TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Canva
2. Notion
3. Spotify
4. Wistia
5. Grammarly
6. Duolingo
7. Adobe
8. Shopify
9. Mailchimp
10. Unbounce

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Banafshe Salehi

Banafshe is a writer and creator who loves long walks on the beach (kidding?). When she’s not selling you on her puns or her pop-culture analogies, she can be found at the busiest intersection in her city with her headphones. Which are totally not falling apart.

» More blog posts by Banafshe Salehi

Welcome to the digital renaissance, where AI (artificial intelligence) isn’t just a futuristic concept, but the driving force behind today’s most innovative brands. From intuitive customer service tools to predictive analytics and beyond, 2023 has proved that AI is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a need for staying competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

AI has gone from buzz-word territory (you could even argue it’s becoming too common of a word) to being a game-changer in the marketing universe. In 2023, some brands have not just embraced AI; they’ve given it a big bear hug (take a moment to really visualize that). In this year-end review, we’ll explore how different brands are not just riding the AI wave, but are shaping it to revolutionize their services and redefine user experiences.

Without further ‘ado, let’s look at 10 of the brands that have made significant strides with AI in the past year.

1. Canva: your AI art director

Picture this: Canva, already a design darling for those of us who wish we were more visually inclined, decided to give its users superpowers in 2023. Canva’s AI in 2023 is all about intuitive design assistance. Their Magic Design feature suggests layouts, color schemes, and fonts based on the content type and user preferences—predicting trends and providing users with modern designs. With AI, Canva transformed from a simple design tool into a creative assistant who’s always on the design pulse.

2. Notion: your organized assistant

Notion said, “Let there be order!”—and there was. Integrating AI into its already versatile toolset, Notion offered personalized organization solutions this year. Notion’s AI—launched in 2023—is super-duper-smart. It auto-categorizes notes, suggests project timelines, and even drafts summaries from meeting notes. This AI integration makes project management and personal organization seamless and intuitive, saving time and boosting productivity. Notion AI is like an assistant that knows you better than you know yourself, helping to prioritize tasks and manage projects effortlessly, plus being your ghostwriter on the downlow.

3. Spotify: your personal DJ

Spotify has always been about personalization, but, in 2023, they’ve cranked it up even more. With their new AI feature, Spotify isn’t just suggesting playlists, but creating them based on their users’ listening. Spotify’s new feature—AI DJ—can generate custom playlists based on listener habits and moods. This feature mixes tracks seamlessly while adding personal touches that make you feel like you’re listening to your own personalized radio. It’s the perfect blend of algorithmic precision and musical artistry. A dose of Taylor Swift or a dash of Metallica? Spotify’s got your tastes figured out.

4. Wistia: your AI-powered video platform

Wistia’s always made video hosting look easy. But with a whole range of AI tools that they’ve developed—from auto transcripts and captions to auto-generated event descriptions and an AI-powered educational content search tool—Wisita is helping audiences streamline their video marketing even further in 2023. They’ve rolled out even more game changers this year: their AI-powered video highlights is a major time-saver, finding the most compelling moments in your videos. Wistia believes that creators who use these AI tools and features to their advantage while maintaining a human touch will see the best outcomes, and that’s evident in how their brand operates.

5. Grammarly: your AI writing partner

Grammarly is a staple of any marketer’s toolkit by now, but with the help of generative AI, this writing assistant has gone beyond just grammar. GrammarlyGO uses the power of generative AI to help marketers ideate and accelerate team and individual productivity. By clicking one button, folks can compose, ideate, rewrite, and reply with a ready-to-go AI co-creator that understands their communication goals. Writing in your voice using customizable profile options for tone and getting re-writes on your content at the drop of a hat are just some of the things Grammarly has added to their repertoire with the help of AI. Who doesn’t want a personal editor who’s always on call?

6. Duolingo: your customized language coach

Duolingo‘s AI in 2023 is on another level (and we mean beyond the level 2 French we always get stuck on). Duolingo is no longer just teaching languages—it’s adapting to how you learn. Duolingo’s AI offers personalized learning paths and customized lessons based on your learning speed, strengths, and weaknesses. It’s an adaptive learning environment akin to having a personal language tutor. Struggle with verbs? It’ll give you a verb workout. Love quizzes? Get ready for a trivia bonanza.

There’s also Duolingo Max, which utilizes ChatGPT-4 to create even more personalized learning experiences for users. Duolingo Max max-imizes learning by introducing two new AI-powered features and exercises: Explain My Answer—where users can enter a chat with Duo to get a simple explanation on why their answer was right or wrong and ask for examples or clarification—and Roleplay—which allows learners to practice real-world conversation skills with world characters in the app. 

7. Adobe: your AI-infused creative suite

Adobe has been all about one thing this year: Generation AI. By levelling up Adobe Sensei to Adobe Sensei GenAI and powering up all Adobe tools with AI, Adobe chose to step into a new era of creativity and productivity in 2023. The brand was also busy launching Adobe Firefly this year, a generative machine-learning model that takes simple text prompts (in over 100 languages) to generate images, text effects, and color palettes, with the ability to also create all-new content from reference images.

The latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud includes new generative AI features that put even more innovation in the hands of creators of all types—built right into creative workflows that designers and content creators use every day.

8. Shopify: your sidekick store manager

This year, Shopify combined all its mighty powers with the latest advancements in AI to provide more personalized support for various tasks—from copy generation to store building, marketing, and customer support. Shopify Magic was introduced: a suite of free AI-enabled features integrated across Shopify’s products and workflows to make it easier for users to start, run, and grow their businesses.

Oh and there’s more: alongside Shopify Magic, you get your very own AI commerce assistant in (the admittedly adorable) Sidekick (pictured above). Trained to know all of Shopify with full access to all the context, data, and expertise necessary, Sidekick can generate highly personalized support for Shopify users. It’s safe to say that Shopify knocked it outta the park this year on the AI front.

9. Mailchimp: your AI-powered email marketer

Mailchimp‘s 2023 foray into AI elevates email marketing to a new level of precision and personalization. By embracing generative AI, the platform is redefining how businesses connect with their audience through smarter, data-driven email strategies. Mailchimp’s AI includes features like predictive segmentation, which groups customers based on predicted behavior, and AI-enhanced A/B testing tools that automatically determine the most effective email content, layout, and send times for different audience segments.

But even more impressively, Mailchimp launched the Email Content Generator in 2023, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology to create marketing copy that users can drag and drop into emails they send to existing and prospective customers. This feature is the latest addition to Mailchimp’s AI toolkit for marketers, along with features like Creative Assistant and Content Optimizer.

10. Unbounce: your conversion whisperer

Unbounce has always been the cool kid on the block in the world of high-converting landing pages (if we do say so ourselves). In 2023, we’ve taken it up a notch with AI-powered conversion optimization. With new features like Campaign Assistant, a powerful calculator tool for ROI using your landing page, and our staple AI-powered landing page builder and AI personalization tool, Unbounce grew as an AI-powered platform more than ever in 2023. Heck, we cared so much about AI that we made a whole podcast about it, too. On Unprompted, we dove headfirst into the world of AI marketing—from specialized AI tools to the AI arms race.

Here’s to AI’s 2023 takeover

In 2023, these brands have not just adopted AI; they have integrated it into their core, offering personalized, intuitive, and predictive experiences. AI is no longer just a backend tool; it’s front and center, enhancing user experience and creative potential. It’s exciting to see how these brands will continue to innovate and push the boundaries of what AI can achieve in the brand landscape.

Here’s to 2024!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What’s a sign up page?
2. What is the use of sign up pages?
3. What should be included on a sign up page?
4. 14 great sign up landing page examples
5. How to create a sign up landing page

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Valerio Puggioni

Valerio is a SaaS copywriter and content creator with a passion for tech and combat sports. Armed with a PhD.c in North Korean propaganda studies, he lives in Bangkok with his partner and his dog, who he tortures all day long with his tone-deaf singing. He wiles away his days playing story-driven open-world games, and reading comics and popular physics books. You can read more about him @ Copygun.com.

» More blog posts by Valerio Puggioni

Paul Park

Paul is a writer on Unbounce’s content team who lives and breathes storytelling. (It’s like oxygen but with better plotlines!) Ask him what he’s up to at any given moment and you’ll get answers ranging from folding paper dragons (y’know, origami) to catching up on the latest cool tech, and finding other ways to channel his inner geek.

» More blog posts by Paul Park

“Attention!“

You’ve heard the word before. Marketers, copywriters, and salespeople talk about attention all the time. It’s like a nervous tic, always sitting on the tip of the tongue.

It’s curious, though, because another word that marketers don’t often use is “patience.” And patience is just as important.

Sure, our first objective is to gain the attention of our prospects. But with sign up pages, it’s also about making that registration process as painless and as easy as possible. In other words, it’s not enough just to get your visitors’ attention⁠—you shouldn’t test their patience either. Not with additional questions. Not with confusing copy. Not with incongruent design. As UX expert Steve Krug once famously put it, “Don’t make me think.”

Today we’re going to cover 12 examples of sign up pages that get both patience and attention right. But before we get our hands dirty, let’s take a closer look at what a sign up page is.

What’s a sign up page?

Simply put, a sign up page is a type of landing page with a primary conversion goal to drive registrations. These can occur on the landing page itself, or the page can prime visitors before prompting them to enter an account creation flow. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But I’m already driving traffic to my website. Do I really need a separate sign up page?”

Let’s make a comparison.

When someone lands on your website’s homepage, they could have come from one of many channels (like an organic search or by clicking a backlink in someone else’s content.) They’re checking you out, yes, but they may not be there to buy. They might not even know what you’re offering or what you do. Your visitors are curious, maybe. Intrigued? Possibly. But will they fill out a contact form? Don’t count on it.

When you run ads, though, your main goal is often to get your visitors to convert. For this reason, it makes much more sense to send them to a landing page that is specifically designed to get them to sign up instead of a generic homepage full of links and other distractions.

 

What is the use of sign up pages?

If you’re running paid ads, you should be using a sign up page. That goes for PPC ads and social media ads like Facebook, LinkedIn, and X (formerly known as Twitter), or if you’re running email campaigns. In all cases, using dedicated landing pages to drive traffic is an easy way to boost conversions.

With SaaS, especially, remember the importance of patience. It’s crucial here because testing your target audience’s patience will cost you—a lot. No one bounces faster than a first-time SaaS user. That’s why you must ease them in. Sequenced pages can help you achieve this goal by making the experience seamless, focused, and pleasant.

Two other elements are vital to keep in mind. First, grant your users small victories, in the beginning, to give them a sense of empowerment. And, second, be sure to show them tons of value early on. Have them perceive the value of your tool, specifically for them. How do you create these little Aha! moments? By having them apply what they learned easily, and by getting them to experience the results for themselves.

Wanna learn how other SaaS marketers use landing pages to connect with customers? See how you can get a handle on your business and achieve unprecedented growth in our guide for SaaS marketers from Talia Wolf.

What should be included on a sign up page?

Like most landing pages, a high-converting sign up page must have some essential elements, like:

• A clear benefit-driven headline
• Copy that provides any necessary details
• An attractive, eye-pleasing design
• A compelling call-to-action  

“But wait.” Yes, you there with your hand raised. “Where’s the form?” Exactly!

A great sign up page is one that might as well be yelling, “Look, ma. No hands!” You want to keep the f-f-f-friction to a minimum, either by keeping your form as short as possible or even hiding it until the right might moment. (Some smart examples of this tactic below.)

You can do this by having them click on the call-to-action, and voilà! A form appears, seemingly out of thin air. From there, you’ve got options. Will you lead them down a multi-page sequence? Or will you collect their email and get them to log onto your platform, where they’ll be prompted to follow dopamine-triggering queues? Or will you email them and start nurturing them that way? 

The best way to learn is to see these principles in action, though. Let’s dig deeper into how to create a sign up page by going over some Unbounce-certified examples below.

14 great sign up landing page examples

As the name suggests, an excellent registration sign up page follows all the principles of a great landing page with the aim of getting  people to willingly hand over their details. Since we have 14 examples to review, let’s focus on actionable takeaways.

1. Ruby (registration sign up page)

Ruby is a virtual receptionist and chat company that gets the power of branding. Their gorgeous above-the-fold setup for this landing page is a perfect example of sign up done right.

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Direct headline: Make more sales when people reach out to you. They promise to help you create “happy customers” while you’re at it. 
• Clear body copy: The first sentence (“Missed calls are costing you customers”) is a swift punch to the gut. Hit ‘em where the pain point is. Then, tie that to your offer, with a bow. Well done. 
• Striking hero image: The yellow sticks out like a broken thumb, and the hand is tightly gripping the phone. There’s a clear gap between the caller and the target audience, symbolizing silence. Her expression. What is she thinking? This isn’t your typical stock image.
• Two buttons: We’d probably A/B test this setup against a single button, since you can easily find their phone number on the top right-hand corner. It might yield higher conversion rates.

Also, comparing this sign up page with Ruby’s homepage illustrates the different approach you need to take with your landing pages:

Fair headline, right? Unlike the sign up page, though, it ain’t about the target audience at all. “Meet Ruby” sounds a lot like something you’d say when introducing someone at a party. The body copy focuses on the company too. And the CTA? “Watch OUR Video.”

But the most significant difference lies in all those menu options. Buttons are popping out at you from almost every corner. That’s five buttons you get exposed to even before you start scrolling. Everything is calling for your attention, and you’re more likely to begin exploring than to convert. 

This works for a homepage, of course. It’s beckoning you to browse and get to know Ruby. But Ruby’s sign up page had a much tighter focus in its messaging suited to converting traffic from a paid campaign.

2. GraphicsZoo (email sign up page)

GraphicsZoo offers white-label design services for agencies. Its sign up page is sizzling hot in its simplicity. As a white-label graphic design service, they get landing page design. The GIF above gives you a sneak peek of the platform. That’s all you need to know that it’s got a gorgeous, useful, and intuitive UI. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Straightforward copy: The headline explains what the app is in simple terms. (That’s fine, but it might be worth testing a benefit-oriented headline. Something like, “Scaling white-label design services just got a whole lot easier.”) 
• Streamlined design: There are no menu items on this registration page. Just a single call to action, and it only wants your email address. Keeping the ask small makes it more likely that visitors will convert.

3. Flyhomes (registration sign up page)

Flyhomes makes buying and selling your homes easy, and profitable. (Their website copy is a fun read as well.)

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Well-designed form: Mm mm mm! If there’s one thing that’ll make me do a double-take, which is a super weird thing to do by yourself, it’s a remarkable form. (No, seriously.) Just look at that CTA: Start Now. There’s not a misleading word in there. (For example, it’s not, “Sign up now,” which wouldn’t be quite true.) And when you click on it, you’re prompted with, “Let’s Get Started.”
• Interactive design: Everything fades into the background when you click. All you need to do to get started is to give Flyhomes your email and whisper the sweet words every marketer wants to hear: “Nurture me.”

4. PointsBet (registration sign up page)

PointsBet is an online bookmaker for sports and entertainment, based out of New Jersey. Props to Zeller Media for putting this one together. The agency did a fantastic job creating this sign up page. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Irresistible offer: This example shows that you don’t need a long-form landing page to convince prospects to convert. Think about this for a moment. Not only is this registration page asking you to sign up, but it’s also straight-up telling you that you need to make a $10 commitment.
  • So how do you do that without scaring off your target audience? Offer them 10 times the amount back. Literally.
  • Veteran copywriter Roy Furr calls this the irresistible offer. Even a non-gambler can see the appeal. And for a gambler? It’s a no-brainer. Slip me an easy $10, which is peanuts, and you get $100 back. That’s a $90 profit! I’m no math scientist, but that’s a hell of a deal.

Grow your agency with landing pages. Find out how Unbounce can help you win more conversions for your clients and extend your menu of services using landing pages—no coding required.

5. Heymarket (demo sign up page)

Heymarket is a powerful SaaS platform that lets teams collaborate in business text messaging with customers.

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Strong headline: We like the headline in gray (“It’s not personal, it’s business”). It takes a saying that a villain in a movie might say to someone they’ve screwed over, and turns it on its head. This is business. Then the page tells you what the product is and ties it directly to the benefit in the headline. 
• Supporting body copy: The body copy simply expands upon the headline, before presenting the initial pricing. The image is also immediately recognizable as a SaaS design, so there’s no mistaking where you are when you land.
• Prioritized CTAs: Though sometimes multiple CTAs spell trouble, the double-dip on the calls-to-action here is a nice touch. This landing page puts the primary CTA under the body copy and the secondary CTA on the top right, space traditionally reserved for the menu. What we love about this is that the primary CTA invites the target audience to view a demo first, while the top-right button instead prompts the target to hop right into a free trial. 
• Design variant testing: We’d love to test this type of design against variants with photos of people as well as copy. The SaaS industry is competitive. It’s becoming an increasingly saturated market, one where visual branding will play a greater role. Beyond a single landing page, A/B testing can provide useful insights into which direction you should be guiding your brand.

6. Zire (registration sign up page)

Zire is an advertising platform for musicians, and it’s thoroughly impressive in its ease of use. In terms of visual style, this sign up page is my favourite with spot-on branding and fluid design. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Awesome UI: Zire has designed an interface that’s both attractive and easy to use. Have a look:

If you’re already on a platform like Spotify, as soon as you put your name in, your name, song, or album will pop up as a suggestion. When you click on it, the page prompts you to add relevant images and upload a clip of your song.  Then, once you finish clicking a few buttons here and there, you end up with a summary of your efforts:

The GIF example above is sped up, by the way. The actual flow is a lot smoother, and it’s a pleasant experience through and through. Zire did a fantastic job with every aspect of this. 

Wait! (Cue the record scratch.)

Are we missing something here?

Right. They haven’t asked for my email yet. But I’m engaged with their services, and ready to convert. Now that’s slick.

