A landing page is a stand alone web page, that's reached, after a click, either from an email, ad or other online marketing resources. They're a crucial part of online marketing and they're designed to encouraged users to take a specific action. One of the most popular types of landing pages is the B2B lead generation landing page, whose purpose is to capture leads and contact information. They're not a part of a website's established navigation and are used for specific marketing campaigns.
A critical tool for promoting your brand, landing pages have enormous power in driving conversions. By using a landing page builder to design and customize your landing pages, you can precisely target your audience and guide them through the sales funnel.
Online marketing can be a business owner’s best friend. When you take your business online, you'll need a powerful digital marketing strategy that captures your brand message perfectly and promotes it across several channels. That's why we're taking a closer look at one of the most effective tools for doing just that—the landing page.
In this article, we’ll discuss the definition of a landing page, explain how to create a landing page and offer some best practices for designing your own.
Ready to create a landing page? Get started with Wix today.
What is a landing page?
A landing page is the destination for people interested in learning more about your business after seeing your online marketing or advertising campaign. Not to be confused with a splash page or a microsite, a landing page is a standalone webpage that entices users to click on a strategic call-to-action (CTA), such as “Get Started,” “Subscribe,” or “Buy Now.” They have a clear and focused call-to-action, minimal distractions, and tailored content that matches the visitor's intent and interest. Landing pages focus on a single goal, typically conversion or lead generation. This precision makes them highly effective and lowers the costs of acquiring leads and making sales.
Landing pages go by several different names including, lead capture pages, single property pages, lead gen pages or destination pages.
The concept of landing pages date back to the early days of direct response marketing campaigns, where marketers drove targeted traffic to specific pages to maximize conversion. Since then, landing pages have evolved from traditional print ads to digital marketing campaigns, and now businesses use them all across their digital marketing channels.
Landing pages vs. websites
To fully understand what a landing page is, you need to know the difference between landing pages vs. websites. The main distinction between a website's homepage and a landing page is that a landing page is specific and a homepage is multifaceted. A homepage's content introduces, whereas a landing page provides information tailored to its desired aim.
As we’ve mentioned, a landing page only has one goal; homepages, on the other hand, have various goals. For that reason, a homepage typically contains a variety of links. Landing pages typically only provide one link to keep visitors focused on the primary CTA. Therefore, landing pages only provide visitors with two options: to convert or exit the page.
Other main differences between a landing page and website page include:
Navigation: landing pages tend to have none on purpose. This is because they're designed to encourage users to take a specific action - often to provide their contact information or make a purchase. By contract, webpages are designed to navigate users to other parts of the site easily and efficiently.
Traffic: website users may come from multiple sources, including search engines, social media and ads. Traffic to a landing page comes from specific, planned sources - an email marketing campaign, or paid search ads, as just two main examples.
To give you a better sense of the difference between the two, we've provided an example template of each below:
Homepage template
Landing page template
Types of landing pages
When considering which landing page type suits your business, think about your goals. Do you want to gather contact information for leads? Are you offering a unique sale? Do you want to collect RSVPs for an event? Focusing directly on this goal will help you build a precise and highly targeted page. Let’s discuss the most common types of landing pages:
Long-form landing page
As the name suggests, a long-form landing page is the longest type of landing page. It features a significant amount of content, including extensive information about a product or service and imagery that emphasizes the value the product or service can provide. Because of that, long-form sales pages can be attractive for search optimization purposes.
Product landing page
If you have a product that you want to spotlight, consider creating a product landing page. You can use it to delve into the product's functionality, features and benefits.
Use this product landing page template to get started.
Event landing page
If hosting an event, create an event landing page to make promoting your event so much easier. It offers a convenient way for interested people to learn more, RSVP or purchase tickets.
Start with this event landing page template.
Lead-generation landing page
Also called a “lead-gen” or a “lead-capture” page, a lead-generation landing page generates leads by collecting information about your audience. It typically includes a form where visitors can submit their contact information. Lead-gen landing pages can help you gain insight into your potential customers as well as how to reach them. To encourage users to enter their details, offer an incentive such as a coupon code, e-book, webinar or exclusive newsletter content. Squeeze pages are another type of this kind of landing page.
Create with this lead generation landing page template.
Unsubscribe landing page
An unsubscribe landing page gives you one last chance to keep customers who signed up for your email marketing in the marketing funnel. You can offer incentives to make their subscription more appealing, over the option to change the frequency of emails or remind them what they will lose if they decide to unsubscribe.
