8 Seconds for a Landing Page: A Guide to Landing Pages That Actually Work

Two rules

I used to think landing pages were very hard. When I was assigned “make a landing page,” I trembled and had no idea what to do. Now I laugh at it. There is nothing simpler. You only need two rules:

• make it clear to the user;
• raise its conversion.

Let us take them in order.

IPart I: make the landing page clear

A landing page is made for the user. If what you offer is not clear to the user, no lead magnets, pop-ups or chatbots will make the page work. To put it more sharply: the page must contain an offer (one), and the user must understand it (two).

Before you start, ask yourself “why,” “who” and “what”:

• Why are you creating this landing page?
• Whom do you want to see on it?
• What steps must a visitor take to fulfil your goal (the CTA)?

Then the logic is simple: define the consumer, understand the need, show how you solve it.

1. Define the consumer

To understand potential customers, first study the market they form:

• Demand analysis: sales data, reviews and comments, with tools such as Google Analytics or Yandex.Metrica.
• Market segmentation: age, gender, income, location, interests and more.
• Behavioral factors: habits, preferences and purchase motives. For example, you may learn that most of your customers prefer online shopping and choose goods with free delivery.

2. Understand the consumer’s need

It is not always obvious. The user may lack something and realize they want it. Then you can solve a pain (offer a loan to someone who has no money right now) or give a benefit (offer theaters an online payment system so they do not keep their own cashiers and handle ticket returns).

Or the user may have no need at all (their need for clothes is closed, but you can still offer a beautiful piece). Then you can fulfil a wish they did not know they had (knowledge of marketing that will always be at hand) or deliver joy (a mobile game to take their mind off things).

Pain ≠ benefit ≠ wish ≠ joy. But whatever you call it, it all hides under the word “need,” and the need is what you must solve.

Use the wording from customer development interviews directly and exaggerate it with this pattern: the problem, the aggravation of the problem, the unexpected solution.

3. Show how you solve the need

In other words, the answer to “what do I write?” Below you will see so many landing page examples that you will understand at once: you can write anything. What matters is showing the solution to the need. Several ways:

1. Name the problem and show the solution. Bring statistics, research, facts and arguments to convince the customer the problem exists, then show the solution. You simply lead the user by the hand through a logical chain. Gardner tested a headline until he found the exact benefit of his product: “85% of possible buyers buy from the company that calls them back faster than the rest.”
2. Do not name the problem, but show the solution. The best ways are video, interactivity or an image that shows the benefit. Video suits people who do not like to read, or when you need to offer several solutions on one page; SEMrush does this on its landing pages. If you use video, say why it is worth watching. If you use images, the higher the image, the faster it must read.
3. Show the benefit. Data and statistics are powerful tools of persuasion. Show how effective, fast or profitable your product is. On the Yandex Practicum course page, for instance, you are immediately offered data showing demand for the profession.
4. Say why you are better. If competition is so strong that consumers know you and all your competitors, simply show why you are better. If you run a special offer (free delivery, say), show it to the user throughout the whole process.
5. Use bullets. If you expect the user to grasp the benefits at once, use bullets. To check that a bullet is strong, mentally add “and not” at the end of it. If “and not” can convince you, the bullet has the right to exist.
6. Show the product from inside. Show what awaits people after they buy. At SkillFactory we once placed a video about how the learning works; a month later conversion was up 22% from the original.
7. Show who is behind the product. Photos of the people behind the product. LinkedIn research and other usability studies agree that photos of people improve conversion.
8. Let the user say “no.” One of the best tactics is to openly admit the product’s weaknesses, which shows honesty and openness. Example: “Try our service free for 30 days. If you do not like it, we will refund you with no questions asked.”
9. If it is hard to describe the problem, go through this list and put on the page whatever you can answer confidently and clearly: What problem do you think THIS solves for you? How would you describe THIS to a colleague or friend? What other options did you consider before choosing THIS? How would you convince more people to choose THIS? What do you hope to achieve with THIS? When did you realize you needed such a product, and what was happening in your world that made you look for THIS? Which two words would you use to describe THIS?
10. If those questions did not help, nothing is simpler: call your potential customer. Make a few cold calls, write down what you said and use it on the landing page.
11. Sell the dream. If you run an online school, it is a mistake to talk about lecture cycles or to give results that are too narrow (“you will learn to write about this, you will teach at universities”). Sell the dream that hits the person in the heart.
12. Use verbs, and swap the plain for the attractive. Not “A network of contacts” but “Build your network of contacts”; not “Narrow specialization” but “Find the specialization in which you will be especially good.” Not “The course is taught by…” but “Your teachers will be the best experts in the industry.”