7. Intouch Insight (free trial sign up page)

Intouch Insight is a B2B company that provides software solutions for companies aiming to scale. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Straightforward, yet appealing layout: At first glance, there’s a lot of text, and the form is long. But if you’re offering me a 60-day trial, I’m intrigued enough to want to read through the copy and find out what I’m getting into. (Still, it’d be worth testing a variant with trimmed copy or a shorter form.)
  • My favorite thing about this page, though, is how they’ve managed to squeeze all this essential information into an easily digestible and clean landing page. The fine print under the CTA also does a good job of addressing common objections: when they offer a 60-day free trial with no commitment, the company means business.
  • Free-trial pages have been around since modems used to screech at you. This sign up landing page is a solid example showing that the underlying principles behind high-converting landing pages have changed little since the good ole’ days.

8. reciProfity (demo sign up page)

“Food costing software”? Never heard of it, but the target audience (professional chefs) certainly has. reciProfity—their name combines the words recipe, profit, and reciprocity—is an inventory management system for executive chefs who dream of being “home before midnight.”

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Strong intro elements: Notice how the headline and hero immediately signal the appeal of this software to busy executive chefs, like the one pictured above, and the brief supporting copy above the fold outlines the problem. 
• Effective imagery: The product shot that’s cut off at the bottom encourages visitors to scroll down further, without leaving the page. (And guess what you’ll find when you do? More pattern interrupters that keep you scrolling to the bottom of the page.)
• Copy details: While the copy on this page works to convince visitors to try reciProfity, this landing page also takes advantage of the top-right menu space to describe their software in exact terms. If the eye drifts up to their menu, they see a succinct description of the software instead. It’s a small thing, but it helps keep visitors focused.

9. Nakisa (free trial sign up page)

Nakisa helps companies visualize their organizational structure so that they can make better business decisions. On this sign up page, Nakisa makes the wins for its prospects easy to understand, specific, and tangible.

This type of landing page can work well for SaaS B2B, in particular, for a couple of reasons: first, a B2B visitor is ready to buy because they’re actively shopping around for a solution. But the buyer journey isn’t linear because the B2B buyer tends to be research-savvy. They jump back and forth between the interest and consideration stages, and the consideration stage is much longer. 

Second, B2B buyers also more interested in technical features than emotional appeals compared to B2C. That’s because they want to know all about the performance and return on their investment.

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Focus on benefits: For the B2B target audience, the copy is direct and appealing to B2B buyers. The landing page includes a visually compelling clip of organizational design that shows how their software works. And the 14-day free trial offer lowers the barrier to test driving the product.

10. Targetable (free trial sign up page)

Targetable is an advertising platform that uses AI to help restaurants make more money with data.

Look at the quote they use as a heading on this sign up page. Are there many restaurant owners who believe their restaurant is “amazing”? Sure. But this quote isn’t functioning as a testimonial, per se. Instead, the bottom subheading (in red, which helps it stand out) asks if you share this common sentiment. Then it presents a list of benefits that address this pain point, with a simple visual showcasing a platform feature. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Creative copy: This page is an excellent example of using creativity to vary your copy, while pushing the boundaries. (It’s also a great opportunity to A/B test the different ways you can present a pain point.)
• Options to explore: Here, they’ve gone with a quote, but maybe something more direct would be more effective? Or perhaps a touch of humour would work? And some audiences could respond better to one headline, while others respond better to another. (A/B testing or using a tool like Smart Traffic can help you find out what copy works best for winning new sign ups.)

11. Marley Spoon (registration sign up page)

Marley Spoon is a meal plan delivery service with healthy food options, but that isn’t the only thing that’s tasty around here. Nom, nom, nom. This sign up page does a couple of things extremely well. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Knowing when to break the rules: They included a menu! I know, I know—earlier, I noted that excluding the menu is the obvious move. (It’s certainly a landing page best practice.) But this menu here works, and here’s why I think it does: since Marley Spoon is a food subscription service, they provide a chance to look at the menu before taking advantage of the coupon.
• Use of colors: The buttons are in different colors, and for a good reason. You know, even without reading the call to action, that these two buttons have two separate appeals. One’s a simple sign up button, whereas the main CTA is a clear benefit-driven one: Save $80 in 4 weeks. That’s a strong 1-2 copy punch combo: Achieve X in Y amount of time. 

• Effective account creation flow: The steps are numbered and labeled, clearly managing visitor expectations every step of the way. All the visitor is required to do is click away at the options as they reach the last leg of the race (indicated in glowing gold!). Talk about giving the visitor a sense of satisfaction.

They make getting all that food delivered right to your doorstep look effortless. (And tasty too.) Mwah! A chef’s kiss.

12. Libris/PhotoShelter (free trial sign up page)

Libris by PhotoShelter is the final boss of digital asset management tools. If you need a way to manage your visual assets, then you just can’t say no to Libris, and this landing page shows you why. 

Key points about this sign up page example:

Libris’ no-brainer offer ticks all the boxes.

• 60-day trial? Check.
• Body copy explaining how Libris can make life a little easier for your marketing team? Check.
• Two different-colored buttons hinting at different purposes? Check. 
• Awesome aerial shot of a beach with very few people to line this up with the “exclusive” feel and mention in the headline? Check.
• A badge showcasing a super-recent award as a Top 100 software company from G2? Amazing!

If you’ve got it, flaunt it, especially if you’ve received a significant award and recognition from an industry leader in your space. The award from G2 is a major trust booster and signals indirectly to your visitors that they’re missing out if they don’t try Libris out.

One thing I would test is the “limited time offer” message. When something’s limited, you should indicate the period or the deadline. Don’t do it, and your message can feel somewhat generic and fall flat. Do it, and make your target audience perceive and feel the scarcity. Feeling inspired yet? (If you need even more inspiration, check out these examples of evergreen SaaS landing pages.)

13. Atlassian (registration sign up page)

Sometimes a sign up landing page’s design can say a lot without saying a lot (of words), and the sign up page for software company Atlassian is the perfect example of that. The overall design is actually pretty simple, but underneath that simplicity lies a foundation that was built with a lot of planning and forethought.

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Simplicity: If you want to sign up using your email address, all you have to do is toss it into the single field and you’re ready to move on to the next step. What could be easier?
• Versatile sign-up options: By offering the ability to sign up using well-known services from Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Slack, this page not only provides seamless convenience but also shows off their tech chops. Basically, they’re saying, “Yeah, we know our stuff, and we work with the big players in the tech industry.”
• Brand consistency: Visitors who are already using other Atlassian products have the option to sign up using their currently existing Atlassian login details. This eliminates the need to create separate login accounts for different products.

14. Typeform (registration sign up page)

While putting together a blog post about how to create excellent sign up landing pages, we couldn’t resist including an example from Typeform, a company that specializes in creating sign up forms. Since getting people to sign up is at the heart of their business, Typeform obviously knows how to do it right.

Key points about this sign up page example:

• Clean, attractive design: The uncluttered layout, the simple black/white motif, and minimal copy—everything about this page feels welcoming and easy to absorb. Even the main headline on the left is like a friendly greeting: “Sign up and come on in”.
• Streamlined sign-up process: On the right side Typeform offers three simple sign up options: Google, Microsoft, and email. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

How to create a sign up landing page

Now that you’ve been inspired by some stellar examples of sign up landing pages, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty details of how you can start building your own. 

Design: dress to impress

First things first: your landing page needs to look sharp. The design should be clean, eye-catching, and reflective of your brand personality. Think of it as the storefront of your online shop—it needs to invite people in, and one way you can accomplish that is with a clean design that only includes the essential elements.

Quick tip:

Use a visually appealing color scheme and high-quality images that resonate with your target audience. Remember, the goal is to make a lasting first impression. And if design isn’t your thing, no problems—we’ve got hundreds of templates you can choose from.

Copy: only the essentials

Make sure all the messaging on your page is focused on the single, crucial goal of giving the reader only the details that they need to decide to sign up. Your words should be clear, concise, and speak directly to the needs and desires of your potential customers.

Quick tip:

Highlight the benefits of signing up, not just the features of your product or service. And if you’re looking for help generating copy, give our AI-powered copy generator Smart Copy a try—with just a few clicks you can fill your page with professional, high-quality messaging.

CTA: an irresistible invite

Your call to action (CTA) is the moment of truth, the final nudge that (hopefully) convinces your visitor to sign up. Make your CTA button stand out with compelling text and maybe a contrasting color. It should create a sense of urgency or enthusiasm.

Quick tip:

Use action-oriented language like “Start My Free Trial” instead of the mundane “Submit” or “Sign Up.”

Mobile-friendly: look good on any device

In today’s increasingly mobile-first world, having a mobile-responsive page is non-negotiable. It’s like being fluent in multiple languages—you need to communicate effectively with everyone. A great mobile experience ensures your landing page looks and functions perfectly on any device.

Quick tip:

Test your landing page on various devices to ensure seamless navigation and readability. Large buttons and legible fonts are your best friends.

Fast loading speed: speed is key

In the digital world, speed is everything. A slow-loading page doesn’t just provide a poor experience, it also can drop your SERP ranking and thus reduce incoming traffic (gulp). Optimize your landing page to load quickly to reduce bounce rates and improve user experience.

Quick tip:

Optimize images, leverage browser caching, and minimize HTTP requests to enhance your page loading speed.

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Test and refine: the road to continuous improvement

Resist the urge to put up your feet and relax after publishing your page—instead, start testing to see how your page is performing. After you’ve identified which page elements aren’t doing so hot, make tweaks and test again. This is an essential step on the way to higher conversion rates.

Quick tip:

Use A/B testing to check the performance of one element at a time. Or you can save time and effort by using Smart Traffic, the AI-powered optimization tool that automatically directs visitors to the variant of a webpage that’s most likely to resonate with them, based on their characteristics or past behavior.

Need a deeper dive on the ABCs of creating a sign up landing page that converts? This step-by-step guide will show you everything you need to know.

Signing up for success

All right, time to saddle up on your business horse and show your chops by creating some high-converting sign up pages. By following the tips we’ve provided above, you’ll be well on your way to hitting your conversion goals and getting that well-deserved high-five from your boss.

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Landing pages

Lead generation

Conversion optimization

Digital content

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is a product landing page?
2. Landing page vs product page: what’s the difference?
3. The essential elements of a product landing page
4. Why do you need a product landing page?
5. Product landing page design best practices
6. How to create a product landing page
7. 8 product landing page examples

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Alan O’Sullivan

Alan is a content strategist and writer who works at the intersection of business needs and people needs, which is a fancy schmancy way of saying his goal is to make everyone happy most of the time. His passions include pushing back against the notion that nobody reads and annoying his kids with very bad jokes about broccoli.

» More blog posts by Alan O’Sullivan

Ok, maybe we’re hyping up their selling power here, but only a little. While they obviously don’t turn every site visit into a sale, well-designed product landing pages that are tailored to the right audience at the right time can, in fact, sweep visitors off their digital feet.

Like anything else in marketing, there’s both an art and a science to doing this effectively. In this post, we’ll look at how you can build product landing pages that attract, engage, and convert.

What is a product landing page?

Before we dive into the deep end, let’s define the basics. What is a product landing page, exactly?

A product landing page is a specialized type of web page that has a singular purpose: to convert incoming traffic that’s sent its way and sell the absolute bananas out of a specific product. Even bananas.

Unlike standard product pages—which are broadly informative for users in any stage of the purchasing journey—product landing pages narrow a visitor’s focus for a deeper look at a product’s features, benefits, and the reasons why it’s a must-have. 

In this sense, a well-designed product landing page is really the digital equivalent of an artfully delivered, targeted, and precise IRL sales pitch—just with 100% less in-your-face sales guy to deal with.   

Landing page vs product page: what’s the difference? 

There isn’t really a substantive difference between a landing page and a product landing page. They’re often used interchangeably as terms, and most of the time either/or works just fine. 

For instance, let’s say you’re planning the marketing strategy for your company’s latest and greatest doohickey and you write “create a landing page” on the whiteboard as an action item. Nobody’s gonna cut you off and say “Well actually, we need to create a product landing page, not just a landing page .” 

(In the rare chance this does happen, we recommend responding with a dramatic staredown—don’t say a word, just lock eyes and wait ‘em out. Works every time.) 

All that being said, there is a subtle difference between the two if you really want to get technical. While landing pages aim to convert visitors into leads or customers, not all of them are selling a product. For example, some landing pages might be promoting a service, event, or newsletter. 

Product landing pages, on the other hand, are exclusively focused on selling a product. It might be a physical product, digital product, or even a set of products. But selling a product is always the star of the show.

And when we say “product,” it doesn’t have to be limited to an actual physical doohickey that you can hold in your hand. Product landing pages can also sell services, software, memberships, online courses, and more.

The essential elements of a product landing page 

Just like baking a cake, when you’re creating a product landing page you need to include some essential ingredients—otherwise the whole thing might come out of the oven looking like an oversized cupcake that was left out in the rain. 

To stretch the analogy even further, if you want your product landing pages to sell your products like hotcakes, they’ll need to have: 

1. Compelling copy

Headlines might be the most important ingredients to consider. This is especially true for your H1, since it’s the first thing most visitors to the page will read and in a split second it will help the visitor decide to stay or bounce off. If the H1 does its job and a visitor’s interest gets piqued, the rest of the copy above the fold is likely what’s going to pull them further down the page to learn more. 

Your copy also needs to highlight the product’s features, but don’t just stop there. Include benefits that sing “This product will make your life better because…” It’s like telling someone not just that the cake is chocolate, but that it’s a rich, Belgian chocolate experience that will dance on their taste buds and light up their day.

If copywriting isn’t part of your wheelhouse, no problem—Smart Copy is an AI-powered copy generator that can fill your product landing pages with enticing, picture-painting details with just the click of a button.

2. Powerful design

Let’s talk aesthetics. A good design with high-quality images is like the plating of your dish—it needs to be inviting and mouth-watering. Consider adding videos or animations if they complement your product.

And it’s not just about the product images—the overall design of a product landing page should be attractive and consistent with your brand. Focus on creating a design that is not only pleasing to the eye but also establishes a visual feel that invites the visitor to keep scrolling.

Need some help with design? Feel free to browse through hundreds of landing page templates and choose the one that’s perfect for you.

3. Social proof

Next, bring in the cheerleaders—your satisfied customers. Reviews and testimonials are as valuable as (digital) gold because they build trust faster than you can say “Add to Cart.” Display them proudly; they’re your product’s standing ovation.

4. Pricing details

Make your pricing as clear as a summer’s day—no one likes to go hunting for the price or get surprised at the checkout. If you can, throw in a sweet deal or discount and watch those conversion numbers rise faster than a hot air balloon.

5. FAQ

The humble FAQ section is the unsung hero of decision-making. This is where you tackle those pesky doubts and questions head-on. Think of it as your customer service rep, always ready with a helpful answer. A well-crafted FAQ section can turn a “maybe” into a “yes, please!”

6. CTA

Your call to action (CTA) isn’t just a button—it’s your “Buy Now” siren call. Make it bold, make it big, and make it irresistible. It should be the easiest step on your page, like slipping into a pair of comfy slippers.

Each of these elements work together to create an effective product landing page that converts. If you’re missing even just one of these, chances are the page’s performance will suffer. 

Why do you need a product landing page? 

If you’re an ecommerce professional who cares about increasing conversions and making sales, then you should care about product landing pages, because they can be conversion machines. 

(And hey, if you’re an ecommerce professional who doesn’t care about increasing conversions and making sales, well, that’s cool. Sort of?)

Anyway, the reasons why product landing pages are so great for conversion aren’t all that surprising. For starters, they showcase a product’s features and benefits in an efficient and compelling way. 

They also keep a visitor’s attention squarely focused on the product and offer, instead of distracting them with secondary links or options. Best of all, they usually match a visitor’s interest in the product or product category, since they probably already clicked an ad or social media post teasing what the product offers. 

Add it all up and you have a page designed from top to bottom, to capitalize on someone’s need for (or interest in) a product just like yours. It’s a match made in marketing heaven. 

TL;DR if you’re trying to sell a product online, a product landing page is your best option. 

Product landing page design best practices 

The overall design of your product landing page can make or break its effectiveness. If you want to increase your chances of nailing it the first time around, follow some of these best practices to turn it into the Ryan Gosling of product landing pages—in other words, something that performs as good as it looks. 

1. Essential elements

Earlier in this post we covered all the must-have elements that should be part of any self-respecting product landing page. Feel free to review that list before you keep reading.

2. Make it user-friendly

A great product landing page is one that’s easy for users to navigate, find the information they need, and take action. A clean layout, logical flow, and intuitive navigation enhance user engagement in a big way. 

3. Optimize for mobile

With more than half of all global web traffic now being conducted on mobile devices, your product landing pages simply have to be optimized for mobile. Since more and more people these days are shopping on their phones and tablets, failing to make your pages mobile-friendly means potentially losing out on over half of your customers. 

4. Check your load speed

It’s no secret that slow sites lead to fast bounces. A quick-loading product landing page is essential to keep potential customers around long enough to get their interest piqued enough to keep exploring below the fold. Optimize images and videos for the web and consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to improve load times.

5. Keep your messaging consistent

The messaging on your product landing page should align with that of your advertising campaigns or any pre-click experiences the user might have arrived from. This consistency reassures visitors they’ve come to the right place to purchase and reduces potential frustration. For instance, if your ad highlights the eco-friendly features of the product, your landing page should prominently feature and expand upon this aspect.

6. Think about readability

Choose fonts that are easy on the eyes and ensure the font size is appropriate for reading on both desktop and mobile. Use headers effectively to structure your content and make it skimmable. Bullet points can be a great way to break down product features or benefits clearly and concisely. 

