With over ten years in SaaS and leadership, Ryan’s touched virtually every marketing discipline.
With over ten years in SaaS and leadership, Ryan’s touched virtually every marketing discipline.
Landing pages are one of the most important marketing tools for business. Not only do they educate visitors on products and services, but they also turn curious prospects into valuable leads and sales. A well-crafted landing page design with examples to guide you can significantly boost these conversions and educate visitors effectively.
But how exactly do you design a landing page? And better yet, how do you design a landing page that actually converts? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about landing page design and how to use it to grow your business.
We’ve all heard of web design—that’s the art of designing a website. Landing page design is the same thing, but for landing pages.
A lot of the same concepts that apply to web design apply to landing page design. However, there are some key differences. Websites are more about brand awareness. They simply need to look good and keep visitors engaged. While a conversion is ideal, it’s not necessary.
Landing pages, on the other hand, are all about the conversion. They need to keep users on the page long enough to absorb all the necessary information, and then encourage them to take action.
Because of this, there are a few unique tricks landing page designers use to increase conversions (which you’ll learn about later in the article).
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Absolutely. Design is often an overlooked element when it comes to conversion marketing, and here’s a great stat to prove it: Businesses that use Leadpages landing page templates enjoy average conversion rates of 11.7%. That’s five times higher than the industry average.
Leadpages landing page templates are created by conversion experts who know how to use design to generate leads and sales. So, it’s no coincidence that they perform so much better.
If you need to design a landing page for your business it’s a good idea to see what other marketers are doing with their pages. Check out these landing page designs to get some ideas for your own pages. Exploring landing page design with examples can help you identify the elements that resonate most with your target audience.
The first thing you’ll notice when you land on this page is the video in the hero section. This initial fold of the landing page is crucial for catching people’s attention, so adding a video instead of a static image is a good strategy. Right away visitors get a sense of the type of content they’ll receive if they sign up for the app.
The landing page also uses plenty of bold colors, especially for its CTA buttons which helps them really stand out. It doesn’t overdo it though and mixes in plenty of white backgrounds to to ensure users aren’t overwhelmed.
This landing page design is an excellent example of less is more. It makes great use of white space, never including more text, images, and graphics than necessary. Not only does this create a very clean-looking page, but it also limits distractions and helps improve readability. Most importantly, it keeps visitors focused on the pitch.
While the page primarily uses a white background, it utilizes colors for key pieces of information and its CTA sections. This makes the information stand out and encourages readers to stop and read these sections if they’re just browsing the page.
Similar to our first example, this landing page design utilizes a moving image to help capture attention in the opening fold. Remember to give just as much attention to your imagery as you do your copy. In this case, the image does an excellent job of previewing the magazine for visitors. That way, it not only aids the design but also helps with conversions.
The page also utilizes colors to highlight certain words and titles. This subtle technique helps liven up headlines while also giving emphasis to important words that the creator really wants visitors to focus on.
Colors aren’t just about looks, they also evoke emotions. So, think long and hard about what colors are right for your brand and product. In this case, BYU chose a primarily blue color scheme, which is associated with intelligence, loyalty, and trust—all qualities you look for in a university. They also keep the colors to a minimum, with a dark blue primary color, and tan and light blue secondary colors.
The one exception is the red CTA buttons, but this works as it really makes those important buttons stand out. The page also utilizes buttons that change colors when you hover over them, which is another design technique that helps increase clicks.
When people think of web design, they usually think of images, graphics, and colors. But text font is also an important tool, and one that is often overlooked. This landing page does an excellent job of using a variety of fonts, both for headlines and body copy, to mix things up and give the text some flare.
It’s subtle, but the arrows at the bottom of each section are also a nice touch, as they encourage visitors to keep scrolling.
A great design doesn’t always need images. Take this landing page for example. There’s no image in the hero section, but it still makes a big impact. The bright color of the background paired with the bold font does a great job of grabbing attention, even if there isn’t any image. This can be a great design choice when you want people to focus on your headline.
Another great thing about this page is the size of the text. It isn’t overwhelming, but it’s large enough that even when displayed on a smaller screen it’s easy to read. The bolding of important phrases is also a great way to highlight the key selling points of the offer.
Don’t let the background be an afterthought. Sure, a clean white background or a solid color is a safe choice, but you can also have some fun with it. This landing page uses a multicolor background in its hero section, and while the effect is subtle it definitely catches the eye and gives the page a unique look.
