If there’s just one thing you can do to improve your marketing ROI drastically, it would be to create more landing pages.
Landing pages are critical to growing your business online. They optimize the buying experience, turning visitors into leads and sales with specific information and an unparalleled focus on conversion.
It's simple: without landing pages on your site, you miss out on opportunities to turn more visitors into customers.
But how do you create a landing page?
In this article, we’ll give you a complete breakdown of how to create a landing page. We’ll also look at the main components of a landing page and how to increase conversions with A/B testing.
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What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a page that visitors “land on” which are optimized for a single conversion goal.
Landing pages are perhaps the most effective lead generation, and sales funnel optimization tool at your disposal.
Often associated with digital ad campaigns, landing pages are versatile tools used to more effectively turn visitors into paying customers.
The primary thing to remember is that landing pages are specifically designed with one goal in mind.
Landing pages are distinct from other pages of your site. They’re often designed with specific, conversion-oriented elements — like compelling headlines to pique curiosity and a form to collect signups or generate leads.
But it’s the singular focus that results in increased conversion rates for your business.
Here’s an example of Thrive Architect's landing page:
The Thrive Architect Landing Page
As you can see, this landing page includes a bold headline, a high color-contrast button, and a video to communicate the value of Thrive Architect dynamically and effectively.
But we'll get into the essential elements of a landing page below.
Let’s move on to why you should utilize landing pages in your marketing strategy.
Why Use a Landing Page?
Landing pages have one main purpose: To increase conversions.
They can be used to...
Each landing page needs to be designed with one goal and with as few distractions as possible.
Too many options on a landing page can overwhelm visitors. This is why sending traffic to a homepage is a major misstep. These pages are too general and are not targeted at a specific audience.
For instance, let’s take a look at Newegg’s homepage:
Newegg's homepage design
It’s a well-designed homepage.
But sending paid traffic here would be a bad idea.
Why?
Because it lacks a single clear call to action.
If a visitor is looking for a new graphics card for their PC and they click an ad, they would expect to see a list of relevant products. Sending them to this homepage would require them to click around the site until they find what they’re looking for.
Most will simply bounce rather than go through the additional effort.
A well-designed landing page matches the messaging of your ad campaigns and keeps visitors focused on a single conversion goal (buying a graphics card).
There’s another compelling reason to utilize landing pages:
70% of shoppers want more personalized shopping experiences.
Landing pages allow you to target specific segments within your audience and make your campaigns more relevant.
When you segment your audience, you can create landing pages that align with the specific interests of your market with targeted and relevant offers.
How To Create a Landing Page
44% of clicks that B2B companies generate are directed to their homepage. And of the B2B companies that are using landing pages, 62% have six or fewer.
The number one reason?
Most marketing departments don’t know how to create a landing page.
You could code one yourself with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). But it’s tedious, time-consuming, and the end result (unless you have both coding and design experience) wouldn't be all that great.
Another option is to hire a developer, but you can expect to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a custom page.
This is where landing page builders and templates come in handy. Thrive Architect WordPress page builder is a powerful WordPress plugin that you can use to quickly create quality landing pages without any coding.
Follow our step-by-step guide on how to create a landing page that drives leads and sales for your business:
Step 1: Choose a Landing Page Template Based on Your Goals
What are you trying to achieve? Do you want to increase sign-ups for your newsletter or do you want visitors to try a free demo?
Once you know exactly what you want your landing page to do, you can select a template that fits your goal.
Some of the most common landing page use-cases:
Get a quote landing page
A personal demo form from Cornerstone
A lead generation form on Thrive Themes
Free trial signup on Shopify
Now, you could build all these landing pages from scratch, technically, but what if you don’t have any design experience?
Not to worry.
Thrive Architect comes packed with over 300 (and counting!) optimized landing page templates you can use to generate more leads for your business.
Here’s a quick peek at some of the templates we have available:
No matter what your conversion goals are, you'll be able to find a great looking template from our landing page gallery and customize it for your needs.
The next step is to put it all together.