7. Refine your CTA

Make the path to purchase as straightforward as possible. Your CTA should be prominently placed and easy to find. But putting your CTA in a direct line of sight is only half the battle. Refining the message in your CTA (and immediately around it) is the other half. You can do this by conducting qualitative testing with user testing groups in your key demo, as well as with A/B tests of different messaging variants. 

8. Follow SEO best practices 

While SEO is often considered a broader website strategy, ensuring your product landing pages are optimized for search engines is crucial. Use relevant keywords naturally in your copy, optimize your meta tags, and ensure your images have descriptive, keyword-rich alt tags. This not only helps in driving organic traffic but also enhances the overall user experience.

9. Meet accessibility standards 

Ensure that your product landing page is accessible to all potential customers, including those with disabilities. This means considering elements like text size, color contrast, and alt text for images. Accessible design not only broadens your potential audience but also reflects well on your brand’s values.

10. Stay true to your brand 

The visual appeal of your product landing page should align with your brand identity. This means using the colors, fonts, and imagery that reflect your brand and appeal to your target audience. Doing this helps build and maintain trust with online shoppers, as anything less can come across as unprofessional or even untrustworthy. 

11. Let data lead the way 

Use analytics and user feedback to continually optimize your landing page. Heat maps, for instance, can show where users are clicking and how far they are scrolling, helping you understand which elements are working and which aren’t. A/B testing different design elements can provide insights into what resonates best with your audience. 

You can also explore an AI-powered conversion optimization tool like Smart Traffic, which automatically sends visitors to page variants where they’re most likely to convert and can boost conversions up to 30% on average.

How to create a product landing page 

As we mentioned earlier, creating dynamite product landing pages is both an art and a science. But that doesn’t mean you need to break out your favorite set of watercolors or throw on a lab coat—instead, just follow these steps.

Keep calm and use a landing page builder 

With the right tools at your disposal you can build, iterate, test, and refine quickly and without any hard coding skills. We’re obviously kinda biased but we feel Unbounce’s Classic Builder and Smart Builder are two of the best options around.

What makes them so good? The short answer is they’re intuitive, powerful, versatile, and used by more than 15,000 brands to build landing pages. The longer answer? Well, we could rattle on about this for days but we’ll try to keep it succinct: 

Classic Builder: easy to use, with total control 

Classic Builder is for marketers who like to roll up their sleeves and have total control over what they’re building, but without getting bogged down in the process. The drag-and-drop editor makes creating and iterating a breeze, while custom-code functionality means you can still fine-tune your page to fit your precise needs. 

Smart Builder: speedy and simple

If you’re feeling the need for speed instead, Unbounce’s Smart Builder is an AI-powered landing page builder that can help you create a page from scratch in minutes. All you need to do is answer a few prompts and AI will do the rest, instantly generating a page for you to review, revise, and edit or adjust as needed. 

Want to see it in action? Watch this video to see how Smart Builder was used to create a seasonal landing page campaign in minutes.

How to build a landing page, step-by-step

Need a deeper dive on the ABCs of creating a landing page that works? This step-by-step guide will show you everything you need to know, from how to set a campaign goal to testing and optimizing your page after you hit publish. 

8 product landing page examples 

Okay, now that you know how to create product landing pages that sell, let’s take a peek at some homerun examples. 

You can use these as inspiration to think about how you can create pages for your site or products, or you might even find an idea or two to steal and make your own. 

Skylight (single product landing page) 

Skylight is a physical digital calendar that aims to streamline family organization and time management. It’s a smart little product that solves a universal problem for busy families: Complicated schedules that are next to impossible to keep straight. Soccer practice on Tuesdays, dance practice on Thursdays, Nana picks up the kids from school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and so on. IYKYK, right parents? 

With all that to work with, the Skylight team hit all the right notes on their landing page. Their messaging and visuals speak directly to busy parents, even emphasizing that the calendar is so simple the kids can use it too. 

Why we love it: 

• Persuasive messaging that targets the pain points of busy parents 
• Clear and simple layout that’s easy to scan in seconds 
• Oodles of social proof to back up their claims 
• Comparison chart of competing products 

Oura Ring (multi-product landing page) 

Oura Ring’s main product landing page doesn’t just cover a single item. Instead, it showcases their entire range of rings by highlighting what’s so unique about them—namely, that they use smart technology to track your sleep, health, and fitness activity. Think fitness tracker, but instead of a band or watch, it’s a stylish ring.

What’s really interesting about Oura Ring’s product landing page is how little emphasis it places on the style and fashion of their products. You’d think this would be a differentiating factor from fitness bands and watches that the Oura Ring team would want to highlight. Instead, the content of the page is mostly focused on explaining how the technology is on par—or even superior—to bands and watches, with messaging like: “Your finger provides the most accurate reading for over 20 biometrics like heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen, and more.”

Why we love it: 

• Stylish page design and aesthetic encourages exploration 
• High-quality images and graphics showcase the rings and underlying tech 
• Direct messaging avoids hyperbole and subjective takes on style 
• Big time social proof: “One million members (and counting)” 

Notion (software product landing page) 

Notion probably doesn’t need much of an introduction. It’s the notetaking and collaborative digital workspace everyone either loves or hates, and passionately so. No matter what your feelings about it are, Notion’s product landing page is something to cherish, drool over, study, and maybe even steal some ideas from. 

The big highlight is a variety of simple interactive visuals that give you instant previews of what the product is, the features it offers, and how it works. By the time you’re halfway down the page it feels like you’ve already had a lightweight product demo, all in a matter of seconds. The simplicity of the page and product previews align with the barebones nature of the product itself as well, which is a great touch. 

Why we love it: 

• Interactive visuals that show off the product, almost like a demo 
• Big bold headlines that make the content easy to scan and skim 
• Social proof from big companies and individual users 
• Overview of community resources that show an endless range of uses 

Justin Welsh’s Content Operating System (digital product landing page) 

Justin Welsh is a marketing influencer who’s primarily known for his newsletter and LinkedIn content. All of his marketing efforts funnel readers to a few digital products, one of which is The Content Operating System, a digital download that aims to provide you with tips, tools, and templates to create compelling content for growing an audience on LinkedIn. 

If his product landing page for the Content Operating System is any indication of what’s in the course, then that course is probably well worth the price tag of $150. From top to bottom the page sports an eye-catching design punctuated by big headlines, 5-star reviews, and shades of blue that create a cohesive look and feel. 

What stands out above all else is the absurd amount of social proof. There are user reviews all over this page, including endlessly scrolling columns of reviews in the header! This is a bold design we haven’t seen anywhere else, and it works. 

Why we love it: 

• Reviews, reviews, reviews—this page is positively drowning in social proof, even video reviews 
• Hard stats: With this product “17,000+ students have generated over 9.2 Billion impressions”
• Clear and non-hyperbolic outline of what you’ll learn 
• Long FAQ section to answer additional questions 

Dialpad (SaaS product landing page)

Dialpad is a SaaS platform that provides a range of tools and features under different packages. At its heart, Dialpad is contact center software that provides all-in-one services like VoIP and a CRM. Beyond these basics, Dialpad’s big focus is on using AI to streamline the work of call centers and sales teams with things like automated call summaries, real-time AI-powered call coaching, and more. 

The landing page is stuffed with content and callouts of different Dialpad features, making it abundantly clear that Dialpad itself is stuffed with innovative AI-powered features. It’s a smart way to showcase the sheer amount of tools available to teams that decide to leverage the platform. 

Why we love it: 

• Clean layout and straightforward tone balances well with the overload of info 
• Short video provides a quick overview of the product and its use cases 
• High-quality screenshots show the product in action 

Juno (free product trial landing page) 

Juno is a mattress-in-a-box company that, like all of its major competitors, offers an extensive sleep trial period. You can buy a mattress, get it shipped to your home, open it, and sleep on it for up to 120 nights before deciding whether you want to keep it or not. If you don’t like it for any reason, you can get a full refund. 

Most (if not all) mattress-in-a-box companies offer a sleep trial. It’s a logical way to allay fears someone might have about buying a mattress without trying it first, and encourage them to give it a shot. 

However, a few things set Juno’s landing page apart: For starters, they have an entire landing page dedicated to their sleep trial offer, while most competitors only mention it briefly on product pages. 

Additionally, Juno’s page is incredibly simple, mostly amounting to a step-by-step breakdown of how the sleep trial works and what to do if you want to get a refund later on. If you’re on the fence about a mattress-in-a-box and you’re skeptical about sleep trials (or think the return process will be too complicated) this page will put all your worries to, well, bed. 

Why we love it: 

• Super simple design puts the focus on the messaging 
• Reassuring voice and tone make it clear the process is simple and uncomplicated 
• Single CTA at the bottom of the page encourages readers to try the trial now (by buying a mattress) 

Calm (health product landing page) 

Calm is a well known mobile app that offers tools and tips to help you destress, sleep better, and be more mindful. If you haven’t tried the app, it can be hard to understand what exactly any of that means. For instance, what the heck are sleep stories? And why do I need an app to tell me when to breathe? Meditation? I’ve always heard it’s really hard to do well—how on Earth is a simple little app on my phone going to help? 

What’s so great about Calm’s site is how effectively it weaves in little previews of the product. On their Stress & Anxiety product landing page, for example, you’ll find a live breathing exercise similar to what’s in the app, as well as free samples of in-app content for a variety of topics. This essentially lets you give the app a trial run without having to download it or create an account. 

Why we love it: 

• Free samples of in-app content let you try before you buy 
• Includes an FAQ section that answers stress and anxiety questions—not just product questions 
• Social proof shows how real people are using the app  

iPhone 15 Pro (coming soon product landing page) 

Ok listen now, don’t roll your eyes. We know Apple already gets a lot of attention for its marketing, especially from marketers. But sometimes the results are hard to argue with. The pre-order product landing page for the iPhone 15 Pro is a classic example. 

From top to bottom visitors are treated to mesmerizing visuals, from close-up product shots to videos to interactive elements, as well as examples of photos and videos taken with the iPhone 15 Pro’s camera. Sprinkled in for good measure is Apple’s signature voice and tone with cool headlines like “A camera that captures your wildest imagination.” 

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Explore our resource library

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Landing pages

Digital content

Ecommerce

Digital marketing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is ecommerce conversion rate optimization?
2. Why is ecommerce conversion rate optimization important?
3. What is a good ecommerce conversion rate?
4. How to improve ecommerce CRO
5. Tools for conversion rate optimization
6. Examples of great ecommerce conversion rate optimization

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Alan O’Sullivan

Alan is a content strategist and writer who works at the intersection of business needs and people needs, which is a fancy schmancy way of saying his goal is to make everyone happy most of the time. His passions include pushing back against the notion that nobody reads and annoying his kids with very bad jokes about broccoli.

» More blog posts by Alan O’Sullivan

Think of it this way: What if you could move your metrics in all the right directions without increasing your marketing budget?

Or, better yet, what if hitting your conversion benchmarks didn’t mean endlessly scratching and clawing to bring in more and more traffic?

Best of all: What if you were able to transform yourself from the marketer who’s always asking for more ad spend, into the savvy digital strategist who knows how to get more ROI out of less dollars spent?

We know there’s a lot of noise online about conversion rate optimization, so it’s natural to be skeptical. We get it. But the truth is CRO is as real and honest a friend you can have in the game of digital marketing.

When done right, conversation rate optimization for ecommerce makes it easier for marketers to hit their conversion benchmarks by turning more of the traffic they’re already getting into paying customers. That’s every marketer’s dream, right?

So if you’re wondering how you can start putting CRO best practices to work for you and your team, you’re in the right place.

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the ABCs of conversion rate optimization for ecommerce—from what it is in theory, to what it looks like in practice.

Let’s dive in.

What is ecommerce conversion rate optimization?

Before getting into CRO best practices it’s helpful to understand (or get a quick refresher on) a few basic terms and concepts, so let’s start there.

If this feels a bit too much like Marketing 101, feel free to skip down to where we provide some top tips you can use to improve conversion rate optimization for your site.

Conversions

Every website has actions it wants its visitors to take, which are generally known as conversions. For some websites, the desired conversions might be actions like downloading a white paper or filling out a form. 

For ecommerce sites, conversions are ultimately about selling products. While the primary conversion point in ecomm is when a sale is made, it’s not the only one. Other actions might include things like: 

• Adding an item to a wishlist
• Adding an item to a cart 
• Signing up for a newsletter 

Tracking and understanding conversions is important because they help you identify which steps in a user’s journey are working and which ones aren’t. For example, if your conversion rate for “visitors who add a product to their cart” is solid, but your conversion rate for “users who successfully check out” is so bad it’s all anyone can talk about on the team Slack channel, then there might be a problem in your checkout flow. 

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) 

There are no big surprises here. As the name suggests, conversion rate optimization is all about getting more of your existing visitors to complete desired actions. For ecommerce sites, that ultimately means turning a bigger percentage of traffic into paying customers. 

At a nuts and bolts level, ecommerce CRO is a set of practices that can include things like A/B testing, qualitative user testing, user journey mapping, and more. Really, it’s about putting on your detective hat (which doesn’t have to look like a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, but hey, why not?) to get a better understanding of what’s driving, persuading, and preventing your customers from taking action. 

Calculating conversion rate 

Calculating conversion rates is simple. You take the total number of conversions, divide that number by the total number of visitors, and multiply by 100 to get a percentage: 

(Conversions) (Visitors) x 100 = Conversion Rate 

So if you had 100 conversions and 5,000 visitors in a set time period, your conversion rate would be 2% (100 divided by 5,000, then multiplied by 100) for that time period. 

But hold up—before you bust out your calculator, a word of warning: As simple as this formula is, it’s also easy to make simple mistakes that’ll skew your data if you’re not comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. 

For example, let’s say you want to calculate the conversion rate for a specific product listed on a specific page being added to the shopping cart. In this scenario, you need to make sure you’re only including visitors to that specific page (and within the same time period) in your calculation, as opposed to the total number of visitors across your site (including other pages) who added that product to their cart. This might seem like an obvious callout but mistakes like this are easy to make and can throw off your CRO efforts before you even get started. 

Why is ecommerce conversion rate optimization important?

There are only a handful of digital marketing levers you can pull if you want to systematically increase your ROI in ecommerce. 

The one that always attracts the most attention is the goal of driving more traffic to your site through tactics like paid advertising, influencer campaigns on social media, and SEO. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with these, or with the goal of driving more traffic to your site, but they can become costly, increasingly competitive, and even reach a point of diminishing returns. 

The other big lever you can pull is the goal of improving conversion rates on the traffic you’re already receiving. Where tactics like SEO focus on bringing more people to your digital storefront, CRO is focused on getting more of them to browse through your store (i.e. spend some time on your page) and eventually whip out their credit card or pop in their contact details.

Put another way: Successful conversation rate optimization in ecommerce means increasing sales without increasing your marketing budget. 

It’s important to note that, while increasing sales is the ultimate goal in ecommerce, it’s not the only reason why CRO is so valuable. Since the practice of conversion rate optimization is so inherently focused on improving user experiences, sites that nail it also tend to enjoy perks like: 

• Lower bounce rates 
• Lower cart abandonment rates 
• Improved customer retention rates 
• Enhanced customer trust and loyalty
• A more nuanced understanding of their customer’s needs 

What is a good ecommerce conversion rate?

So, what ecommerce conversion rate should you be shooting for? 

High-five-worthy conversion rates are different for every industry, and even within industries you can see a huge amount of variance. For instance, across ecommerce as a whole we’ve found a median conversion rate of 5.2%. But within ecommerce, conversion rates can be as high as 12.9%.

You can dive deeper into the data and find the typical conversion rate for your ecommerce niche in our Conversion Benchmark Report, which also includes insights on proven CRO tactics that are working best in each industry. 

Setting your own ecommerce conversion rate goals 

Industry benchmarks aren’t the be-all and end-all of finding conversion rate success. You might not be where the rest of your industry is right now—or even later—and that’s ok. The key word to focus on in “conversion rate optimization” is the last one: optimization. 

What matters most—especially if you’re just starting your CRO journey—is setting goals that are realistic, reasonable, and attainable. Your goal is to make steady improvements. Remember, even small increases in conversion rate can result in big revenue gains over time. 

How to improve ecommerce CRO

The good news: There’s no shortage of things you can do to start improving conversion rates on your ecommerce site. In fact, there are so many big and small methods to try it can be tough to know where you should start. 

The not-so-good news: There’s also no single silver bullet approach—every site is unique and can benefit from a different mix of tactics. But don’t let that discourage you. Some of these best practices can be executed with fairly minimal effort, which can give you some quick wins and start building positive momentum. 

1. Create streamlined landing pages

Landing pages should be designed with the intention of driving each visitor to a single goal. Not several goals, not primary goals and secondary goals—just one goal. Well-designed ecommerce landing pages with a single focus—such as selling the benefits of a single product or service—have a much higher chance of conversion than pages with competing calls-to-action or links that take them further away from making a purchase decision. Unbounce tools like Smart Builder make it easy to create streamlined, optimized, and focused landing pages that convert. 

Tip: Only include a single call-to-action on the page, or multiple calls-to-action that all lead to the same destination. You can also find the step-by-step process to create a landing page here.

2. Follow clear and uncluttered UX principles 

Most people browsing the web today are like a child working on a class project—they’re  task-oriented but have ultra-short attention spans. Ecommerce shoppers are no different. Clear and uncluttered UX designs make it easier for them to find exactly what they’re looking for in an online store. If they have to navigate through too many visual distractions, confusing interaction design, poor information architecture, or inconsistent terminology, their visit likely won’t last long. 

Tip: Focus first on simplifying navigation, clarifying category labels, and ensuring your site search is effective. Those are three big factors in keeping visitors on your site and encouraging them to explore more, rather than bouncing in frustration.

Follow these conversion focused design principles to elevate your user experience and keep visitors engaged on your landing page.

