Landing pages can serve different purposes – and they are all crucial to streamlining your sales funnels and generating revenue for your business.
You might be using a landing page to collect emails from visitors who opt in for a freebie, or maybe you might want to get people to register for an upcoming webinar. Perhaps, in some cases, a landing page can be the sales page where you present your offer and allow visitors to buy your product or service.
No matter the role a particular landing page plays in your business, there’s always the same goal; to entice people to take action, subscribe, register, or buy. To help you accomplish your goal of creating high-converting landing pages, we’ve put together a 27-point landing page checklist that you should go through before you publish your next landing page.
In reality, most landing pages are not optimized for conversions. They’re “pretty,” but they don’t work that well… That’s why we built Scriptly’s Page Builder. Inside Scriptly, you’ll find landing pages that get 52% conversion on average or more.
You can, of course, jump into Scriptly’s Page Builder for free and start working with pages that you already know convert!
A 27-point landing page checklist
1. Use your customer’s language
You want to get your message across using the words that your potential customers use. Don’t get lost in professional jargon because you try to demonstrate authority. Use everyday language that resonates with your target audience.
2. Craft a compelling headline
Your headline is the first thing people will read. It’s the fundamental element of your page. Pack it with benefits to make it enticing and convincing. Don’t be afraid to be bold and blunt with your headline copy.
3. Use a complimentary sub-headline
Your landing page sub-headline is the perfect opportunity to reinforce your message and clarify the benefits. Some marketers use it to call out their ideal customer and even place it above the main headline.
4. Write professional, solid, landing page copy
As with all things in life, practice makes perfect. But before you get to a point where you can write effective web copy, consider hiring a professional copywriter.
5. Attention-grabbing hero image
If you want your landing page to follow the AIDA model (Attention – Interest – Desire – Action), you need to draw attention with an image.
6. Your hero image needs to direct people towards the registration form
Place it strategically so it draws the user’s eyes to your call to action, usually a sign-up form.
7. Keep the number of required form fields to the minimum
Your sign-up form doesn’t need to ask for more than a user is willing to give up. If possible, eliminate all fields and keep the email address field only. People are much more willing to sign up if it takes them less time and energy.
8. Only one call to action (CTA) per page
You want visitors to do one thing – not a lot of different things. Eliminate all unnecessary CTAs that don’t serve your main CTA. If you want people to subscribe to your list, just stick to that and avoid throwing other offers at them.
9. Benefit-driven CTA text
When you ask people to take an action, such as to subscribe to your list, it’s always the best practice to be clear about what’s in it for them. Help them understand the benefit they will enjoy in exchange for giving up their email.
10. Above-the-fold CTA
Your CTA elements (usually an opt-in form and a button) should be visible without the user having to scroll down. Test your page on mobile as well to make sure it is visible on smaller screens.
11. Striking CTA button
Beneath your form (or next to it, if it’s a horizontal one), there will be a button. That CTA button needs to have a vivid color, an easy-to-read font and a maximum of five words.
12. Stripped out navigation
In most cases, landing pages will perform better without the main navigation bar. As mentioned above, you want to entice the user to take an action. Why throw in irrelevant information?
13. Avoid content clutter
The same goes for all extra information about you and your company that is not related to the message you want to get across on landing page. For example, if you’re selling a product on that page, you don’t want to showcase all of the other products you may have. Take the minimalist approach to the content you include on your landing pages.
14. Clear offer and benefit
We need to stress that your landing page copy, including your headline and everything that is above the fold, should be describing a clear offer and the benefit of claiming that offer. If the random user has to go through your whole page to understand what it is about, then you’ve probably lost them.
15. Landing page copy should be a continuation of the ad copy
The landing page is not a standalone marketing element; it’s part of your sales funnel. That is why you need to keep consistent messages throughout your funnel. For example, when you drive traffic to your sales page from Facebook, the ad copy needs to prepare the user for what they may expect to see when they click through.