Step 2: Include the Essential Components of a Landing Page
Let’s break down each of the main components of a landing page:
#0: No external navigation
Before we can get into the essential components of a landing page, we have to start with what shouldn't be there.
And that's a bunch of links or buttons to the rest of your website.
Remember, your landing page is all about focusing a visitor's attention on the conversion goal (lead generation, free trial, demo booking, signup, etc.).
Think about it this way:
Have you ever been in the frozen section of the grocery aisle, staring at all the ice cream options?
It can take forever for you to decide which of these delicious-looking frozen treats is right for you.
You know you want ice cream, you're just not 100% sure which ice cream will satisfy.
If there were one ice cream, you'd probably just choose it and be done.
Landing page optimization is no different. Give your visitors a single option (conversion), and they'll be more likely to convert.
You'll notice that none of the landing page examples in this resource have a navbar or external links. They're optimized for the visitor to choose chocolate and move on with their day.
#1: A benefit-focused headline
Your headline’s job is to grab attention and get visitors to keep reading. It should clearly communicate your value proposition and convey a clear benefit.
Here’s an example of a headline that clearly communicates value from Freshbooks:
A good value proposition headline example
It's targeted (at small businesses) and describes precisely what the landing page visitor stands to get (an all-in-one invoicing and accounting solution). There's no fluff, just clarity, and value.
#2: A compelling subheadline
The purpose of the headline is to reel your visitor’s in.
The subheadline, then, provides your landing page visitors with additional benefits they can relate to. Be sure to use customer-centric copy like “you” to address your audience directly.
Here’s a good subheadline from Evernote:
Check out the subheadline on Evernote's landing page
#3: A high-quality, relevant image
Invest in professional images for your landing pages. If you need to use stock photos, check out Matt's post about how to use stock photos like a pro.
Use relevant images that provide additional context about your products or services.
Here’s an example from the "Dropbox for Business" landing page:
Additional images provide more information about a product or service
#4: A Clear Call to Action
A call to action is a prompt that tells visitors what action you want them to take.
Call to actions typically take the form of a button with a bit of copy (e.g. Sign up for a free trial).
As they're the focal point of the landing page (the conversion goal), they should stand out visually from all the other elements on the page.
Here’s an example of a call to action button that Basecamp uses on its landing pagetowel:
The call-to-action button pops out of Basecamp's homepage
Step 3: Creating a landing page with Thrive Architect
Thrive Architect allows you to fully customize each of the main components of a landing page with ease.
Here are some advanced features that the Thrive Architect WordPress landing page builder comes with:
- Instant drag and drop editing
- Flexible column layouts
- Eye-catching text and image combinations
- Total font customization
- Advanced hover effects
- Instant preview on different screen sizes
- Mobile responsive editing
- Dynamic animations and actions
That’s not all either.
With the following conversion-focused elements, you’ll be able to build credibility with your users and drive even more sales.
- Call-to-action buttons
- Built-in testimonials
- Styled lists
- Credit card icons
- Lead generation forms
- Content boxes
- Animated countdown timers
- The ability to hide content
- Pricing tables
- Contact forms
Guarantee/trust icons
Once your new landing pages go live, you’ll want to track them with Google Analytics to view key metrics like bounce rates and conversions.
If a landing page isn’t converting as well as you hoped, don’t throw in the towel just yet. There are ways to improve your landing pages, and get your conversions going.
Step 4: Optimize Your Landing Pages With A/B Testing
The average landing page conversion rate across industries is 2.35%. That means you can expect to generate 2 sales for every 100 visitors you send to a landing page.
That's not great, and you can do better.
How?
A/B testing.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing involves creating a new variation of your existing landing page. Either with testing software or Javascript, you split the existing traffic to your landing page between the original and the variation to determine which results in more conversions.
After measuring the results, you can see which variation performs better and start showing every visitor the winner.
A/B Testing explained (Source)
Here are some case studies showing the powerful effects of A/B testing.
A/B Testing Example #1: Long Form Landing Pages Increased Conversions by 30%
With shortening attention spans on the web, you would think that shorter landing pages would result in higher conversions.
But that’s not always the case.