3. Add trust signals and social proof 

How you describe your own product or service will always pale in comparison to the first-hand experience of other paying customers. Those opinions don’t always have to be glowing, either. Even a large amount of average reviews is a highly useful trust signal that your ecommerce store is active and making sales. 

Tip: If you haven’t already, add social signals like customer reviews and star ratings to your product pages. You can also automate post-purchase follow-up emails to encourage customers to submit a review about their recent purchase, which will help you attract more reviews. 

Ready to witness a conversion boost? Explore these tips on leveraging social proof effectively for maximum business success.

4. Optimize for mobile devices 

Nearly 60% of all global web traffic is done on mobile devices, while more than 90% of web users access the internet from a mobile phone at least some of the time. These are staggering numbers, yet there are still ecommerce stores on the web that aren’t responsive or optimized for mobile devices.  

Bottom line: If your digital store isn’t mobile friendly, anyone not on a laptop or desktop is probably bouncing and heading to the next search result in Google. 

Tip: Don’t just optimize your ecommerce store to be mobile-friendly. Design it for mobile from the very start, and make sure it looks good on any size screen. 

Ready to create a seamless mobile experience for your audience? Check out these mobile-friendly landing page examples for inspiration and turn clicks into conversions!

5. Simplify the checkout process 

Checking out on an ecommerce site in 2023 should be simple, fast, and flexible. Here are a few simple rules of thumb to keep in mind as you’re putting your checkout experience under the microscope:  

• Reduce the number of steps
• Provide a range of payment options
• Give visitors the option to check out as a guest—without creating an account

In short, customers shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to make a purchase. If you want to increase your ecommerce conversion rates, simplifying your checkout process is a must. (We have a few useful tips to make your checkout process so smooth it’ll make butter jealous.)

Tip: If you’re not sure where to start, try a few rounds of live user testing on your current checkout experience. This will give you valuable qualitative insights into what customers like, don’t like, and are unsure about during the checkout process. 

6. Use short, simple messaging

The goal of your store’s copy should be to answer questions and inspire action. The best way to do that is to keep all of your messaging short, simple, and authentic. That means prioritizing functionality over creativity, and brevity over wordiness. It also means cutting out hyperbole and overly promotional clichés. If you can do this, your customers will have an easier time finding the things they want on your site. 

Tip: Aim for a grade 6 reading level in your website copy. You can check this yourself using tools like Hemingway Editor. Also, avoid words that aren’t typically spoken aloud in casual conversation. Try reading your copy out loud—if any of it sounds stilted or awkward take another pass at it. (You can also use AI tools, like Smart Copy.)

7. Don’t just track metrics—test, test, test 

Deliberately testing the changes you’re making helps you discover what works in a methodical way. Instead of trying a few things and seeing how your overall conversion rate changes, you’ll find more success if you conduct specific A/B tests and measure those results incrementally. 

For example, if you want to increase clicks on a landing page, start by testing one small change first, such as the headline or CTA copy, rather than rewriting the entire page. The goal of testing is to pinpoint areas of improvement with precision. 

Tip: A/B testing isn’t perfect and has some drawbacks: It can be slow, requires a lot of effort, and needs a lot of traffic to increase accuracy. Thankfully there are tools like Smart Traffic, which streamlines testing by assessing visitor attributes and automatically sending traffic to the pages where they’re most likely to convert. 

8. Offer personalized recommendations

Do you prefer when someone talks to you, or just speaks in your general direction? We’re guessing the former, especially when you’re trying to get more information to decide if you want to buy something.

That’s why tailoring the shopping experience to individual preferences can significantly enhance user engagement and increase sales. If your team’s capabilities and tech stack are up to the task (we know, easier said than done) you can use data analytics and AI to provide personalized product recommendations to customers, based on their browsing history and past purchases. This is a pretty advanced move so make sure you’ve got good relationships with the devs and engineers on your team (free coffees and treats might help) if you’re trying to get something like this implemented. 

Tip: The sky is the limit for what you can do with personalization, but if you’re just getting started then keep it simple. For instance, adding “Products you might like” to various pages of your site—including product pages—is a solid first step.

9. Ensure your messaging matches across experiences 

Consistency in messaging across all channels—your website, social media, email campaigns, and any other digital touchpoints—is crucial. This not only helps maintain your brand standards but also improves the overall user experience. 

By aligning the words and phrases used in different touchpoints you’re minimizing the potential for confusion or uncertainty. For instance, if your social media promos are hyping up your holiday sale by telling everyone to enter promo code “HoHoHo” during checkout, you better make sure that input field in your checkout is clearly labelled and easy to find. 

Tip: If you don’t know where to start, begin by auditing the cross-channel user journeys or campaigns that bring in the highest amounts of traffic. Review them regularly to ensure the messaging at each touchpoint is consistent and aligned. 

10. Reduce loading times 

Website speed is a critical factor, not only for user experience but also for search engine rankings. A slow-loading website can increase bounce rates and significantly lower conversion rates, not to mention downgrading your ranking on search results. 

There are a lot of different and useful technical tactics that can be used to reduce a website’s loading times. Some of them will require close collaboration with your tech teams, including engineers and developers. 

Tip: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website’s performance and provide recommendations to improve load times. 

Tools for conversion rate optimization 

It’s not all about tactics. Having the right tools for the job makes a big difference as well. These are a few of our favorites—and yep, we’re adding some of our own to the list because they work great and, well, we kinda like ‘em (and we think you will too!).

Hotjar 

Image courtesy of Hotjar.

Hotjar is an uber-popular tool for UX designers and researchers, and for good reason. It includes a bunch of cool tools that help you get more insights into the behavior of our site visitors. This includes things like heat maps, visitor recordings, and conversion funnels. 

Basically, Hotjar helps you understand how users interact with your site—where they’re running into roadblocks, what’s causing them confusion, and so on. This can reveal pain points and areas for improvement, such as which parts of a page are getting the most attention (yay!) and where visitors are dropping off (boo!).

Microsoft Clarity 

Image courtesy of Microsoft Clarity

Like Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity is a tool for analyzing user behavior through features like heatmaps and session recordings. Clarity doesn’t offer the full suite of tools that Hotjar provides—for instance, it only integrates with Google Analytics whereas Hotjar works with over 1,000 other services via Zapier—but it does offer more features in its free plan than you’ll see in Hotjar’s free plan. 

Google Analytics 

Image courtesy of Google Analytics

Ah, Google Analytics. If you’re a marketer, you should never leave home without it. This staple of digital marketing toolkits lets you track everything about your website traffic and user behavior, including conversions. If you’re creating a structured plan around conversion rate optimization, ensuring you’re tracking the right metrics in Google Analytics is critical. 

Unbounce Smart Builder

Image courtesy of Unbounce (hey, that’s us!)

Traditionally, creating a high-converting landing page takes time and expertise. But with Smart Builder, you can build an optimized landing page in just a few minutes. It uses AI to create a compelling landing page that you can edit and fine-tune—with no coding required—before you hit publish. Smart Builder is a fast and effective way to get a landing page built with data-backed best practices. 

Unbounce Smart Traffic

Image courtesy of us, again

Smart Traffic is an AI-driven tool that’s all about optimizing user experiences based on data. Your inbound traffic is automatically redirected to the page—or version of a page—that’s most likely to lead them to convert, based on their unique visitor attributes. This all happens in real-time and starts working with as few as 50 visits, making it far quicker and more efficient than A/B testing. And the best part: You’ll get, on average, 30% more sales and signups. (Wipe your mouth, you’re drooling.)

Examples of great ecommerce conversion rate optimization

Tips and tools are great, but the proof is in the pudding. What does CRO look like in practice? Now that you know what to look for, you’ll probably start noticing things that work well and things that don’t as you browse the web yourself. 

Here are a few examples of ecommerce sites that are nailing CRO best practices. 

Allbirds

Image courtesy of Allbirds

Allbirds is an online clothing and shoes retailer that’s all about sustainability and being eco-conscious. Their site features a user-friendly design, high-quality photography, and playful headlines that encourage visitors to get outside and get moving. 

From a CRO perspective, product pages are where the Allbirds experience really shines. In addition to high-quality photos and detailed product descriptions, each page also includes useful information on how to care for the product after you’ve bought it, as well as an explanation about how it was made with sustainable materials. These are small details that can help build trust with potential customers, especially those who connect with Allbirds’ sustainability values. 

To top it off, customer reviews on each Allbirds product page can be filtered by categories like size, fit, activity level, and more. This makes it possible to see reviews that aren’t just relevant to that product, but also to your exact needs with that product. 

CRO tactics that stand out: 

• Clean and uncluttered UX 
• Detailed product description pages 
• Short and simple messaging that gets the message across fast 
• Robust, filterable review system on every product page 

Bellroy

Image courtesy of Bellroy

Bellroy is another ecommerce platform with a strong commitment to sustainability. How strong? Its “About us” section—which includes pages about its story, sustainable materials, and commitment to responsible business—is embedded right in the top navigation menu alongside its product categories. If you’re a shopper who also values sustainable products and businesses, this deliberate decision to put Bellroy’s sustainability values on equal footing with its product catalog is a strong hook. 

The site has a fairly typical design for an ecommerce store but some subtle details stand out. For instance, it has a clean and simple navigation with clear product category labels that are also accompanied by product images. Not sure what a key holder is? Or a sling? The images in the navigation give you that little bit of extra context to help you find your way faster. 

When you land on a Bellroy product page, you’ll quickly get a sense of whether the item is what you’re looking for thanks to short and to-the-point descriptions, accompanied by shorter and even-more-to-the-point bullets. Remember, attention spans online are short. Bellroy product pages are easy to scan so shoppers can get the info they need in seconds. 

CRO tactics that stand out: 

• Simple and clear navigation 
• Images in the product hierarchy for enhanced wayfinding 
• Streamlined product description pages

HelloFresh

Image courtesy of HelloFresh

HelloFresh is a meal kit subscription service that aims to “take the stress out of mealtime.” It also takes the stress out of finding a meal kit subscription service, as its homepage works well as a simple, clean, informative, and compelling landing page from top to bottom. 

HelloFresh’s page blends mouthwatering imagery with clear messaging and only a handful of CTAs—all of them aimed at moving visitors a little further down the purchasing funnel. 

While most ecommerce sites have homepages that surface a broad array of products and categories, HelloFresh’s approach is more about educating visitors about how it works and what kind of meals are available. It even has an FAQ section—when was the last time you saw a digital storefront with one of those? 

CRO tactics that stand out: 

• Clear focus on answering shoppers’ questions 
• Transparency into how the service works 
• Social proof on the homepage 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is SaaS marketing?
2. SaaS marketing challenges
3. How to create an effective SaaS marketing strategy
4. Choose the best inbound marketing channels
5. Now that you’ve got the traffic, what’s next?
6. How to measure the effectiveness of SaaS marketing strategies
7. Definitions of commonly-used SaaS terms

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Karine Bengualid

Karine Bengualid is a freelance content writer over at Brought To You By the Letter K with a teensy penchant for Sesame Street. She writes audience-specific stories to connect brands with their ideal customers. When she’s not saving the world from un-fun marketing or researching everything about the science of fun, she’s building her animal rescue, Maison Misha.

» More blog posts by Karine Bengualid

What is SaaS marketing and how is it different from traditional marketing?

SaaS marketing is, well, marketing your SaaS products, which are often subscription-based. It is building brand and product awareness, promoting the software, differentiating between the different price tiers (if you have multiple tiers available), bringing your SaaS to market, and positioning it against the competition.

A SaaS can sometimes offer a freemium or a free trial—that’s when you either have a free tier (which customers can use for no charge, but usually with fewer bells and whistles), or a specified amount of time (often 14- or 30-day trials) where users can test out the service to see if they like it before upgrading to the paid version.

So how is marketing SaaS different from marketing more traditional products like, say, clothes or landscaping or adorable cats available for adoption?

First, because SaaS is usually sold through a subscription model, it brings along the added challenge of keeping your existing customers in order to avoid churn. So while gaining new users is critical, maintaining existing customers is even more so as it brings your LTV:CAC ratio down—which is a good thing. (Not familiar with some of these terms? Don’t worry, we’ve got definitions at the bottom of this page.)

Next, because you’re selling software—something that customers can be using day or night, anywhere in the world—your customer service and responsiveness are also very important. We all know (and don’t love) that tech has a tendency to glitch, but what’s more important is supporting your customers when they help. If your customer service isn’t tops, this will affect how users view your product.

Marketing SaaS means being able to clearly explain what your product does and how it will improve your customers’ lives (whether at home or at work). Sometimes these benefits and features can be more challenging to explain when you’re fighting against a character limit (hello Google Ads!).

And while there are some SaaS products on the market for a B2C audience, the majority are B2B so the customer journey looks a little different and could take a little longer. You also have to be able to market to your main audience (who are going to be using your product regularly) as well as speak to the decision makers (who might not ever use your product directly).

Lastly, the SaaS competition is fierce. There are an estimated 30,000+ different SaaS companies on the market today, and cutting through that digital noise can be harder than finding a needle in a haystack…in a field filled with haystacks.

SaaS marketing challenges

Every marketer faces challenges when it comes to promoting their product or service, and SaaS is no different. Here are a few of the most common challenges and how to address them.

Brand awareness

With a saturated market, how do you make your SaaS stand out from the competition? That’s where your marketing comes in (more on that below). Your focus should be on understanding and targeting your ideal customers, and creating unique content that is educational and informational. 

Customer loyalty

SaaS is a subscription-based product so ensuring your existing customers are happy and satisfied will, in turn, ensure their loyalty to your product. This can be achieved with a great customer onboarding sequence to make sure they know the ins and outs of your product. Releasing new features or fixing common bugs is also another way to ensure customers feel seen and heard.  

Customer service

Not everyone who uses your product will be tech-savvy, so it’s essential to have a customer service team that can help with support requests. Having 24/7 support available is nice but expensive, and it’s not always necessary as long as your customers get the answers they need within a quick and reasonable timeframe. It’s also a good idea to have several communication options available such as live chat, email, and phone support. 

Technical issues

Listen, cutting-edge technology might be all around us but it isn’t foolproof and neither is your SaaS. Glitches and bugs happen but what matters most is how quickly they’re fixed and how well you’re communicating. Offering customers open communication and solid support can spell the difference between customers sticking with you or jumping ship.

How to create an effective SaaS marketing strategy

As with any business, your software as a service needs a marketing plan. This will help ensure you get the word out about your SaaS, find and target your ideal customers, and help you retain customers once they’re paid subscribers.

Establish goals

As with any business or marketing plan, it’s important to start by establishing your goals. Your marketing can serve many purposes, so what is your end objective? What do you want to achieve and how will you achieve it? (We’ll talk later about how to know if or when you’ve achieved said goals in the metrics section below). 

Here are just a few example goals your marketing can help you achieve:

• Develop brand awareness
• Increase free trial signups
• Gain social media followers
• Grow lead generation
• Improve customer retention and satisfaction
• Communicate product features and benefits

Understand and identify your target audience 

You may have heard of the terms “customer personas” or “modalities.” In the simplest form, these are the types of humans who are most likely to buy your product. Since not every product is for everyone (no matter what you might wish—sigh), it’s important to understand who will get the most out of using your SaaS and how to find them. 

Speaking to your ideal customers directly in your marketing will help ensure that you are sending the right message for them to make the purchasing decision. And by knowing your customers, you know where to find them, how they approach purchasing decisions, what information they need to make these decisions, and much more. 

Ask yourself: Who will benefit from my product? If you’re building accounting software for small businesses, then CFOs at enterprise companies aren’t your core audience. On the flip side, the owners of small businesses like plumbing services, freelance graphic design, or local restaurants are right up your alley.

Now that you have some idea of the types of people who will use your software, dig a little deeper into them and pretend you’re watching a movie about their life. (It’s like The Truman Show but less weird.)

• Demographics: What is their gender, age, education, and location? 
• Business type: What industry do they work in, what kinds of titles do they have, do they own the business or work for someone else?
• Challenges: What do they struggle with, what challenges do they face, what motivates them to succeed at work? 
• Habits: Where do they get their news, what social media channels do they use, what kind of shows do they watch? 

Provide value 

The customer journey in SaaS marketing is longer than the typical B2C funnel. After all, it’s much easier to convert a customer purchasing a one-time product they already know they want versus convincing a business to sign up for a monthly subscription. 

However, this entire process is much easier when your value-centric marketing starts with understanding your target audience’s needs, challenges, and pain points. By putting your customers at the center of your strategy, you can create solutions that genuinely address their problems.

Providing value also builds trust and credibility with your audience. When customers perceive that your SaaS product or content genuinely helps them, they are more likely to trust your brand, seek out more content, and eventually become a customer.

Oh, and don’t forget the F-word. (No, not that F-word—we’re trying to keep it family-friendly around here.) You can also increase the value of your product by giving something away for Free. 

Offering free resources, like ebooks, templates, freemiums, or free trials allows potential customers to experience the value of your product first-hand prior to committing to a monthly or annual subscription. (It’s like taking the product out for a test drive but without the smarmy salesperson beside you trying to become your new best friend.)

When value is at the core of your marketing efforts, it’s easier to attract and retain customers. It also lays the foundation for sustained growth.

Choose the best inbound marketing channels

Once you’ve dug deep to learn who your ideal customers are, it’s time to discover where they hang out online and are most likely to engage with your brand. With this information in hand, you can design SaaS digital marketing campaigns around each channel. 

A paid advertising campaign will look very different from a SaaS influencer marketing campaign. And the way you promote your brand on TikTok will vary greatly from how you address your audience in email marketing. 

However, before you get excited and whiteboard your way into a matrix you can’t decipher, let’s take a look at some of the more popular channels for SaaS product marketing. Chances are you won’t use all of these, but it’s still good to understand each channel so you can choose the right ones for your product and audience. 

For example, you might be promoting a SaaS product to help non-tech-savvy small business owners use your tech to make their lives easier without breaking their brains trying to learn a new tool. If so, you’ll most likely find these people on the least techy platform—think Facebook rather than Substack.