How to use cold calls when creating a landing page:

• Record your conversations with potential customers. They help you see which arguments work and which do not. Analyze answers and objections to find the key points the page must reflect.
• Calls reveal which problems worry your target audience. Pick out those pain points and build content that answers specific needs.
• Feedback from calls helps improve the content and design. If customers struggle to find some information, simplify navigation.

A bonus for CPA

The main quality of a landing page is that it must sell as much as possible. It should reflect everything about the product, its benefits and terms, and it must have an application form so that the chain closes for the user: where and how to leave a request.

For CPA marketing it matters that traffic does not leak from the landing page. If the footer has links to social networks, or chatbots are running, it is better to remove all of it. This is easy to do with dynamic link substitution, which technical specialists usually do in a minute, and the benefit for conversion is enormous.

When you launch an offer in CPA, do not forget to place a link to the affiliate program, usually in the footer, though many advertisers also put it in the header. It lets webmasters who want to promote your offer on the CPA model quickly register in the affiliate network and start driving traffic.

IIPart II: how to lay everything out

1. Put the main and clearest things first

You have only 8 seconds to grab visitors’ attention, so place interesting information at the top of the page. Use Yandex Webvisor or similar services to check it. Dell, for example, did a good job of making sure its main message sits in the user’s main area of attention.

Words in headlines and descriptions. There are no strict rules, but there are general recommendations:

• Headline: one or two sentences, three at most. Its main goal is to grab attention and convey the core idea.
• Description: usually one or two short paragraphs, informative enough for the user to understand what it is about, but not overloaded with detail. If the first screen carries an offer limited in time, put the deadline there.
• CTA: a button or link that leads the user to the next step should be short and clear: “Subscribe,” “Buy,” “Order a consultation.”

It does not matter much where and how many times you place the CTA: top, bottom, middle. The rule is that there should be a problem, and the CTA should be its logical continuation.

2. Do not overcomplicate: KISS

KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid. However much you write and whatever meanings you put in, you have no right to duplicate content or place what is already clear from other blocks. Write everything you want, then cut it five times over. What matters is that it quickly turns into a picture in the user’s head.

3. Make a good design

Design here means not only neat layout but also how modern and current the page is. Remember that 94% of visitors’ first impressions of a business are related to the design of its website. A well-designed site increases sales; a poor one scares customers away.

• Most users come from mobile devices, so 61% will not return to a site that looks and works badly on a smartphone.
• 37% of visitors are more likely to buy on a site with responsive design.

What does an ideal landing page design look like? One that solves its task: collects leads, converts, sells. Still, there are general rules. WIM designer Yulia Kozlovskaya put together a checklist of what a quality landing page must have:

• Optimal in length. About 5–7 screens; a user can read and digest it in 7–15 minutes.
• Structured. Information is distributed across screens by a thought-out logic.
• Convenient. CTAs sit on several screens so the user can take the target action at any moment. If the page is long, it needs navigation between screens.
• Bright. It should not bore: it needs dynamics, good photos, color contrasts, expressive typography.
• Contrasting. Background and text contrast with each other so information reads easily; images do not merge with the content but act as anchor objects.
• Built on the proximity rule. Internal distances and paddings are smaller than external ones, and there is enough air, so information does not stick into a mush.
• Thoughtful typography. A font hierarchy: headings of several levels, body text and a disclaimer. Line spacing is font size times 1.5 (150%). Alignment fits the text block length: left is great, center is fine, right is rarely acceptable, justified is not acceptable.
• Trendy. Laconic minimalism and/or elements of glassmorphism, brutalism, complex gradients, 3D renders or non-standard illustrations.
• Alive. Animation and interactive blocks are provided.