Coming soon landing page
A coming soon landing page can help stir up enthusiasm for your upcoming business. Consider posting your planned launch date and creating a “notify me” form so that they will know when the site officially goes live.
Try this coming soon landing page template.
Thank-you landing page
Because thank-you landing pages appear once a customer has performed an action—such as making a purchase or sharing their contact information—they can effectively nurture leads and retain customers. “You can use a thank-you landing page to create an additional funnel by offering them another incentive,” said Jane Musatova, a Wix product marketing manager with loads of landing page experience.
Click-through landing page
This type of landing page typically has a CTA that sends visitors directly into the checkout flow, nudging them to buy or subscribe. eCommerce or SaaS sites focused on making immediate sales commonly use click-through landing pages.
On top of this landing pages can also be designed as dynamic landing pages or static depending on whether the content stays the same or changes based on the user.
What is the purpose of landing pages?
Landing pages offer enormous growth potential for your company and can help your business continue to flourish. Incorporate landing pages into your marketing strategies for the following benefits:
01. They dramatically improve your conversion rate
As mentioned earlier, landing pages focus on a single goal and compel your visitors to take action. In doing so, they move people further down the marketing funnel—from anonymous visitors to leads and finally to paying customers.
02. They tell you about your audience
If you include a signup form on your landing page, you can ask for information about your audience’s demographics to gain a better understanding of your target market. On top of that, the channels that work—or don’t—for your landing page promotion say a lot about your prospective customers' interests and habits. You can use this information to holistically optimize your targeting efforts and marketing strategy.
03. They increase brand awareness
An attractive, well-designed landing page conveys your brand's professionalism, value and appeal. Not only can landing pages convert leads in the moment, but they help bolster your brand simply by getting the word out. The more people that know about you, the better off your business.
04. They are measurable
By analyzing landing page metrics such as conversions, bounce rate, page views and traffic source, you can get a sense of how a particular marketing campaign perform. Take a look at where the traffic comes from—for instance, a paid post or an email marketing campaign—to determine which marketing assets prove most effective.
What is the anatomy of a landing page?
Let’s go over the basic elements of landing page design so that you’ll know exactly what to include:
Visuals
You have less than 20 seconds to convince your audience to stick around long enough to learn anything from your landing page. Design is your greatest tool for doing so. Images or videos add context and make the page more engaging.
Headlines
Because customers typically skim through landing pages, they may only read the headlines before decide whether to respond to your CTA. For that reason, make your headlines direct, enticing and brief. A strong and clear headline instantly grabs the user's attention and communicates the value proposition. This will be the most challenging part of building your landing page, because you have to convince them in three to seven words that your offering provides value.
Description
Make sure to include a concise and clear description that explains the product or service and how it benefits the user.
Calls-to-action aka CTAs
Calls-to-actions (CTAs), which are the prompts you’ll use to encourage readers to take a specific action, are typically two to four words long. “Subscribe Now,” “Start Your Free Trial,” “Learn More” and “Request a Demo” are a few good examples.
Summary of benefits
The summary of benefits should be your landing page's most detailed section. Here, you can provide more information to interested readers who want to learn more. Remember to keep the summary simple. Rather than getting into the nitty gritty, use the space to emphasize the specific benefits they will get from hitting the CTA button.
Social proof
Don’t expect readers to take your word for it. Include testimonials, reviews and awards on your landing page to prove to readers that your claims are valid and customers actually benefit from the touted features.
Closing statement
The readers who make it to the bottom of your page likely want your offering, so the closing statement should give them the final push to hit that CTA button. It doesn’t have to be extensive—you can wrap everything up with a strong headline and CTA.
For more insight, check out the full article: The Anatomy of a Landing Page
Landing page best practices
As you develop your campaign, keep in mind these landing page best practices to create the most effective one for your business.
01. Perform A/B testing
Landing pages allow for experimentation, which can lead to better user experiences and higher conversion rates. With A/B testing, you can test headlines, formats, designs and CTAs to see what performs best. For example, you could use an A/B test to determine whether your CTA button should say “Buy Now” or “Get Started,” based on which has the higher conversion rate. Musatova recommends using Google Optimize or Hotjar for your A/B testing.