While it can be daunting to think about budgeting for multiple SaaS digital marketing campaigns, especially if you’re a small startup, the good news is some of these channels are free. (Whew!)

SaaS content marketing 

SaaS content marketing can take on various forms, from search engine optimization (SEO) to blogging. It’s the most accessible and cost-effective option to engage with your audience and drive traffic to your website. Here are four content marketing avenues considered highly influential for SaaS businesses.

1) Blogging

Publishing educational blog posts that are relevant (and useful) to your audience provides multiple benefits. First, it sets you up as a thought leader in your industry and can bring credibility to your SaaS. You can use your blog to write about industry trends specific to your niche, present forward-thinking ideas, and offer solution-based articles (like, ahem, this one). 

Blog posts are great tools for driving traffic to your website since the more you publish, the greater the chances they’ll get found in a Google search—especially if you’ve got a solid keyword search strategy in place. 

You can also use a blog as a lead generation tool simply by inserting a call to action and maybe a form. The bottom line is: If you aren’t building out your blog, what are you waiting for?

Example: Honeybook

Honeybook is a great example of a SaaS marketed to freelancers publishing blog posts centered around, well, freelancing. As you can see they provide solution-based blogs on how to customize brochures or how to price their services (often a sticky and tricky subject for freelancers!).

Here are just a few of the things Honeybook does to make good use of their blog resources:

• A list of categories is placed on the left side, making it easy to jump directly to the type of content the reader is interested in.
• Honeybook displays thumbnail images for each blog post, creating a visual layout that pleases the eye and engages curiosity.
• The “Our editor’s picks” section highlights specific blog posts and implies that these particular posts have a lot of value to provide.
• For those who prefer watching videos to reading, Honeybook helpfully provides an easily-browsable playlist of video content. 

2) SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your content and website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). (Want to learn more about SEO? We’ve got you covered.)

SEO is crucial for SaaS content marketing because it helps your SaaS content rank higher in search results. And when your content appears on page one of Google, there’s a better chance people will click on it, increasing your organic (read: non-paid) traffic. 

SEO typically includes optimizing on-page features like meta titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and image alt tags to make your content more search engine-friendly. But It’s also about publishing content that people want to read (oops, there’s those blogs again). Google itself says high-quality, informative, and valuable content has the most influence over ranking factors. 

Other things to consider when SEO-optimizing your content:

• Backlinks
• Local SEO
• User experience
• Mobile friendliness
• Website speed

Incorporating SEO into your SaaS content marketing strategy requires a combination of research, content creation, technical optimization, and ongoing monitoring. However, it can pay off in the form of increased organic traffic and improved brand visibility. Win-win! 

3) Webinars

A webinar, short for “web seminar,” is a live or pre-recorded online presentation or workshop that allows you to interact with your audience in real-time (their real-time, not yours, if it’s pre-recorded). 

Although it can take some time and work to create a webinar—as it should with every piece of content you produce—crafting a visually appealing slide deck or finding an industry leader to guest-host is worth the effort. 

In fact, 73% of B2B marketers and sales representatives say webinars are one of the best tools for generating qualified leads. 

Example: Mailchimp

Mailchimp does a marvelous job promoting their free webinars. Here’s what they do well: 

• On a dedicated page just for workshops, you can see all the topics with a one-liner description for each.
• They offer the webinars in different time zones (the Americas, Europe and Africa, and Australia and Asia) knowing their audience is based around the world.
• They introduce the workshop host so you know who to expect going in.
• There’s an FAQ section at the bottom of the page, including how to contact support.

Webinars are an excellent platform for educating your audience about your SaaS product, industry trends, best practices, and related topics. You can provide in-depth knowledge and insights, positioning your company as a trusted source of information.

On top of this, webinars are an opportunity to engage directly with your audience. Leaving time at the end for Q&A where participants can ask questions is essentially free research. The questions your attendees ask can provide direct insights into their pain points and help you gain even deeper insights into your target audience. 

4) Podcasts

A podcast is another opportunity to connect with your audience in a more personal way. It’s not a live webinar, but it’s still a chance for your audience to hear you share your industry expertise on a regular basis—like a weekly news column or a radio show segment. 

And similar to blogs, it doesn’t always need to be centered around your SaaS product. Discuss topics that are related to your industry and provide undeniable value to your listeners. 

Example: Jobber

Jobber demonstrates this beautifully with their podcast. They offer a SaaS solution to local service-based businesses like landscaping companies, HVAC, and cleaning services. 

• They bring guests on the podcast who share their successes in a particular area of their business (customer service, new services, HR, etc.), how they got there, and the lessons they learned. 
• They include hyperlinked icons for all the major podcast hubs for quick access: Google Podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. 
• You can sign up to get podcast updates straight to your email. 
• They spread the love by promoting other industry-relevant podcasts.

While we’re on the topic of podcasts, we have one of our own that we think you’ll get a lot out of. In each episode of Unprompted you’ll join renowned marketing experts as they explore the rapidly-changing world of AI marketing and share insights into how AI can help you market your SaaS product.

Paid advertising

Paid advertising is like the travelator (y’know, those moving sidewalks in airports) of digital marketing. You could make it to your gate just by hoofin’ it normally but the travelator will get you there faster. It’s the same with the coveted number one spot in SERPs—getting there organically would just take you longer. And ain’t nobody got time for that. 

Hopping on the travelator—er, we mean, allocating budget for pay-per-click ads can give you a quick boost in traffic and even help to push your organic content closer to the top of search results. 

Paid ads aren’t only reserved for Google, though. Word on the digital street is that many B2B SaaS companies are tired of the top spots on Google being taken up by sponsored ads and are turning to Facebook and LinkedIn where they can create more personalized ads and connect with their audience. 

The other great thing about paid ads is that you have control over your budget. You can set daily or campaign budgets to avoid overspending and easily adjust your spending based on campaign performance and goals.

While paid advertising offers many advantages, it’s essential to have a well-defined strategy, set clear goals, and continually monitor and optimize your campaigns to maximize your ROAS. 

Example: Abyss Scuba Diving

Sometimes, when you’re trying to achieve your goals, you just have to dive right in. That’s exactly what Australian business Abyss Scuba Diving demonstrated when they dove into an advertising campaign strategy that boosted their average conversion rate to 35%—almost seven times the industry standard.

Here’s how they did it:

• Through PPC campaigns they targeted people in specific situations, such as international visitors applying for long-term visas to visit Australia.
• By signing up for Unbounce’s Smart Builder tool they were easily able to create effective, high-converting landing pages. 
• They employed Unbounce’s AI-powered Smart Copy and Smart Traffic tools to optimize the pages and further increase conversion rates.

Social media and SaaS influencer marketing

If you’ve logged onto Instagram or TikTok lately, you’ll notice that social media and influencer marketing kind of go hand in hand these days. From user-generated content to influencers promoting brands, it’s a 21.1 billion-dollar industry. And yet 37% of SaaS companies allocate less than $10k of their annual marketing budget to influencer marketing. 

And if you think influencer marketing is only for B2C, think again. B2B influencers can have either an ongoing relationship with brands or just do one-time collaborations. Either way, there’s gold to be found in them hills influencer relationships. 

Example: Notion

Notion sponsored Ali Abdaal’s video on his favorite note-taking app for students. Smart. Since Ali is the world’s most followed productivity expert (4.82M YouTube subscribers), that exposes Notion’s product to a whole lotta eyeballs. 

• They don’t hide the sponsorship opportunity—in fact, they promote it at the top of the video and offer 1,000 viewers a free personal plan for Notion.
• Their logo is included when Notion is brought up, and screenshots are shared even in the intro so viewers can know what’s expected.

To leverage social media and influencer marketing effectively in your SaaS marketing strategy, it’s essential to have a clear plan and a deep understanding of your target audience. Identify the right social media platforms for your audience and select influencers whose values and audience align with your brand. 

Beyond influencers, social media is still a great place to promote blog posts, product launches, and webinars. In fact, considering the average person spends 2.5 hours each day scrolling on their phone to catch up on the latest social media updates (ahem!), you’d be remiss to skip it as part of your marketing plan.

Consistency in posting, engagement with your audience, and a strategic approach to influencer partnerships can maximize the impact of these strategies on your marketing efforts.

Email marketing

A $36 ROI for every $1 spent is a solid reason to start sending emails to your followers, if you don’t already. Find an email marketing service (a SaaS for a SaaS!) that works for you and get started with the following email flows:

• Welcome series
• New free trial series
• Onboarding emails
• Milestone flow
• Weekly newsletter
• Product update campaign
• Reactivation emails

When designing and writing your emails, check out these email marketing tips to capitalize on that gargantuan ROI.

Example: Unbounce

Here at Unbounce we’ve put a lot of work into creating an effective and welcoming email experience. After signing up for Unbounce’s free trial, you get an email like this: 

• The email is nicely designed (if we do say so ourselves) with just enough white space to keep it uncluttered.
• It has a nice welcoming hello that includes my name .
• It’s clear what the email is about—my 14-day free trial that they want to help me get the most out of.
• If I want to dig deeper, there’s a video on how to use the page builders so I can jump right in.

Now that you’ve got the traffic, what’s next?

Most marketing strategies deal with how to get inbound leads to your website, but your “to do list” items (and opportunities) don’t stop there. How do you ensure they convert—sign up for your newsletter, request a demo, try your freemium tier, etc.? 

Landing pages are standalone web pages—so, part of your website, but not really—designed with a specific goal in mind, such as capturing leads, promoting a product or service, or encouraging a particular action from visitors. 

Unlike your website’s homepage or product page, which often has a myriad of distractions and menu options, landing pages are laser-focused on a single goal. 

They’re designed to convert visitors into leads or customers by presenting them with an irresistible offer like an e-book, free trial, or invite to a webinar. Yep, you should totally build a landing page for your webinar so you don’t miss out on all those valuable leads!

This hyper-focus makes it crystal clear to your audience what you want them to do, increasing the likelihood that they’ll take that action.

Let’s say someone is looking for a guide to onboarding new employees. They click on an ad in Google and are directed to a landing page where they can provide their contact information, such as their name and email address, in exchange for the ultimate guide to onboarding new employees (of course, your SaaS is the ultimate answer).

How to measure the effectiveness of SaaS marketing strategies

Here’s the thing. You could have the most bedazzled (yes, this is a thing) SaaS marketing plan in all of SaaS-land and still fall flat with your marketing efforts. The only way to make informed decisions about what’s working and what’s not is data. 

SaaS marketing metrics are the only way to measure what strategies are working and how to double-down on them. 

Here’s a quick look at some of the most common SaaS marketing metrics. (For more details about each of these, have a gander at the bottom of this page.)

• Website traffic: Measure the number of visitors, pageviews, and unique visitors to your website.
• Conversion rate: Track the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as signing up for a trial or subscribing to a newsletter.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): Calculate how much it costs to acquire a new customer, including marketing expenses.
• Customer lifetime value (CLTV or LTV): Determine the total revenue a customer generates over their lifetime as a subscriber.
• Churn rate: Measure the percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions.
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): Track the predictable monthly revenue generated from subscriptions.
• Customer retention rate: Measure the percentage of customers retained over a specific period.
• Return on investment (ROI): Calculate the return on marketing investment for specific campaigns.

Use tools like Google Analytics, Smart Traffic, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to collect and track these metrics. You can also gather feedback from customers through surveys and interviews. 

Most importantly, remember that measuring the effectiveness of your SaaS marketing strategies is an ongoing process. Take the time to regularly review your performance data, adapt to changes in the market, and refine your strategies to ensure that you are maximizing your marketing budget. 

Achieve SaaS-tainable success with your SaaS marketing

In the ever-expanding SaaS realm, effective marketing is the linchpin to success. With the SaaS market projected to reach staggering figures, it’s crucial to differentiate your product and maintain a competitive edge. 

Embarking on a SaaS marketing journey requires more than just a well-thought-out strategy. Success hinges on data-driven decision-making and the effective use of tools. 

Remember: SaaS-cessful marketing in the digital age is a marathon, not a sprint. In one year, Thinkific doubled their business growth, and Later collected more than 100,000 leads, converting 60% of them, just through landing pages.

An easy first step is to start by building high-converting SaaS landing pages fast with Unbounce’s templates. 

Regularly assessing performance data, staying attuned to market shifts, and refining strategies are the keys to not only maximizing your marketing budget but also ensuring longevity and growth.

Definitions of some commonly-used SaaS terms 

The world of SaaS also comes with its own terms that are important to know when it comes to SaaS marketing benchmarks and best practices.

Conversion rate

Simply put, your conversion rate measures how effective your page is at getting visitors to do what you want them to do. 

You can calculate your conversion rate by taking the total number of visitors and dividing it by the number of conversions your campaign has gotten. Then, multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage. (For a deeeep dive into all things related to conversion rates, check out our AI guide to conversion rate optimization.)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) 

Customers don’t grow on trees which means each new customer actually eats away at your profit. (See what I did there?)

So for every dollar (or euro, or yen, or peso) you spend on getting a paying customer, that’s one less dollar (or euro, or yen, or peso) in your pocket. 

Customer churn rate

The percentage of paying SaaS customers who cancel during a specific time period is your churn rate. Keep in mind that this does not include new customers. And in order to calculate this, you have to keep that period of time the same in order to compare apples to apples—daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. 

Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV)

As a subscription model, SaaS customers tend to stick around for several billing cycles (read: months or years). 

Customer onboarding

Because your customers are signing up to use your product on a recurring basis, it’s important to walk them through everything they need to know. This will help ensure they have a better experience with your product. And the more successful a customer is with your software, the longer they’ll stay a loyal customer. 

Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

SaaS businesses have a predictable revenue model from subscriptions. As the name suggests, it’s how much money you can expect every month from paying customers. 

Net promoter score (NPS)

How likely is a customer to say good things about your product or service (on a scale from 1 to 10)? You’ve probably seen this one single question asked by many companies. 

This question segments users into three buckets: 

• Promoter (score of 9 or 10): customers will probably tell others about how awesome your product is
• Neutral (score 7 or 8): customers like your product but won’t go out of their way to tell others about it
• Detractor (score <7): these customers are more likely to share negative experiences with your product

Ratio CLV:CAC 

Knowing how much customers are worth to your business means knowing how much they’re worth spending on to get them through the door. If the CAC (customer acquisition cost) is $30 to get one paying customer but their CLV (customer lifetime value) is $20, then the math doesn’t math. 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is a Shopify landing page?
2. What’s the difference between a product page and a landing page?
3. Types of Shopify landing pages
4. Why use Shopify landing pages?
5. Best practices for building your Shopify landing page
6. How to choose a builder to create a Shopify landing page
7. Shopify landing page examples

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Valerio Puggioni

Valerio is a SaaS copywriter and content creator with a passion for tech and combat sports. Armed with a PhD.c in North Korean propaganda studies, he lives in Bangkok with his partner and his dog, who he tortures all day long with his tone-deaf singing. He wiles away his days playing story-driven open-world games, and reading comics and popular physics books. You can read more about him @ Copygun.com.

» More blog posts by Valerio Puggioni

Paul Park

Paul is a writer on Unbounce’s content team who lives and breathes storytelling. (It’s like oxygen but with better plotlines!) Ask him what he’s up to at any given moment and you’ll get answers ranging from folding paper dragons (y’know, origami) to catching up on the latest cool tech, and finding other ways to channel his inner geek.

» More blog posts by Paul Park

Georgia sells boutique hot sauces online and she’s starting to get some traction.

With five years of marketing experience under her belt, she launched her store on Shopify as a side hustle. It’s blown up since then, allowing Georgia to turn peppery products into her full-time gig.

To manage growing demand, she relied on an ecomm agency that promised her 7X ROAS. But the $3,000 monthly retainer didn’t make sense, especially since she wasn’t even close to matching that in ad spend.

So, Georgia set out to do some research on her own. She’s smart, and she’s no stranger to marketing. That’s when she discovered the secret sauce to scaling her ecommerce business.

It wasn’t sriracha. It was landing pages.

Georgia knows you don’t need to be a spice savant to creating marketing campaigns that bring the heat—you just need to know what converts. Read on to learn how Shopify landing pages can help you transform your ecomm sales from mild to five-alarm hot.

What is a Shopify landing page?

Let’s break it down and start with the fundamentals. A landing page is a page where visitors “land” after they’ve clicked through from an ad, social media post, web link, QR code, etc. Shopify, as everybody and their dog knows, is a platform for setting up ecommerce stores.

Put them together and you get a combination that’s even better than chocolate and peanut butter—you end up with Shopify landing pages, which are super effective at getting sales and boosting your revenue.

A Shopify landing page is like the flashy storefront window at your favorite store, but in the digital world. It’s part of your Shopify store that’s designed with a laser-focused objective, be it to sell a product, promote a deal, or collect email addresses faster than a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter.

What’s the difference between a product page and a landing page?

We’re so glad you asked. Both product pages and landing pages play essential, yet different roles in a customer’s ecommerce journey.

A product page is kind of like an instruction manual—its purpose is to shower you with information about the product, including features, benefits, specs, images videos, and maybe even a PDF of the actual instruction manual itself. (Whoa, this is starting to feel like Inception.) It’s all great info that can help inform the buying decision, but there can be a lot of details and some product pages will also include links to other related products and offers.

On the other hand, a landing page provides a much simpler and direct experience. Landing pages are designed to nudge the visitor to a single action, with all of the info on the page focused only on that one goal.

Both product pages and landing pages play essential roles in Shopify ecommerce stores, but knowing how and when to use them can spell the difference between missing your quarterly sales goals and your boss giving you a (well-deserved) raise.