4. Check yourself

MarketingSherpa created a formula that I personally use to check myself when I build a landing page:

This analysis shows that people read only 28% of the text on a page, and the more text there is, the smaller the share read. To raise the chance that visitors read most of your content, make the text easy to read: highlight keywords, use headings, write short paragraphs and use lists.

Useful reading: “How Little Do Users Read” and “Block Reading: How We Read on the Web” (both in English), and the collection of 300 tools for designers compiled by Contented.

Examples of landing pages with trendy solutions that I like: Alfa-Bank, Kukhnya na rayone, HumbleTeam, Stag, Nice!, Nuts for Pets.

IIIPart III: how to check that the landing page will work

Either way, conversion comes down to understanding the product and the audience and conveying it as vividly as possible. That takes research. Besides A/B tests, you can run corridor interviews and customer surveys (we recently asked customers which speakers matter to them and optimized the speakers block on our landing pages accordingly). There are also many services now for transcribing customer calls, and that information can be used to optimize the customer journey.

— Pavel Korkodinov, Head of PMM, Ultimate Education Creative Cluster

1. Run a corridor test

A corridor test is a simple way to get feedback from real visitors. Ask questions to learn what they like, what causes difficulty and what improvements they would like. Questions you can include in the checklist:

• Is there anything you cannot find on this page?
• What confuses you on this page?
• Do you have any questions?
• What worries you most about buying this product?
• What is the number one reason stopping you from buying?
• What else would you like to see on this page?
• What can we help you find?
• Why did you not buy today?
• What could we have done to convince you to buy?
• What is the biggest problem we can solve for you?
• What are you looking for in your ideal solution?
• What else could we put on this page to convince you to buy?
• What almost stopped you from signing up?
• What finally convinced you to sign up?

2. Send traffic and check it in Webvisor right away

Webvisor is a Yandex Metrica tool that records visitors’ actions on your site. It shows how users interact with your content, which pages they view most and where they run into difficulty, which helps expose weak spots and improve the experience. To work with it effectively, split the audience into groups, for example by goals, queries and traffic sources, so you can quickly assess overall activity and see what to improve.

3. A/B test

The best A/B tests rest on two things: you collect data about your visitors (for example through a survey or a click map), and on that data you build hypotheses and run separate tests.

4. Survey the landing page on site

On-site surveys let you ask questions of visitors who are on your site right now, both those who end up becoming customers and those who visit but may not buy. The second type is exactly who you want to target: the goal is to find out what stops visitors from becoming customers or from taking any step you want them to take. Is it the price? Are they confused? Is the site broken? Options include Qualaroo and Google surveys for website owners.

IVPart IV: how to raise conversion

The first conversion on its own, without end-to-end conversion, is just a metric. Often, by raising the first conversion we lower the end-to-end one or load the sales team with non-target leads (the form on the first screen). So the effectiveness of end-to-end conversion does not end at the moment of the request; it is better to design the onboarding that follows. What is the share of missed calls from the form? What are the reasons for refusal? From that you can customize the user’s path further: add chatbots, questionnaires, extra information closing the main objections for that segment. Sometimes features you give little weight work strongly: a photo on the first screen can affect conversion more than changes to form fields. It is better to push problems further down the funnel. Better to collect a non-target lead than nothing at all, so optimization starts at the top of the funnel, with the next stages tuned afterward.

— Pavel Korkodinov, Head of PMM, Ultimate Education Creative Cluster

Go through these articles and test the techniques on your landing pages: QuickSprout, InSales, Yagla, ZoomInfo, WiserNotify.

And my personal advice:

1. Choose the headline right

A strong call to action can push people to the start of your sales funnel, while a lukewarm one makes them click away. Version with a happy couple and a subheading beat the “waterfall” version, turning 85% more visitors into buyers.