Here’s another tip you can take from this landing page: If you’re selling a digital product create a cover for it like this page did. This makes the product seem more tangible and something of value, rather than just a digital file on the internet.
As you can see, the design of your landing page has a big impact on its performance. So, what’s the best way to design a high-converting page?
You could hire a professional designer to do it for you, but this process is slow and expensive. Luckily, landing page builders like Leadpages have made designing landing pages quick and easy, even for complete beginners.
Here’s how you can design a professional landing page like a pro.
Leadpages has 150+ landing page templates that already follow design best practices and are optimized for conversions. This means most of the hard work is already done for you. All you have to do is browse the library and find a design that suits your product or brand. You can sort templates by type, industry, conversion rate, and more to help narrow down your choices.
While Leadpages templates are ready to go right out of the box, you’ll likely want to make some tweaks so they align with your other marketing assets. Luckily, customizing your template is super simple with the Leadpages Landing Page Builder.
The drag-and-drop interface allows you to move elements, add new sections, and edit text and images with a few clicks of your mouse. You can also make bigger changes like swapping in new colors and fonts to really make the page your own.
The final element of your landing page design is your images. Try to choose imagery that will get people’s attention, highlight the benefits of your product or service, and complement the other elements of your design.
Uploading images to your Leadpages account is easy. Once your image is ready, simply drag and drop the image widget into place and then select the right photo from your library.
Once you’re happy with your landing page just hit the “publish” button to share it with the world. You can publish your page to your free Leadpages subdomain, a custom domain, or a WordPress site.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when designing your landing page.
One of the keys to driving conversions is keeping visitors focused. If there are too many graphics, images, and colors they won’t know where to look or what you want them to do. This is why you should take the “less is more” approach.
A clean and minimalist layout is easy on the eyes, but it also minimizes distractions for visitors. That way they stay focused on your pitch and are more likely to follow along all the way to your call to action.
Along the same lines as our last tip, too many colors can also be a distraction. It can also make your page gaudy and overwhelming. If your page is hard to look at people will be more inclined to click away.
Try to keep your page to two or three colors maximum. This could include a primary color, a secondary color that’s used to highlight important information, and a contrasting color for your CTA button to help it stand out.
Speaking of colors, make sure to be consistent with your colors across all your marketing assets. When someone clicks on your ads and arrives at your landing page you want it to be a seamless transition.
Nothing makes you look more unprofessional and amateurish than low-res images. If the images on your site are blurry and out of focus it doesn’t just make your site look bad—it also hurts your credibility.
Here are a few options for sourcing images:
Also known as negative space, white space basically means giving your text, images, and any other content on your page some breathing room. It’s essentially space on your page without any text or images.
When different page elements are close together readers start to associate them as one. This becomes problematic because important information can get lost in the shuffle. By using white space to spread things out a bit visitors can focus on one element at a time, which is important for conversions.
There are plenty of other benefits of white space:
Your call to action is arguably the most important piece of copy on your landing page—so make sure people notice it. You can make the text a little more bold, increase the size, and use colors and shapes to really draw attention to the section.
Don’t make it obvious (a flashing arrow pointing at your CTA might be a little much), but some subtle design tweaks that draw the eye to this section can have a big impact on conversions.
Simplify the design process by using one of these premade landing page templates.
This is a clean template with some great pops of color, especially the CTA buttons which really draw the eye. The curved section transitions also add some style to the page and set it apart from traditional landing pages.
The white text on a black background is a clean look and a great way to mix things up if you’re tired of white backgrounds. This template also includes CTA buttons that change colors when you hover over them to encourage more clicks, and the parallax scrolling effect adds some depth.
The bold font in the hero section really helps the headline make an impact and ample whitespace is used throughout the page, resulting in a design that’s easy on the eyes.
This template uses a calming color palette and we see another example of parallax scrolling here. Different colors are also used to give emphasis to important words in the headlines.
As you can see, creating beautiful landing page designs is easy once you know the basic principles. And with a tool like Leadpages, you can build your first page in 30 minutes or less.
Try Leadpages free for 14 days to simplify your landing page design.
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As a people-first marketing leader, Ryan focuses on simplifying the complex and delivering exceptional value to businesses of all sizes. With over ten years in SaaS, he’s built teams that were included on the Inc 500 fastest growing list, and touched virtually every marketing discipline, including creative direction, demand generation, and advertising.
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Create web pages, explore our integrations, and see if we're the right fit for your business.