Crazy Egg tested a long form landing page that was nearly 20 times longer than the control:
Crazy Egg's A/B test on short vs. long landing pages
The longer page explained in extensive detail what Crazy Egg is and what heat maps entail. It outperformed the control by 30%.
Does this mean your landing page should be this long?
No. In fact, shortening your page has also been shown to increase conversion rates by 13%.
That's why it's so incredibly important to test your pages. You never really know what's going to work until you do.
A/B Testing Example #2: Showing a Relevant Image Increased Sign-ups by 89%
Makelaarsand, a Dutch real estate agency, experimented with changing the image on its signup form.
They changed the picture from that of a smiling woman...
Changing just the image on a signup form is something you should A/B test
To one with a man holding a “sold” sticker over a “for sale” sign...
Marelaarsland changed not only the image but its size too
Changing the image to a desired result led to 89% more sign-ups. The A/B test shows that changing just one element on a landing page can have a major impact on conversions.
A/B Testing Example #3: Adding Social Proof Led to a 400% Increase in Conversions
Adding social proof to your pages can also increase conversions.
Voices.com increased conversion rates by 400% by communicating social proof with customer logos to their homepage.
If you’re not testing, you’re leaving money on the table.
With Thrive Optimize, you can build your landing page and easily create multiple variations to test.
Here’s an example of how the data looks after conducting an A/B test with two variations:
How an A/B test looks like in Thrive Optimize
Just a single change can drastically increase conversions.
But you won’t know unless you test.
To start driving more conversions, leads and sales with A/B testing, check out Thrive's easy-to-use A/B testing tool, Thrive Optimize.
Or you can sign up for our premium Thrive Membership and get full access to our entire suite of WordPress Plugins.
Here's what you get:
With these powerful tools, you’ll be able to build engaging websites and landing pages that bring in more conversions — all without writing a single line of code.
Build Your Landing Pages!
Landing pages are an indispensable marketing tool. They can be used to drive more product sales or even grow your mailing list.
Hopefully this guide on how to create a landing page has given you everything you need to start driving more leads and sales to your business.
They can be an extremely valuable marketing tool, but building multiple from scratch can be exhausting.
If you want to learn more about Thrive’s landing page templates, A/B testing tool, and how to add landing pages to your website, you can learn more at Thrive University.
Hello, Andrea
Thank you for sharing this useful information.
When it comes to landing pages and the overall user experience I have had as a Thrive Themes customer with all your tools, I would rate it as an A+. This has been a relation that started back in December of 2015. On the flip side of things, however, I would greatly appreciate a deeper integration of your tools with other big players in the business, such as with StudioPress, for instance.
I fully understand that the custom theme builder is coming soon and that the possibilities it offers in combination with Thrive Architect are enormous. Nevertheless, the fine tuning of plugins such as Thrive Comments and the Thrive Headline Optimizer would allow us to have a seamless experience when trying to utilize them in combination with a StudioPress theme. This would also allow for a better experience when using landing pages that are part of those WP themes. Hopefully this is something your developers can investigate.
Thank you so much for your time and attention to this matter. I also wish to make it clear that as a Thrive Themes customer I have had one of the greatest entrepreneurial journeys. The knowledge I have acquired from the whole TT team, is literally priceless and full of value.
Best regards.
Yes. Landing Pages creation on WordPress with Thrive Architect is very easy. Also, Thrive Architect helped me to create an awesome home page. I was not good at knowledge about A/B testing. After reading this post, I’ve understood. Thank, Andrea.
Great article! Thank you so much for laying it all out!
Excellent! Thanks!
Very very helpful article, so thank you for it 🙂
Along with so many other articles from TT, it has become a great school for me and my next steps. Really grateful for all the help you provide!
Thank you Andrea, building landing pages is what it is all about as an ecommerce website builder. I agree each page must have front and centre the consideration to 1 – convert or at the least 2 – build trust and engagement.
Previously I had these two point s the other way around and belived building engagement was “enough” – but it doesn’t actually pay the bills ????
So , yes, EVERY page is a landing page of some sort.