• Power words. Action verbs such as “Get,” “Download,” “Access” beat weaker, passive ones such as “Find,” “Learn” or “See.” “Click here” says nothing to the reader; “Click here to get a free download” is much more powerful.
• Fear as a motivator. The need for safety, protection and shelter underlies many of our basic decisions. The headline “about 20,000,000 homes burned to the ground” increased the number of insurance sign-ups by 65%.
• Headlines decide who reads. As of May 2020, one Timepad blog article got 1,500 views. The number of people who read an email with the same content was 10 times larger, and with the right headline, 30 times larger. The user decides from a few words of the headline whether to open the article.

Four rules of a conversion headline. It must:

• be unique to your brand voice and fit your target audience;
• contain numbers, a verb and triggers (for example, “How I attracted 95,657 readers to my blog”);
• convey a sense of urgency;
• match the content (nobody likes to be lured by a pretty headline, find nothing there and feel cheated).

Ogilvy took a long time to find convincing enough details to sell Rolls-Royce. A good headline of his: “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

By the way, the name of your blog, or of the place where you publish content, is also a headline. See how conversion from the home page to the blog changes if it is called “Knowledge” or “Education Center” instead of “Blog.” To judge a headline’s effectiveness, use the A/B tests described above. A bonus: a cheat sheet of 71 headlines.

2. Numbers are not always true

We often see statistics saying “X% increase in conversions.” But what stands behind these numbers? Sometimes they are rounded, sometimes unreliable. Look deeper and analyze what exactly led to growth. So numbers should not be rounded: leave them as they are. Do not make the discount very large and do not overpromise, but do not be modest either.

3. Reputation and reviews are the basis of trust

Plain numbers or dry reviews do not inspire trust. Add photos of people so that reviews look sincere and real. Stories instead of numbers: instead of “71% of respondents bought my product,” tell the story of one customer: “Marina, a sales manager, raised her income by 20% using my methods.” Such stories evoke more emotion and are remembered better. Example: the service Daily Burn put screenshots, illustrations of product features and a calorie calculator on its site, and got a 20.45% rise in sign-ups.

4. Depth of interaction

The more time users spend on your site, the higher the chance they buy or take the target action. Interactive elements such as calculators, surveys or quizzes increase depth of interaction. Insight: if users rarely go to the inner pages, place the button higher to draw attention to important content.

5. Watch the measure

Suppose you are too focused on converting. You turn on several pop-ups and several social network buttons, and soon the site is a mess. Do not overdo it.

6. Emphasize the outcomes

Instead of focusing on the cost the user must pay, emphasize the benefits they will get. Use language that stresses possibilities and prospects rather than costs. Benefits are better shown in pictures than told.

7. Explain the reason for the discount

Buffer added case studies to its pricing page to justify its prices. Be the first to say that your product will not handle every task.

8. In the backlog, prioritize conversion tasks by revenue growth

This takes a comprehensive approach combining analytics, UX/UI design, SEO and A/B testing. It lets you build a highly effective landing page that attracts and holds the target audience and raises revenue.

9. Add lyrical blocks

Ones that reach the emotional part of the audience: how great it is to join you and realize yourself, get the profession you want, rather than stay on the sidelines of life.

10. Community

People want to be part of something bigger. You can write that there is a closed community (even if only formally) where people support and help each other, joke around and live their best life. Positioning through community is far more winning and later opens many times more monetization opportunities and is much more sustainable in its development.

11. Brand

If you replaced your name on the landing page with your competitor’s, most people would not notice. You need to tie yourself to the brand more often.

Conclusions

When creating a landing page, remember that backlog priorities must be set with revenue growth in mind. Key points:

1. Market and competitor analysis. Before development, research the market and competitors. It shows which elements can raise conversion and improve the user experience.
2. Target audience. Define who your target customer is and what they need, so the page resonates with their needs and motives.
3. USP. Formulate the unique selling proposition of your product or service clearly. It must be plainly visible on the page and catch visitors’ attention.
4. CTA. Make CTA elements bright and noticeable, clearly worded, leading the visitor to the action that brings you profit (a purchase, a newsletter subscription).
5. SEO. Make sure your landing page is optimized for search engines. It increases organic traffic and brings more potential customers.
6. Web analytics. Implement web analytics, such as Google Analytics, to track the page’s effectiveness and make the needed adjustments.
7. Testing and optimization. Regularly test different elements (headlines, images, forms) and optimize them on the collected data.