02. Minimize navigation
To create a straight path from your landing page to the desired action, remove as many links as possible. You can even remove the navigation bar. Ideally, your CTA button will be the only link—any others that need to be on the page should take up as little real estate as possible.
03. Maximize readability
Long chunks of text can bore, overwhelm and distract your visitors. On the other hand, making your text short, sweet and skimmable will grab hold of your audience’s attention right away. Every word should serve a very specific purpose and bring their eyes directly to the CTA. Don't get too creative with your content here—save that for your blog.
Looking to learn how to create a blog? Wix has got your covered with thousands of design features, built-in SEO and marketing tools, that will allow you to scale your content, your brand and your business with their blog maker.
04. Maintain consistency
“What is most important in creating landing pages is consistency in messaging and design,” said Musatova. To prevent any confusion while moving from point A to point B, make sure your marketing asset's content matches that of your landing page. For example, the SEO headline for the landing page should match the one that appears above the fold. Additionally, your landing page's branding and formatting should coordinate with your site’s homepage. This will allow your audience to move seamlessly through your marketing funnel with ease and minimal distraction.
05. Make your CTA prominent
Your landing page should include a CTA that stands out. To achieve this, use clear and direct language and a CTA button that contrasts visually from the background. Place the CTA button multiple times across the landing page so that visitors don’t need to hunt for it.
06. Target specific markets
An effective landing page targets potential customers in a specific stage of the marketing funnel. You’ll want the page's content to keep with your audience's intent. Once you’ve segmented leads, you can even create a few versions of the same landing page to better target different groups of potential customers.
07. Simplify actions
The more you simplify the action you’re expecting readers to take, the more likely they will do so. For example, Musatova recommends limiting forms to only the most essential information. “You don’t want to scare people away with long, time-consuming forms,” she explained. “People also get a bit concerned about sharing information.” You might even consider only asking for email addresses and finding out more information later.
08. Focus on the consumer
Your landing page's content should focus on the reader rather than your company. Instead of talking about how great your business is and all of its achievements, focus on the ways your offer can benefit the customer.
09. Place important content above the fold
Don’t depend on visitors to scroll to convert. Place at least one CTA button above the fold where it’s immediately visible. Place other key elements of your landing page, such as the image and headline, above the fold as well.
10. Make it mobile-friendly
Make sure your landing page not only looks great on any device, but that it also loads quickly. A good portion of your traffic will come from mobile browsing, and these visitors will be less likely to convert if the page looks clunky on their smaller screen or if it loads too slow.
11. Use landing page templates
Most of the best landing page builders will offer thoughtful landing page templates to speed up the creation process. Professional designers and marketing experts built these templates, so they’re destined to drive conversions and make sales. You can also fully customize each one to best fit your branding. You can even use the opportunity to design two different pages and see which one performs better amongst your audience.
How to get traffic to your landing pages
Now for the fun part—bringing visitors to your landing page so they can convert. The biggest challenge businesses face with landing pages is creating an effective strategy for attracting traffic to the landing page itself. Utilizing other digital marketing practices can help to increase traffic to landing pages. Try these four avenues to grow traffic:
01. Social media
As one of the most prominent platforms for engaging with your target audience, start promoting your landing page on social media. Whether it’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Pinterest, create a compelling post with a link to your landing page. That way, you’ll target people already interested in your brand and bring in quality traffic.
Pro tip: You can also use a link in bio tool such as Hopp by Wix to direct your community towards specific social channels and simplify content sharing.
02. Email marketing
Email marketing remains one of the most effective methods for attracting traffic to your landing page. If you nail the email subject line, visuals, layout and copywriting, your landing page will get a noticeable boost of incoming visits.
03. SEO
Optimizing your landing pages for Google search rankings ensures that the right people will be able to find it. To start, do some research into which keyword SERPs best fit your landing page using SEO tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Once you decide on the primary keyword you want the page to rank for, work it into the copy whenever possible, as well as your SEO title and description.
Using Wix to create a website means that you can customize your on-page SEO, including meta tags, URL slugs, canonical tags and other page elements. Headers, for example, improve readability for the user, but also contribute to the HTML language that Google reads to determine website ranking. When Google scans website content, it uses headers to help analyze a website or web page's information. Headers are arranged in a hierarchy from H1 to H6, with H1 as the page title.
Keep in mind that SEO isn’t a quick-and-dirty strategy that produces immediate effort—it requires sustained attention. The effort pays off because a landing page can maintain SEO authority it has accumulated over time.