16. Understand buyers’ emotions that drive sales
High-converting pages always pay attention to the psychological elements of buyers’ behavior. A professional copywriter should be able to utilize those elements (scarcity, the need to feel included, or fear of missing out) in order to drive more conversions.
17. Social proof
Testimonials and other kinds of social proof (such as a large social media following) are of highest importance when the landing page visitor is nearly ready to buy. Social proof helps strengthen the feeling of security when making a purchase decision. It makes people feel that they’re in good hands and it bolsters their feeling of having made the right decision.
18. Trust elements
Accordingly, trust elements, like an SSL certificate and site seals (or trust badges), will increase the user’s eagerness to buy. Trust elements may not be needed when you want people to subscribe to your list, but they’re essential to an ecommerce website and any kind of checkout or sales page.
19. Links to “privacy policy” and “terms of service”
If you’re driving traffic from paid media, you need to have these pages in place. Also, a privacy policy and your terms of service are essential legal documents that your web visitors should be able to access with one click. Here’s a free tool to generate your business agreements and policies, but it’s always a good idea to consult with a lawyer if possible.
20. Eliminate risk
Risk avoidance is a major reason why some visitors will leave your page without taking any action at all. When it comes to sales pages, most marketers and online business owners tend to eliminate risk by offering a 30-day money-back guarantee, whether it be a digital or physical product.
21. Give prospects a way to contact you
In the case of sales pages, and as a rule of thumb, you want to provide people a way to get in touch with you. Let’s assume you’re selling a high-end product, like a $4,500 coaching program. Although people might be familiar with your brand and services, you still want to give them the opportunity to pose questions that they feel are important to them before they hit the buy button.
22. Offer bonuses
Bonuses serve as the finishing touch to your landing page. With bonuses, people feel that they get more value for the same amount of money. Choose bonuses wisely, so that they complement your main offer, and you will get a conversion rate boost.
23. Keep it simple
Marketers often talk about the KISS principle. What does it mean? Keep It Simple, Stupid! We have no need to elaborate on that, do we? 🙂
24. Brand congruence
Brand consistency across all channels and on your landing pages is important. Not only will it make your brand recognizable, but also it will affect the emotional state of the potential buyer in a positive way.
25. First impression and design
Accordingly, layout, colors, and fonts on your landing page are important as well. There’s a theory about the impact of colors on purchasing decisions, but even if you don’t want to walk the extra mile just make sure your page looks good design wise. Always have a professional designer create your page or use a pre-made template instead of trying to combine random colors.
26. Mobile responsiveness
Now, let’s briefly discuss a couple of technical elements. Rarely will you find a landing page that is not mobile responsive. Nowadays a lot, if not the majority of users browse the internet from their mobile devices. That is why you need to test your pages to ensure they look good on smaller screens as well. Here’s one of the many tools available to test your web pages for responsiveness. Also, here’s Google’s mobile-friendly test.
27. Loading time
Attention span is diminishing for most internet users due to spending a lot of time online and being subjected to constant distractions. Make sure your page loads fast, ideally in 1.5 seconds or less, if you want to reduce bounce rate. Here’s a popular tool to test loading speed and get recommendations on how to improve it.
Conclusion
If you need to know how to build high-converting landing pages, there are quite a few ways of doing it, from custom code, to WordPress plugins, to standalone landing page tools like Scriptly. Essentially there are many options, but we’ll keep this simple.
If you want one piece of software that you can use for all of your landing pages, sign up for Scriptly’s Page Builder. Not only do the landing pages, sales pages, and webinar registration pages convert really well; Scriptly’s also got other apps for writing email auto-responders and webinars.
If you’d rather work with WordPress, there is a Scriptly plugin that you can add to your website so all of your pages look like they’re hosted right on your website!
Conversion rate optimization should be your top concern when building an opt-in, webinar registration or sales page. Use the landing page checklist in this article to ensure that you have considered all of the important elements of a successful landing page.