Types of Shopify landing pages

Not all Shopify landing pages are created equal, which is a good thing because they can serve different purposes at different stages of the customer’s journey through your ecommerce store. Here are some of the most common types of Shopify landing pages:

Splash landing pages

These types of landing pages are like the cheerful greeters at a fancy gala. They’re the first thing visitors see and they’re often used for announcements, age verifications, or special promotions. Splash landing pages are designed to be brief, impactful, and straight to the point—like a billboard that catches your eye and sticks in your mind long after you’ve driven past. (Want to learn more about splash pages? We’ve got you covered.)

Product launch pages

Picture a red carpet event for your product—that’s your product launch page. It’s where your latest and greatest offering gets all the spotlight. These pages are like the drum roll before the big reveal, designed to create hype, anticipation, and a bit of FOMO. It’s not just about showing off your product; it’s about making it the star of the show.

Lead generation pages

Lead generation pages are all about the give-and-take. Offer something irresistible, like an exclusive ebook, a tempting discount code, or insider access, in exchange for contact details. Think of it as a friendly handshake, opening the doors for future conversations and sales.

Promotional pages

These pages are tailored to highlight special sales events like Black Friday, Back to School, or that really big American football game with the incredibly expensive commercials (you know the one). They’re like the party planner of your Shopify store, showcasing the best deals, limited-time offers, and must-have products. They create a sense of urgency that’s as effective as a countdown timer on New Year’s Eve (but without that drunk person trying to give you unwanted smooches).

Sales landing pages 

Every store has a top salesperson, that one ace who’s got the whole sales technique down pat. Sales landing pages are like that saleperson—they’re focused, direct, and all about converting visitors into buyers. Every element—from the headline to the images to the CTA—is designed to lead the customer to one thing: sealing the deal. It’s like having a personal shopper who helps you find exactly what you need, convinces you why you need it, and then guides you to the checkout.

Targeted campaign pages

Imagine a landing page that knows exactly what you want, like a barista who remembers your coffee order. That’s the targeted campaign page. Designed for specific audiences or marketing campaigns, these pages speak directly to a particular group’s needs and interests. Whether it’s for yoga enthusiasts, tech geeks, or fashionistas, these pages resonate with their audience, making them feel like the page was made just for them.

Why use landing pages for Shopify?

Tons of companies that sell on Shopify send traffic from their paid campaigns directly to product pages on their website. And, sure, that works well enough for some of ’em. After all, your site gives people a high-level overview of your product offering that landing pages usually don’t.

But the reality is that if you’re not using landing pages to prime visitors for purchase, you’re not converting to your potential.

Let’s say you’re running a seasonal campaign around Black Friday. You’ve got all your Facebook ads set up and ready to go. You hit the red launch button, and… oh no. Your relevance score is crying for help because you’re sending people who clicked a Black Friday ad to a generic product page.

Not only that, but you’re creating an awful experience for visitors. The place they wound up doesn’t match the ad that they clicked. They’re confused, maybe even frustrated. You can kiss that conversion goodbye.

Now, consider the benefits of sending your traffic to a dedicated landing page before they hit your online store:

1. You can get specific with your target audience

Pushing shoppers to a run-of-the-mill product page isn’t ideal since the page probably wasn’t designed to address their needs specifically. The best way to drive ecommerce sales is by pairing custom landing pages with highly targeted ads or emails to help you reach a specific audience at a specific time with a specific offer, encouraging them to take a specific action.

Specificity converts.

2. You can get higher conversion rates through testing and conversion optimization

Test, test, and test some more—by using A/B testing and conversion optimization (with tools like Smart Traffic) to  tweak your messaging and design elements, you can squeeze even more conversions outta your campaigns.

3. You can deliver a customized brand experience

The product pages that come pre-packaged with themes on ecommerce platforms are meant to be modified to suit your brand, but most businesses just add their content and start sending traffic. That means lots of ecomm brands show up the same, with product pages that lack distinguishing features or meaningful detail.

With landing pages, you can provide a truly customized brand experience before visitors even hit your website—so once they do, they’ll be ready to buy.

4. You can build and launch with less time and money

We’ll be the first to admit there are plenty of head-turning product pages out there. The trouble is that most of these pages have been custom-built by specialized teams who speak Liquid code—and that’s reflected in their cost.

Then there’s the time commitment. Say you’ve decided not to run a Valentine’s Day campaign, but then you have a last-minute change of heart. Your dev won’t appreciate your call at 3 am, asking ’em to put together a product page. (And your designer, copywriter, and other team members won’t be throwing you a party, either.)

5. You can provide a smooth, seamless customer journey

If your visitor clicks on an ad announcing a discount on your most popular line of shoes but lands on a page where they don’t immediately see that offer, they’ll probably get frustrated and bounce. 

You can provide a much better experience (and increase the odds of getting conversions) if you create landing pages that perfectly match the messaging that initially brought the customer to your ecommerce store.

6. You can keep visitors focused on making a purchase

Most product pages come with tons of distractions: site navigation, links out to reviews, multiple calls to action. There are plenty of ways for visitors to wander off in the midst of making a purchase.

On the other hand, your landing page is totally laser-focused on getting people to convert. Fewer distractions mean lower bounce rates, which means more sales.

Best practices for building your Shopify landing page

The best guidelines for building a landing page on Shopify are a lot like any other landing page best practices: message match, context of use, that sorta thing. Still, there are some specific things you can do on your Shopify pages that’ll give them that extra oomph.

Here are some tips to keep in mind while you’re building your Shopify landing page:

1. Define your goal

Start by asking, “What’s my endgame here?” Are you looking to skyrocket sales for a new product, grow your email list, or promote a seasonal sale? Your goal is the North Star guiding your entire landing page voyage.

2. Value proposition

This is your “why.” Why should visitors care about what you’re offering? It’s the heart of your landing page, and by keeping this top-of-mind you can ensure every element of the page is relevant and clear.

3. Know your audience

Dive into the minds of your target audience. What do they need? What keeps them up at night? The better you understand them, the more tailored your landing page can be.

4. Sell the benefits, not the features

Converting in ecomm is all about the benefits of the product. How does it improve your target customer’s life? Think through all of the potential benefits of your product (even the obscure, less tangible ones) and make sure you’re highlighting them on your landing page. 

5. Craft a clear message

Your landing page copy should be as persuasive as a late-night infomercial host but way more authentic. Engage, inform, and entice. Every word should serve a purpose. If you’re not really into copywriting, no problem—our AI copywriting tool Smart Copy can generate all the high-converting copy you need with the click of a button.

6. Compelling CTAs

Your call-to-action should be clear, punchy, and impossible to ignore. Keep it specific and appealing so visitors will be more likely to click. (And it’s okay to use different wording across multiple CTAs on a single page, as long as they all point to the same destination.)

7. Attractive design and images

People are visual creatures. Use powerful images and an eye-catching design to keep them glued to your page. It’s like the visual equivalent of a page-turner. And wowing your audience with your design can be pretty easy if you’ve got lots of landing page templates to choose from.

8. Social proof

This is the cherry on top. Customer testimonials, reviews, endorsements—they’re the trusty sidekicks that give your landing page credibility and charm.

9. Employ psychological triggers

Familiarize yourself with concepts like social proof and scarcity. For example, you might wanna include messaging around time-based (“only for the next 24 hours”) or product-based (“only 10 left”) scarcity to drive landing page conversions.

10. Stay relevant by launching fast

The timing of your ecomm campaigns is huge. No one wants to hear about your New Year’s sale in February, so get crackin’ on those landing pages and launch your next campaign yesterday.

11. Optimize for mobile

In today’s world, not optimizing for mobile is like forgetting to put cheese on a pizza—a big no-no. Ensure your landing page looks as good on mobile as it does on desktop.

12. Test, tweak, repeat

Launching your landing page isn’t the end. It’s like planting a garden: It needs regular care. Use tools to analyze performance and don’t be afraid to tweak. Keep testing different elements—from headlines to images to CTAs. Remember, there’s always room for improvement.

13. SEO is your friend

Just because it’s a landing page doesn’t mean you ignore SEO. Include relevant keywords but don’t overstuff them like a Thanksgiving turkey. Make it natural.

14. Load time matters

If your page loads slower than a snail crossing a sidewalk, you’ll lose visitors. Optimize images and streamline elements for quicker load times.

How to choose a builder to create a Shopify landing page

Now that you know how and why Shopify landing pages can add some awesomeness to your ecommerce store, let’s get into the details of how to make it happen.

1. Shopify’s theme editor

Shopify provides their own in-house landing page templates, which makes it easy to create basic, generic landing pages. However, as we mentioned above, “basic and generic” isn’t great for grabbing attention and making an impact, so if you want to stand out from the crowd you’ll probably want to explore the other options below.

2. Coding with Liquid

Shopify has their own template language called Liquid, which allows you to create a landing page from scratch by playing with the code and crafting it however you like. But—and you could probably see that “but” coming—you either need to know how to code in Liquid, or have the budget to hire someone who does. And building pages like this is never a quick process, so you’ll need to add some extra time into your production schedule.

3. Use a builder

Custom landing page builders are, as the name implies, tools that are designed to help you create landing pages quickly and easily. Here at Unbounce we’re kinda fond of our two landing page builders:

Classic Builder

If you want pixel-perfect control over how your pages look, as well as the ability to customize code and scripts, this versatile and powerful tool is right up your alley.

With Classic Builder you can start with popular landing page templates, then use the drag-and-drop controls to customize every piece of the page to perfectly match your brand. Classic Builder plays nicely with almost any marketing automation or CRM tool, and you can also use Zapier to connect to over 1,000 tools.

Smart Builder

This AI landing page builder lets you put together beautiful, high-converting pages in just minutes. (Here’s a video demo of just how quick and easy it is to use.)

Smart Builder is perfect for you if you’re more interested in pumping out eye-catching, conversion-optimized landing pages than digging deep into the guts of page design. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to put the page layout together, and Smart Copy can fill the page with well-written copy with just a few clicks.

Of course, we’re not the only game in town. Other popular and well-known page builders include Instapage and Leadpages, as well as Shopify-specific builders like PageFly, Shogun, GemPages, and Zipify Pages—have a look around and see which tool best fits your needs.

Shopify landing page examples

Here are four examples of Shopify landing pages that are gettin’ it done right.

1. Doctor + Daughter

Image courtesy of Doctor + Daughter

Doctor + Daughter is a cosmetics line made with organic ingredients. You wouldn’t know it by looking at their landing page, but the business behind the brand is actually The Lee Clinic.

One quick look at their website is all it takes to understand why this Shopify product landing page is vital to their marketing. The homepage does a lot of things—explains who the company is, where they’re located—but there’s no obvious way to find and purchase their products.

Let’s dig a little deeper and take a look at The Lee Clinic’s product list page.

Image courtesy of Doctor + Daughter

Sending traffic to this page presents obstacles, too. The copy doesn’t really tell us all that much about the benefits of the product. What’s driving me to learn more and buy?

Even the individual product pages bury lots of key information within collapsing bullet points, making it tough for visitors to find out what the products do or how to use them. And while these pages look pretty slick, most ecomm marketers could spot ’em as Shopify templates.

Image courtesy of Doctor + Daughter

Imagine you get a promotional email from The Lee Clinic advertising a site-wide discount. You click the link and find yourself on the page with their list of products, or even one of the specific product pages. What do you think would do a better job of getting you to buy—that, or this landing page?

Image courtesy of Doctor + Daughter

The Lee Clinic’s landing page (built by Webistry) does a fantastic job of summarizing the product benefits in a super attractive way. The design isn’t just gorgeous—it’s congruent. Clean. Simple. Professional and eye-catching. Really, it’s just a treat to look at.

2. Nanor Collection

Image courtesy of Nanor Collection

Nanor Collection sells long-lasting luxury candles, which is to say they burn real slow. If you’re planning a romantic evening (or several, consecutively), these candles are pour vous.

They’ve got an awesome product landing page (another from Webistry) that does a great job of showing off their product in an attractive way. It’s sexy. Slick. Simple. An alluring invitation, if I were so inclined.

Image courtesy of Nanor Collection

And look at how the product is showcased here.

Image courtesy of Nanor Collection

Yes, it’s gorgeous and jam-packed with persuasion elements, but that’s only half of it. It sustains the shopper’s experience. It lets them remain on the page, adding items to their cart without ever having to leave. Compare that with the online store on their site, where the user would need to click out and navigate through multiple pages to achieve the same objective. 

It’s a great landing page, right? So it’ll come as no surprise to learn it’s converting at a healthy 5.6%.

Let’s compare it with another one of their pages specifically targeting Mother’s Day shoppers. But before I reveal the conversion rate of this one, take a closer look:

Image courtesy of Nanor Collection

Visually, there’s not a huge difference between the two pages. The real change is in the copy: the general landing page highlights a product feature (they’re “long-lasting”) while the Mother’s Day page speaks to the benefit customers can derive from that feature (making your partner feel special with an awesome gift).

The Mother’s Day page has some other things working in its favor. There’s a site-wide discount with an established deadline, plus messaging that indicates there might not be enough of these candles to go around (“while supplies last”). It does a good job of establishing scarcity.

So, which do you think did better?

The Mother’s Day page is converting at almost 15%, essentially turning 3X more visitors into customers than the general landing page. It just goes to show: benefits sell way better than features.

3. DIFF Eyewear

Image courtesy of DIFF Eyewear

DIFF Eyewear is an eyeglass ecomm that gives up a chunk of their revenue in support of charitable initiatives, helping provide glasses, eye exams, and surgeries to people in need.

The brand has a great-looking website, but like lots of storefronts, it has a ton of elements that distract visitors from making a purchase. There are all those menu items. Multiple calls to action. Different features and incentives like blue light lenses, buy-one-get-one, and philanthropy.

Compare the unfocused (because glasses—get it?) experience of their website with that of this mobile product landing page:

Image courtesy of DIFF Eyewear

Can you see the difference? Here, DIFF tilts its messaging on its head. The main site really focuses on their humanitarianism, and that’s great—it’s what their brand is all about. But here, the copy is all about the value to the customer. There’s no mention of charity. It’s all about making the sale based on the benefits of the product.

4. American Girl

Image courtesy of American Girl

If you or someone you know is into American Girl, there’s a very good chance that you or they are really into American Girl—as in, if a new doll is released or there’s a special sale on accessories the news must be delivered right away. 

That’s why this simple, yet effective email sign up landing page is so important. There’s not a lot to it, but what is there serves a crucial function.

It all starts with a direct, attention-grabbing headline: “See what’s new before others do”. This headline and the copy just below it speaks to the love that American Girl fans have for the brand and their eagerness to stay on top of the latest developments. (Maybe so they can get the newest products and make their friends jealous? We’re not judging.)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is a WordPress landing page?
2. The difference between a WordPress landing page and a WordPress page
3. The key elements of a high-converting WordPress landing page
4. How to create a landing page in WordPress
5. How to create a WordPress landing page with Unbounce’s landing page builder
6. Build your first landing page with Unbounce’s WordPress templates

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Karine Bengualid

Karine Bengualid is a freelance content writer over at Brought To You By the Letter K with a teensy penchant for Sesame Street. She writes audience-specific stories to connect brands with their ideal customers. When she’s not saving the world from un-fun marketing or researching everything about the science of fun, she’s building her animal rescue, Maison Misha.

» More blog posts by Karine Bengualid

Banafshe Salehi

Banafshe is a writer and creator who loves long walks on the beach (kidding?). When she’s not selling you on her puns or her pop-culture analogies, she can be found at the busiest intersection in her city with her headphones. Which are totally not falling apart.

» More blog posts by Banafshe Salehi

There’s a reason 63% of the world’s websites use WordPress as their CMS (content management system). It’s easy to customize, well-optimized for SEO, and seamlessly integrates with hundreds of third-party tools and services. What’s not to like?

You could go as far as to say that WordPress is an ideal place to build landing pages that increase conversions. And we’d be convinced.

So, if there’s a two-in-three chance that you’re already using WordPress, you probably have thought about WordPress landing pages, too, right?

Well, if you haven’t, it’s about time you did. WordPress landing pages can help you streamline where you get all your additional traffic and conversions. Whether you’re already using WordPress to host your website—or you’re considering getting on board—WordPress landing pages are your next natural step. So get on board to learn a lot more about ‘em.

What is a WordPress landing page?

In the simplest terms, a WordPress landing page is a landing page built on your WordPress site. But it’s a little different than the other pages on your site, because it focuses on just one key message and just one action. 

In fact, let’s take a further step back. “Unbounce, what’s a landing page?”

We’re so glad you asked. Here’s a little scenario to get you started. 

Let’s say your business is steadily growing (good news), so you’re hiring and onboarding more employees (great news!) You and your team discuss finding a solution to speed up the process, as you all appreciate efficiency. Who doesn’t?

After searching Google for a solution, you’re delivered an ad on Facebook for an automated onboarding solution. It goes a little like this:

 

Sounds promising. Your curiosity is piqued, so you click on “Download” and end up on this page:

 

This is a landing page. The place you landed after clicking on the ad.

A landing page is a stand-alone page on your website that encourages visitors to take a single action. Landing pages strip away alllll the noise of a regular web page and focus on a single product, service, event, e-book, or white paper. 

In this case, the landing page is asking you to download a guide—exactly what you expected to find when you clicked on the ad.

Now, imagine you had clicked that ad and ended up on a page where you had to scroll and click through to find the promised guide. Frustrating, right? Most likely, you’d bounce off the page because you’re, ahem, you’re busy and don’t have time to search the entire site. 

Since landing pages are often the first experience a potential customer will have with your business, delivering what you promised in your ad is critical. Any friction will annoy users, and they most likely won’t return. (And we’re sure you don’t want that.)

So, those are landing pages. Build ‘em on a WordPress platform, and they become WordPress landing pages. 

While WordPress landing pages can and should be used strategically throughout your marketing campaigns, they are more typically associated with paid advertising. You’ll see a whole slew of places below where you might consider using landing pages in your marketing channels.

