.
Building your pages on ClickFunnels makes this easy with A/B split testing. If you’re not using ClickFunnels, you’ll want to make sure the software you are using gives you this ability to ensure you’re able to lower your marketing costs and increase your conversions.
Tip #11 Consider Templates
Unless you’re a graphic designer, web developer, marketer, funnel builder, product creator, and all-around entrepreneur with years of experience, you may want to consider using templates to help get your landing pages built faster.
This is especially true if you’re a beginner or starting & operating your business with limited time or resources available.
Templates from the ClickFunnels marketplace have already been proven to convert, look great, and give you the ability to plug in your copy, images, videos, social proof, and make minor tweaks so they work with your offer.
Using templates can save you a ton of time, money, frustration, and guesswork so you’re able to launch your offers fast and with less headache.
That gives you more time to focus on making sure your offer is top-notch, that your customers are served at the highest level possible, and that you’re not sitting in front of a computer for 12 hours a day learning how to pull all this stuff together.
It’s highly recommended to save time where you can — and let the experts do what they do best, especially when it comes to design and web development. Templates solve all of those problems for you.
Final Thoughts
Creating high converting landing pages is an incredibly effective way to grow your business.
As you’ve seen in this guide, though, the rules aren’t necessarily carved into stone.
There are best practices you can follow and tips you can use to ensure your landing pages look good, load fast, and get the conversion you’re looking for but, at the end of the day, your business, your audience, your offer, and your goals are all yours.
You can take what we’ve given you here and adapt it to what you need. The main goal, though, is to get your landing pages built, start driving traffic, and get to the point you can start serving the people you want to serve.
That’s the foundation of every great business. High converting landing pages just help you get to that goal even faster than you would if you relied on a website, or blog, by itself.