04. Paid ads
Social media marketing, email marketing and SEO are free ways to draw traffic to your landing page. However, if you think you could use an additional boost, consider promoting your landing page via paid ads. By targeting people based on their interests and demographics, you prompt them with the landing page designated for their specific niche.
Search results ads: Based on keywords that you define, search results ads show up on search engines when people include those terms in their queries.
Social media ads: When you create paid social media posts, social networks like Facebook and Instagram promote them to people who match the profile of your target audience.
Display ads: Another option is to use third-party advertising tools to place banner ads on the websites your audience frequents.
Based on your campaign goals, you may choose to diversify your advertising efforts or focus on just one of these platforms. Whichever you decide, consistently monitor your results so that you can adapt your campaign accordingly.
Landing page examples
To better understand how to implement these strategies, take a look at these landing page examples. (Also, test drive some of the best AI landing page builders today.)
01. SurveyMonkey
As a global leader in polling and survey software, SurveyMonkey has designed a landing page that presents two options to their audience upon landing on their page: Go Premium and Sign Up For Free. A brief line accompanies the CTA, describing the product: Voting and polling features to help you capture opinions and get your results in no time.
An abundance of white space throughout helps readers follow the content without distraction. As you continue to scroll, you’ll see that SurveyMonkey provides only essential information, including pricing for their three most popular plans and a contact form to receive a demo. The form requires very minimal information, including name, business email address, job title and company name.
02. Tipalti
Tipalti is a B2B financial company that has designed a landing page to help them gather new leads. Visitors are immediately greeted with a form to collect contact information along with a large yellow button containing the main CTA, Get a free demo.
The company maintains their branding elements, including colors, font and logo, throughout the page to remain consistent with their marketing efforts. As you scroll below the fold, you can see they highlight facts as to why you should choose their service, including testimonials with customer photos. You’ll also see CTA buttons presented several times, providing visitors multiple opportunities to schedule a demo.
03. Miro
Miro is an online collaboration tool that allows teams to create visual boards to plan projects and tasks. Upon entering this landing page, a video displaying the tool’s capabilities greets you. Without clicking play, the video shows a preview of how the project boards function. This immediately engages the viewer.
The CTA, "Get Started," is located to the left, surrounded by an abundance of blank space which forces your attention to these two places. Toward the bottom, you’ll notice that the site features some of Miro’s biggest clients and displays the main benefits of using the product. This simple, yet captivating design is an excellent example of a landing page done right.
04. Upwork
Upwork is a leading freelancer platform that markets both to freelancers as well as businesses who want to hire them. This particular landing page targets businesses looking to hire freelancers for independent work. Get Started, the primary CTA, is located twice above the fold, making it easy for leads to click and convert.
Its brand colors, green and white, adorn the page along with a list of leading clients, benefits of hiring through Upwork and a user testimonial at the bottom. The strip at the top of the page features an image of one of Upwork’s top rated freelancers, which helps establish a more personal connection to the business.
How to create a landing page in 7 easy steps
Looking to build a landing page of your own? Follow these steps to get started:
Determine your goals for any landing page you want to create. Landing pages, by definition, are designed to encourage users to convert — whether it's a sale, a signup or to provide lead gen information. The goal you decide on will determine what type of landing page you choose and your CTAs, so make sure to be clear on these from the start.
Use a landing page builder, like Wix, to create your page efficiently and without any technical constraints.
Plan and write great copy. It should be high quality and written to encourage your landing page visitors to take a required action. If writing compelling copy isn't your thing, you might want to consider hiring a copywriter to help you. You can also use an AI writing assistant to really save time, just make sure to edit it well.
Use images and visuals to improve the design and appeal of your landing page. Many landing page builders include banks of images you can use on your page. Make sure they reflect, as well as possible, your brand and message.
Headlines are crucial on a landing page, they are what makes users stay on your page and move around it. Don't let them go to waste. They should be intentional and clear.
If you have it, use social proof on your landing page — either testimonials or reviews from current or past clients and customers. These are good for building trust with potential customers.
Call-to-actions, CTA's are one of the most important parts of your landing page. So choose and position them well. You can also use forms on your page to generate leads.
What is a landing page FAQ
What are the components of a landing page?
The essential components of a successful landing page include a clear headline, a concise description, a prominent CTA, engaging visuals and trust symbols boasting social proof.