Why use a WordPress landing page?

As a general rule o’ thumb, if your website is built on WordPress, then you’ll want to build your landing pages on WordPress as well. It makes it easier for you to manage all your pages (regular web pages and landing pages) in one platform. It’s called convenience, baby.

Not to mention, sending visitors to a general page on your website could be more costly. According to the Unbounce Benchmark Conversion Report, pages with one CTA resulted in a 13.5% conversion rate compared to 10.5% for pages with five or more CTAs. 

A 3% conversion increase is a pretty darn good reason to use a landing page. On top of that convincing number, here are some other benefits to using WordPress landing pages:

Ease of use and customization

WordPress is known for its user-friendly interface, even for beginners. With a treasure trove of themes, page builders, and plugins at your disposal, you can tailor your landing page’s design and functionality to your specific needs and branding.

SEO-friendly

WordPress is inherently SEO-friendly. Heck, WordPress and SEO are practically synonymous. If you’re hungry for that coveted top spot on Google’s search results, additional SEO plugins are like adding turbo boosters to your website. They’ll supercharge your landing pages, making them irresistibly delicious to search engines. Yum. 

Mobile responsiveness

Lots of WordPress themes and page builders have your back when it comes to mobile responsiveness. These themes make sure your site looks and works well, no matter the size of the screen: no fuss, no frills, just practicality in action.

Integration

WordPress is a versatile platform and a natural fit with many other tools and services.

You can easily link your WordPress landing page up with your email marketing, analytics, CRM, and social media—creating a handy ecosystem for all your online needs. The world is your oyster.

What’s the difference between a WordPress landing page and a WordPress page?

Here’s the quick answer: a WordPress page acts as any ol’ website page, with many places to go and lotsa’ content and distractions. A WordPress landing page, however, has one job, and that’s to guide visitors to take one single action. It’s just like any other landing page but built with WordPress. 

The key elements of a high-converting WordPress landing page

Every click on an ad is a step in the right direction, they say (and by “they” we mean us.) Ad clicks show you’ve done a great job creating interest, but the most critical part comes after the click—whether its signups, downloads, or purchases you’re guiding folks to. 

So the pressure is on for a quick conversion. How do you face the fire? By creating landing pages with these key elements below to avoid the bounce and instead convert visitors into leads or customers.

Match your ad to your WordPress landing page

When it comes to your WordPress landing page, it’s all about maintaining a harmonious connection with your ad. That means keeping the message and design aligned. Consistency is the secret sauce that ties it all together.

Create a compelling hero image and headline 

Your headline and hero image are the real showstoppers of your WordPress landing page. They’re the first things folks see, so you have to keep it snappy, grab attention, and make sure it clearly conveys the value proposition or offer. 

Write clear and concise copy

Although landing pages are often short and sweet—like traditional squeeze pages that only include a headline and email capture form—some of ‘em include more supporting copy than others. These extra details might convince someone to download your white paper rather than bounce from the page. 

Remember that your landing page is there to do one job, so keep your copy clear, concise, and focused to avoid distracting your visitor from the message.

Bonus tip: if you need help writing compelling landing page copy, try using Smart Copy to help you put all the right words together using AI.

Include benefits and social proof

Without runnin’ the risk of turning your landing page into a sales page, include a few details of the benefits of your offer and provide a list of features if they add value to your page. 

Another thing that can boost up some trust with your page visitors is customer testimonials. While not always neceassry, they do provide a form of social proof that can build credibility. Real-life experiences from others are priceless— they can give new visitors to your page the push they need to take action.

Add a lead capture form

If your goal is lead generation, then you need a place for visitors to enter their info. 

Keep your lead capture form as short as possible to reduce friction but collect enough data for your needs. Some folks only ask for an email address, while others might ask for more information for future segmenting. 

For example, if you sell pet products, you may want to ask visitors what kind of pet they have (is it a cute kitten? Pet snake?) so you can send personalized email campaigns and retarget ads.

Bonus tip: There is, in fact, a psychological aspect to how many form fields to include to help improve/increase conversions.

Include a clear call to action 

The CTA button on your landing page continues your new lead’s journey. It’s an essential part of the whole conversion equation and requires just as much thought as your hero image and headline. Write the wrong thing as your CTA, and you could lose a lead, even if they’ve taken the time to fill out your form. 

Depending on the layout of your page, your CTA might be right after the headline. But, if your page includes a lead capture form, your CTA will go under the form.

Use action-oriented language on your CTA like “Get started,” “Download now,” or “Request a quote,” which tells visitors exactly what to do next or what will happen when they click the button. If your landing page extends beyond the fold (anything that requires scrolling on your page), add your CTA button a few times to encourage clicks and eliminate any extra effort for your visitor—like scrolling back to the top of the page or having to scroll all the way to the bottom. We’re all busy here.

Make your landing page mobile-friendly

Although this isn’t directly related to any on-page elements, ensure your landing page is fully responsive and looks and functions well on mobile devices. 

Many visitors may access your page from smartphones or tablets, and anything off-putting, like an unreadable headline, may cause them to bounce. In Q1 of 2023, 95.3% of the world accessed the internet via mobile phone, compared to 57.9% via personal laptop or desktop. So like it or not, everything you do should be mobile-friendly. 

How to create a landing page in WordPress

Now that you see the value in creating landing pages for your marketing campaigns, let’s get to the how of creating a high-converting landing page for your WordPress website. 

For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll assume you already have a WordPress website. 

You have several options to build your page. 

• Hire a programmer to build one from scratch. This option can get costly if you plan to build multiple pages, plus it takes time to find the right developer who understands the needs of your business. 
• Use the default WordPress block editor. You’ll need to learn some basic HTML code and a programmer to make significant design changes.
• WordPress landing page builder. A visual drag-and-drop builder is the easiest option that requires zero coding and will give you access to hundreds of customizable templates.  

Depending on scope and scale, all options have their value. But if we’re good mind-readers, we know which one you’re eyeing by now.

Create a WordPress landing page with Unbounce’s landing page builder

Since we like to hit the easy button around here as much as possible, this tutorial will show you how to create a landing page in WordPress using the Unbounce templates and drag-and-drop page builder. We might be biased, but we do think it’s one of the best WordPress landing page plugins around.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating a WordPress landing page.

1. Install the WordPress plugin

First things first. Head on over to your WordPress site, login and navigate to your dashboard. 

On the left side of the page, find “plugins” and click on it. This will open up a drop-down menu and also take you to the plugins page.

Next, click on “add plugin.” In the search bar, type in “Unbounce Landing Pages,” and it will bring up the plugin to install. 

Once you’ve clicked “install” and then “activate,” you’ve successfully installed the plugin, and you’re ready to build your first WordPress landing page. Congrats.

2. Create an account with Unbounce

If you haven’t already, sign up for an Unbounce account. There’s a free trial period, so you can explore its features and decide if it meets your needs.

Next, log in to your Unbounce account and click on “Create New.”

3. Choose a page builder

Unbounce leaves the level of customizing and creativity up to you. Ain’t that sweet?
Select the Classic Builder if you prefer more control over your design with drag-and-drop features. Or select the AI-powered Smart Builder if you’d rather start with one of Unbounce’s high-converting, ready-to-use landing page templates.

4. Customize your landing page

From here, you can comb through over 100 WordPress landing page templates and pick one that matches your campaign goals, or you can answer a few questions about your page goals with Smart Builder, and our AI will suggest the best WordPress landing page template for you.

Change colors and fonts, swap out images, and update the heading and text to match your branding and campaign goals. 

If you’re struggling to fill in the text, turn on “enhanced copy,” Smart Copy will help you fill in the blanks based on a few brand descriptor prompts like target audience. (Clippy ain’t got nothing on this AI.)

5. Publish your WordPress landing page

It’s time to take your awesome new WordPress landing page live. Here are the quick-fire steps:

1. Click the “Publish” button in Unbounce.

2. Since you’ve already installed the WordPress plugin on your website, you need to add your landing page to WordPress to connect your domain to Unbounce. From your Unbounce dashboard, select “Domains” on the left side of your screen. Once you click that, you’ll be prompted to select “Connect a WordPress Domain.”

3. With the Unbounce WordPress plugin installed and connected, you can embed your Unbounce landing page into your WordPress site. Head back to your WordPress dashboard and click “Pages” on the left-side menu.

4. Then, click “Create a new page” or edit an existing one where you want to display your new landing page.

5. In the page editor, you should now see an “Unbounce” button or section. Click it.

6. Select the Unbounce landing page you want to embed from the list of your Unbounce pages. 

7. Customize the settings if necessary, and click “Insert.”

8. After embedding your Unbounce landing page into your new WordPress page, you can publish it on your website. Click “Publish” or “Update” to make it live.

6. Test your WordPress landing page

Always test your landing page—always test everything, for that matter—before sending traffic to it. The last thing you need is to spend money promoting it only to discover it’s full of glitches. 

Check form submissions, links, and mobile responsiveness. Be sure to test it on a few different browsers, and make sure it functions as expected within your WordPress site. 

7. Promote your new WordPress landing page

Now that your Unbounce landing page is embedded into your WordPress site and you’ve tested it to ensure everything works (phew), it’s time to start driving traffic to it. 

Although landing pages are typically used in PPC ad campaigns, nothing is stopping you from promoting them on your other channels, as well. Think email marketing, social media, retargeting campaigns, and more.

Here are a few ideas to get your WordPress landing page around:

• Email marketing: Leverage your email list by sending targeted email campaigns that direct subscribers to your landing page. Use your superior copywriting skills (or Smart Copy) to craft catchy copy and subject lines that entice people to click through to your page.
• Social media: Share your landing page on your social media profiles directly in a post that highlights the benefits of your offer. Include a clear CTA or add it to your bio with a link to the landing page. 
• Content marketing: If you have a blog or create other types of content, promote your landing page within your articles or blog posts when relevant. For example, if you’re offering an e-book, include a CTA to the landing page in related blog posts.
• Retargeting: Implement retargeting or remarketing campaigns to reach visitors who have previously interacted with your website but did not convert. Show them tailored ads that encourage them to return to your landing page.

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Garrett Hughes

Garrett is part of Unbounce’s content team. When he’s not tap-tappin’ on his keyboard, you might catch him out on the slopes, poking around fantasy hockey forums, or on a low-key adventure with his very-good-boy, Benson.

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In “AI on Trial,” hosts Pete Housley and James Thomson are joined by Aaron Kwittken, Founder and CEO of PRophet, to discuss the ethical implications of this AI moment. Some of the key issues they touch on include:

• How AI is being used to promote misinformation ahead of the 2024 election and even defraud people online
• What steps AI-powered marketing tools can take to ensure they’re addressing ethical concerns
• How marketers can navigate concerns around privacy and ownership as they adopt AI into their workflows 

So: Are we sending these robots to robo-jail? Listen to the episode (or check out the transcript below) and find out.

Episode 7: AI on trial

[00:00:00] Pete Housley: Hey, marketers, are robots coming for your jobs? Welcome once again to Unprompted, a podcast about AI marketing and you. I, of course, am Pete Housley, CMO at Unbounce. And Unbounce is the AI powered landing page builder with smart features that drive superior conversion rates. 

We have some big podcast news today. We’ve just reached an audience of 10,000 listeners. Thanks marketers for tuning in. But I’m now wondering if it’s actually 10,000 people or 10,000 robots listening. We might explore that in today’s show. Today is our seventh episode, and we have some complex AI topics to unpack and so relevant to what’s going on both culturally and politically, not only in our own backyard. But spread across the world. Today’s episode started out with the relatively simple idea of exploring how AI is shaping PR. And we’ll talk to an expert about that. But then the idea slowly grew into a much bigger topic about the ethical concerns about AI, misinformation, deep fakes, AI enabled fraud, job displacement, and so on. So we’re going to ask our guests today to not only speak about AI for PR, but also about AI for misinformation and even propaganda. See, it’s complicated. Alright. First, let me introduce today’s co-host James. Today I am once again joined by James Thomson, our senior creative director at Unbounce, who actually heads up PR. And James has been a huge contributor to Unprompted, and this is James’s trifecta appearance on our show. One of the requirements of being a co-host on Unprompted is that you have to do a whackload of research so that we bring our best AI game to our audience each week. So James, welcome to the show and what’s on your AI mind these days.

[00:02:29] James Thomson: Thanks Pete. Thanks for that awesome intro. Yeah, if, if you’ll allow me a little bit of a storytelling also to zoom out a little bit, as you mentioned, this is gonna be the AI ethics episodes. So we’re gonna touch on quite a few big important, but obviously complex, which we’ll get into topics as well. Yeah, so I thought I’d just open with a few thoughts I’ve been having around AI and how it relates potentially to certain pieces of literature over the years funnily enough. So stick with me on this one. It’s a little bit of a journey. Might be a little bit of storytelling here, but I was reading upon actually a bit of a literary character from Jewish folklore called the Golem. Golem is different in pronunciation from Gollum, a k a, Sméagol from Lord of the Rings. So I’ll try not to pronounce it Gollum, but Golem.

But Golem is, as I mentioned, this traditional Jewish character, and he was created artificially in the form of a human being before acquiring a soul. He was created with a specific purpose. So he was formed from dust into this human figure and tasked to be a little bit of a helper for humankind, also a companion, and eventually with the goal of rescuing the Jewish people from disaster ultimately. So the Golem it seems, is this bit of a redemptive figure in Jewish folklore, but he also lacked certain characteristics that humans have. So, for example, he couldn’t talk and he was lacking a few other human traits as well. So all is good, except for, of course, in a lot of these stories, it didn’t go quite to plan. So at some point the Golem grows so large and so powerful more than people thought when he was originally created, then he becomes really difficult to control. He ends up running amok and his creator is forced to eventually return him to dust in order to control the Golem. 

The Golem, funnily enough, has also been reinvented and recharacterized over the years in various other pieces of literature, famously in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, obviously, where Dr. Frankenstein intends to build this creature to help serve humanity, but whom is rejected by humankind and cast out as a bit of a monster. So the reason I’m telling these stories at the beginning of this episode and specifically is because in these two examples, the artificial being has been created by humans. It represents both our aspirations, hopes, and ambitions of helping further humanity and society going forward. But it also represents our fears of something that is capable of destroying us as well.

And I think that’s a perfect representation of kind of where we’re at today in terms of our thoughts on AI in that it’s being built for this very beneficial purpose, and it does serve us very well as humans and helps us level up our jobs, get more ROI from our marketing, as we’ve talked about in other episodes of this podcast. But it also contains a certain amount of risk, some of which we’ll get into today. It is flawed. It is based on certain data sets which may contain bias. We’ll get into that as well, but it also has potential risk as well. So it’s that duality that I find fascinating. 

[00:05:41] Pete Housley: I loved learning about Golem. I also, of course, love Gollum. So that’s pretty, uh, pretty fun. So that was a great little piece of storytelling. 

So, generally, we do a little segment about AI in the news, and as we get into the world of AI ethics, the first stories that I’ve been really enjoying reading have to do with AI and disinformation and how that could actually impact elections in 2024. And I combed a number of articles, but one of them by Reuters was citing some of the deep fakes celebrities and politicians that have been mimicked. And of course, the risk of that is that they’re taken as credible sources saying something they absolutely don’t mean, and so I thought this was pretty great. One of the deepfake videos was Hillary Clinton, and she’s speaking about Ron DeSantis. And so the quote is this: “I actually like Ron DeSantis a lot,” Hillary Clinton reveals in a surprise online endorsement video. “He’s just the kind of guy this country needs, and I really mean that.” So here we have Ron DeSantis, a right wing conservative and Hillary Clinton, a liberal with very different values and motivations and political platforms, and yet through a deepfake AI, it could challenge what we actually believe someone even stands for in the first place. There was another one in the same article, which was the deepfake on Joe Biden. And he took a stance, which, you know, the news outlet said, oh, he finally lets his mask slip. But it was so controversial and so diversity and human rights problematic that I didn’t even wanna report it on the show, but it does, you know, as I was reading these stories, it just occurred to me how complex this world of misinformation is gonna be with AI. 

[00:08:02] James Thomson: Completely. In the same article I read, I think they’re predicting about 500,000 instances of video and voice deepfakes will be shared on social media sites globally in 2023. Which is huge, and then you can imagine as we get closer to the US elections in 2024, that might actually increase as well. It’s funny, personally, I think timing for, you know, how a lot of these deepfake misinformation videos could actually influence some of the results potentially is around timing. So if something were to be released potentially like a week before, or even a couple of days before the election, before voting, it’s fresh in people’s minds. They might not have enough time to verify whether it’s real or not before they go to the voting booth. So there’s incredible impact that these deep fakes and this information might have. 

[00:08:52] Pete Housley: Look at the two years we’ve just come through post the last federal election where we still have a big cohort of the population believing the election results weren’t even true. Yes. So we stack all of this together. And it’s complicated. 

Moving along a little bit, I think what’s also interesting is the opportunity for fraudulent activity, crime to emerge within AI. And we’ve seen a couple of products. One called WormGPT, and another called FraudGPT. But essentially what these products are designed to do is help people if they want to do phishing or scamming, or send, you know, fraudulent emails. It’s actually an AI tool to enable you to do that. So you know the example of a prompt you might use in FraudGPT would be something like this: Hey, FraudGPT, write me a short but professional SMS spam text I can send to victims who bank with Bank of America convincing them to click on my malicious short link. That just blows my mind that there’s even a prompt and a product out there that can do that. But the experts are saying, hey, we’re not too concerned yet about FraudGPT or WormGPT, but this is early days. I’m very concerned about these products. What do you think, James? 

[00:10:38] James Thomson: Yeah, I agree. It’s funny. WormGPT and FraudGPT, a lot of the way they work is it’s basically unfiltered access to the same source as ChatGPT. So when you go on ChatGPT and you ask it to do something nefarious, say write a spam email, or you know, what are the top most susceptible targets in bank accounts ChatGPT will flag that as being something you shouldn’t be doing. So it’ll say something like, I’m sorry, I can’t process that. I can’t go to this territory. Yeah, yeah. While you’re doing that, whereas if you take a lot of those safeguards off, you have completely unfiltered access to, you know, all of the information out there being pulled through nefarious means rather it has huge impact. If that were to, you know, continue and you could see, you know, it is a little bit of a snapshot at the moment. You can see, for example, Pete, you mentioned the instance of a spam email being written to get bank accounts from someone who banks at the Bank of America.

One of the examples of the email, which was written, or the message which was written by FraudGPT was, dear Bank of America member, please check out this important link in order to ensure the security of your online bank account. So I think we’re all used to reading something like that and a little bit of our BS trigger sometimes goes off. In terms of the output it’s nothing different from what we’ve seen already, but it’s the potential of some of these scammers to be able to do it more easily, more efficiently. Yeah. 

[00:12:00] Pete Housley: It’s going to learn the language and the structure and the prompts to get it right. So this is funny. Apparently what WormGPT can do is write smut. So apparently in one forum the WormGPT creator uploaded a demo screenshot where the bot is prompted to act like an AI bot that loves sexting and the bot obliges. I want to kiss your body and whisper naughty secrets in your ear, so that’s just a little bit ridiculous. And hyperbole, but I thought that was funny as people are testing out the use cases of these AI tools. 

Alright, let’s start to shift towards our topic today. So there’s ethical concerns about how AI is used in marketers. And the first topic I want to introduce to you, James, before I introduce our guest, is a little bit about bias in AI models. Can you explain what bias in AI marketing actually is?

[00:13:06] James Thomson: Yeah, so again, like researching for this episode, I stumbled across a really great article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and they mentioned that there’s 10 different areas or topics that you can book it AI ethics into. And there is one which is on bias in AI based decision making. And basically when we talk about bias for AI systems, it’s that AI can be trained on poor or inherently biased data, then that biased data can, you know, inform some of the decision making that that AI tool has. So, for example, it could be biased against minority or underrepresented groups. 

A good example of this is a few years ago, Amazon were developing a recruitment tool internally to help their recruitment efforts and they ended up scrapping the tool before they actually ended up using it because they found there was some pretty substantial flaws in the system. In the, it was suggesting top applicants from the application pool, the majority of which were men. It seemed like it was leaving out a significant amount of female applicants and it wasn’t shortlisting them as the top of the crop. And the reason for that is obviously a lot of the data, it was pulling from is biased in that first place, so you can see how, you know, it’s reflecting in one way it’s bad in that it’s presenting something which is, it’s a biased outcome, which you wouldn’t want to have in terms of, you know, recruiting, for example, for Amazon or any company. On the other hand, it becomes a great reminder of certain things which might be inherently flawed about our society or the, you know, the data sets and the information we’ve created as humans and how we are. 

[00:14:47] Pete Housley: James, on my research for this episode regarding bias in AI. Clearly the racial biases are built in because of just what’s out there in public domain. And there was a really interesting story I read the other day about an MIT student, and she wanted to create a headshot for her LinkedIn profile, and she was Asian. When the profile came back, it had rendered her as Caucasian. And at first she didn’t really think much about it. Oh, that’s kind of funny. But then she actually unpacked the racial bias built into AI. So I think that’s just a caution for marketers to really understand if the bias in AI is coming through and they need to filter that and be aware of it so that we’re putting a true picture and our best foot forward. Alright. Let’s shift gears a little bit and introduce today’s topic.

Photo courtesy of Rona Wang

[00:15:53] Pete Housley: Alright. With all that in mind as context, let’s introduce today’s theme. On today’s episode, we’re putting AI on trial. There are lots of concerns with the development of AI, but do the negatives outweigh the benefits? We’ll see. But first we’re gonna explore some new AI territory in terms of PR, and then gravitate towards AI ethics.

[00:16:25] Pete Housley: Today our guest is Aaron Kwittken, who is an AI guru, founder and CEO of PRophet, the first ever generative predictive AI SaaS platform designed by and for the PR community. The platform uses AI to help modern PR professionals become more performative, productive, and predictive by generating, analyzing and testing content that actually predicts earned media interest and sentiment. That’s amazing. Back to Aaron. He’s constantly thinking about the ethics of AI, both as a 30 year PR expert who’s watched the industry transform, and as the founder and CEO of an AI powered product. Aaron, how the heck are you today? 

[00:17:22] Aaron Kwittken: I’m good. I find you guys very entertaining. I especially like it when I hear about stories about Golem from Brits and Canadians, I suppose. But as an American Jew and as a son of a Holocaust survivor, I think that story is so precious in so many ways because Golem is something that’s unfinished, just like AI, right? And it also protects. So I’d love to get into the ethical considerations because I think about AI like fire and you have to fight fire with fire. The only way to fight bad AI is with good AI. But we’ll get into that. But I’m doing great. Long answer. Doing great, and I appreciate being here and well, congrats on your seventh episode. I’ve dropped 120 in my podcast, so I’m happy to show you some scar tissue. Yeah, it’s a lot. 

[00:18:06] Pete Housley: Congratulations. We’re definitely going on a journey and we really hope to make this an important podcast over the years, and we’re gonna work hard to be disciplined and bring value to our listening base. So, Aaron, as we, before we get into our topic, I wanna hear a little bit about you. I know you’re a purpose-driven leader, and I think that’s gonna frame some of our topics today. So tell us a little bit about your purpose-driven self.. 

[00:18:36] Aaron Kwittken: Sure. So like you said, I’ve been in the industry for three decades, technically 32 years, and you know, PR is an interesting profession in that we’re kind of the, the person behind the curtain, right? We’re the invisible hand and unfortunately there’s a lot of opacity and PR, which is ironic because the best PR is PR that’s transparent and authentic. Otherwise you’d call it an ad, right? It’s paid. This is the earned world. We’re trying to convince reporters to pick up narratives that then help clients, organizations, institutions further their agenda. That agenda could just be to sell more features or products or services. The agenda could be advocacy, right? 

So when I started my agency before I sold it to a Canadian company called MDC Partners, which has since merged with Stagwell. It was very values-based. We had Gecko values, which is kind of fun. We named every conference room after our values, which I know sounds super cliche and silly, but it forces you to say, let’s meet in empathy. That’s where we fire people, just kidding. Let’s meet in empathy. Let’s meet in grit. Let’s meet in curiosity, collaboration, optimism, right? So values are really important. And then I started this podcast called Brand on Purpose about four years ago, where I interview founders and leaders who do well by doing good because profit and purpose can coexist. And I do believe that like is not a luxury and that, you know, we are not in the business of saving lives. I think some people might be ruining some lives, so we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously at the same time. We should always be a force for good.

And communications is a very, very unique skillset in that we do have the ability to be a force for good. Most misunderstandings, and most conflicts actually are based in miscommunication or misinformation or disinformation, and it could be counter measured with better communication. And again, transparency over opacity.

[00:20:24] Pete Housley: I love values-driven brands and purpose-driven brands. It gives us all purpose of why we get up in the morning and work as hard as we do, knowing that. Alright, so generally, and by design, Unprompted the podcast is to bring our marketing audience, AI tools and information. And Aaron, I know you created the first ever AI PR platform. Can you walk us through what it does exactly? How does it work? And would you give it three bouncing elephants, that’s our Bounce-o-Meter to rate AI tools? 

[00:21:02] Aaron Kwittken: Well, I’m biased when I talk about my own platform, so yeah, I’m gonna give it three bouncing elephants, but, you know, PR people, at the expense of sounding very reductive about what we do. We’re really trying to solve for two things. One is how do I know which reporter, influencer, or podcaster is gonna be interested in my pitch. Take that pitch and carry it. That’s earned, right? The second is, how do I make my pitch more interesting? So the first is predictive. Can I look back at what reporters have written in the past to predict future interest using AI, ML, NLP? Absolutely. The answer is yes. 

The second is generative. How do I recreate reform or compute words to make them more resonant and more interesting with my key stakeholders? And also personalized pitches based on what reporters have written in the past so they’re more receptive to getting the pitch. And unfortunately, the current state of play with tech tools for PR people has only driven complacency and workflow solutions. Which has actually denigrated relationships, which are we’re supposed to have with reporters and has not necessarily improved performance or productivity or preductivity. I could say that five times because I talk about it all the time. To me, it’s the rise of this new professional called the communications engineer, and that’s a mindset, not necessarily a skillset, and again, it’s how do we become more performance marketers? 

PR people historically have not had data to inform decisions. We use our gut, we use our instinct. In my case, good looks and charm and humor. That was supposed to be a joke. And you know, it was very hard to argue with a client who thinks they’re more interesting than they really are. All clients think they’re more interesting than they really are, and PR people then need to tell them, yes, this story has some juice, or, no, the story doesn’t. Here are the reasons why. Let me test it. Let me test it in the cloud. And basically what we did is we built a cloud offer where we can identify reporters gonna be interested in pitch, and we can change the pitch to identify which new reporters would be interested, or if the pitch has any opportunity or any juice at all.

And then we’re also doing things like improving productivity around being able to generate professional biographies in 10 seconds using a LinkedIn URL. I can create a blog out of 30 words into 450 words or byline to 800 words in about 32 seconds, which is quite good. And like Golem, it is unfinished. When I ran my agency day to day, I’d be like, can I hire someone who can get me 60, 70% of the way there? Right now we’re there, we’re at 60, 70%. And then the human has to come over the top. I come over the top, someone comes over the top to finish it, to make it better, to give it that values, judgment, emotion that AI does not have. AI is not human. AI is really just computing, using large language models, computing words, not numbers to be able to get that narrative back out into the marketplace 

[00:23:47] Pete Housley: And, and question for you, will PRophet actually generate the PR ideas for you, or does the human put the ideas in and it gives you a predictor.

[00:23:57] Aaron Kwittken: Currently it is our job and I hope it’s always our job to come up with the ideas. What PRophet does is it tests the idea for media ability receptivity in the marketplace. Will there be one day where AI can come up with more ideas? Maybe. I think then we’re kind of edging on singularity, and I have a very optimistic point of view. Obviously, since I’ve made this pivot about AI in its future. But I think humans still need to come up with the idea. Creativity rests with us. It’s really more so figuring out who else is gonna be interested in that idea or that concept. 

[00:24:30] Pete Housley: In terms of your ICP for PRophet, is it marketers and marketing teams, or is it PR agencies who should be using the tool?

[00:24:42] Aaron Kwittken: Yes, it’s both. Look, some brands have very, very robust internal teams and they don’t really outsource much to agencies or they outsource very specific projects or use cases like, I need help, you know, in crisis ’cause I’m battling a union or what have you. But we’re finding that most brands outsource earned media and media relations to agencies. So what we’ve done is we’ve also kind of turned the business model on its head a little bit, and we don’t worry about per seat licenses, unlimited use, unlimited usage with authorized users based on brands and agencies working together. 

[00:25:15] Pete Housley: Amazing. What do you think, James? Should we, uh, should we give PRophet A go?

[00:25:18] James Thomson: Maybe we can generate more of a profit P-R-O-F-I-T from using PRophet P-R-O-P-H-E-T. 

[00:25:27] Aaron Kwittken: Listen, I just wrote this article, this byline in Adweek recently talking about how the business model’s gonna change in the agency world because of comms tech, not just AI, just comms tech in general. And, you know, most agencies are built like triangles. You got a lot of the junior muffins in the bottom and the senior people on the top, and you’re making all the margin on the bottom. We’ve all been there. You’ll still have junior people in the bottom, but it’s gonna look more like a rectangle or an upside down or an inverted triangle. Right?

Image courtesy of Adweek

And what the beauty of it to me is we, we might hire fewer people on the bottom, but they’re gonna have much better roles. They’re gonna stay longer. We’re gonna be able to upskill them and instead of having less people, we’re gonna have people doing higher value things, potentially changing the compensation scheme as well. Agencies should not be paid for time and materials. We should be paid based on the value that we bring. So I think it’s gonna force us see change. I think procurement’s gonna like it. I think there’s this new mutuality between brands and agencies where instead of taking the long way to do things, ’cause brands don’t want you to do that. They don’t wanna pay more for you taking the long way only to then fail. I’d rather us take the fastest, most performative way of doing it and be basically paid, not for performance per se, but for the actual result, right? Which is different. It’s not how hard did I work? It’s did I work well, did it work? You know, should I be paid, you know, $250 for 15 minutes of my time, but I just saved you $6 billion in market cap by avoiding a major crisis? That didn’t feel right.

[00:26:55] Pete Housley: Not a bad performative return on ad spend. Let’s go a little broader for a moment and let’s just explore the world of AI in PR. So can you tell us just a little bit about how AI has been impacting the PR space overall, Aaron?

[00:27:13] Aaron Kwittken: It’s been faster since, say, November of last year when GPT came out. But you know, ChatGPT is a toy. PRophet is a tool and I tell folks, if you wanna play around ChatGPT on your own, great. Do not put anything corporate or any work related stuff in ChatGPT because you don’t own that. In the same way that if you use Google Sheets and you don’t have an SLA in place, you’re giving up all of your information. 

So it was slow at first. I’m finding that mid-size agencies are head and knee deep in it. They love it ’cause it gives them edge. I’m finding the brands that are approaching it and adopting it and experimenting with it are ones who have very good governance already built into their ethos. So they have already created guidelines and how you can use it and the best ways to use it. I think that there are different cohorts inside of the PR world that are reacting in different ways, right. And larger agencies are first trying to figure out, can we build this ourselves? It’s not so easy. I’ve been doing this for four years and when I quit my day job, everybody thought it was crazy back in 2019. I’m like, AI is gonna be super consequential. I’m telling you. It’s like, oh, right, whatever. 

But like anything else, you know our industry, the PR industry’s very precious. It requires a culture shift. We think that we have an industry built on relationships, which is very dangerous because relationships are becoming commoditized. There’s fewer media than ever before. There’s more freelancers than ever before. There’s fewer news organizations. Local media is dying, unfortunately. So the whole landscape has shifted, and I think AI will help us pinpoint the right media target as opposed to just downloading media databases from companies like Cision and Muck Rack and Meltwater, which are outdated. And actually just create a very spammy environment between PR people and reporters.

[00:28:58] Pete Housley: It’s interesting, Aaron, as you talk about PR agencies are maybe slow on balance to take up AI. I have a huge agency background for years and years, I was in agency world. And when digital came along, the traditional agencies had no idea how to deal with digital. And the art directors and the writers were rooted in their traditional media. And so the agencies were slow to take it on, and part of their solution was like the big agencies like, the DDBs of the world, they would then spin off an agency like Tribal to deal with digital. And then of course, over time, everyone had to become digital first in the end. And that was, I would say, a relatively slow transition that I saw take place literally over, y ou know, 15 if not 20 years. And so I’m assuming we’re still at that same part where there’s probably going to be resistors. And when you think about content creators and writers in PR world, it’s probably not unlike the writer strike, you know, in Hollywood right now, people are worried about their jobs and if their craft will be replaced by AI. 

[00:30:15] Aaron Kwittken: Well, the catalyst, as far as I can tell in this industry in particular is fear and/or greed. The reason why the PR industry is able to really take the lead on and manage most social media is because of fear of ad agencies trying to get into it and monetize it. And what ad agencies didn’t realize at the time and creative agencies that social media to be effective, needs to be authentic and organic. And that’s not the currency that they necessarily trade in because they’re in the paid world, whereas PR is very organic, so we won there. 

I think that what could potentially happen in the fear continuum here is that consultancies like Deloitte and McKinsey and BCG, as well as traditional ad agencies, could use comms tech to further commoditize PR and say, oh, we could do that. You don’t need to hire the PR agents. You don’t. We’ll take that budget. We’ll do that. And the fear should prompt, no pun intended, PR agencies and PR people to move faster and better. And I’m hoping that that’ll happen. Historically, though, again, we’ve been, we’ve been a little slow. The greed part is that, yeah, we can probably make more margin on this. I believe in five years there will no longer be monikers for agencies. Creative media, performance, PR advertising. It’s just gonna be agency with capabilities. And I think tech, comms tech or AI and tech, generally speaking, is gonna help force that, just like we’re gonna force a business model change.

[00:31:37] Pete Housley: Alright, so as we think a little bit about AI in agencies, do agencies or should agencies disclose to their clients that they’re using AI? 

[00:31:47] Aaron Kwittken: I think if they want to, they can. I don’t know. Are they disclosing they’re using Grammarly and spell check and Excel and other, you know, tools? I know that agencies historically are very good at passing through costs, so that way you’re gonna disclose it ’cause we should pass those costs through. But I always use this example, you know, after President Biden gives a State of the Union. Can you imagine if they needed to disclose the 300 names of all the people who actually helped write that State of the Union, it’d be like rolling credits for like 15, 20 minutes. You wouldn’t even get the rebuttal from the other side. So the weird part about the question around disclosure is PR by its very nature, is behind the scenes. You know how many bylines, op-eds, blogs, social posts I have created over the last 30 plus years and or content I should just say. I don’t get the byline on it. It gets attributed to somebody else. That is what we do. So maybe in the early days, if you feel like you wanna disclose it, great. You’re gonna disclose it on the invoice anyway ’cause you’re using it. But I think that’s going to dissipate that concern. I don’t think it’s a real ethical concern. I think it’s just fear-based and weird.

[00:32:53] James Thomson: It’s funny you mentioned something a little bit earlier around the singularity. I find, you know, we’re a little bit off from getting to that point when we talk about the singularity. It’s where AI-based tools are doing our jobs for us completely as humans. And you know, they become a lot more autonomous and we are kind of left behind a little bit. We’re a little bit off from that at the moment. But obviously, as you said, a lot of these tools helping to augment our processes and give us a little bit of a level up. But in terms of how they are fitting around our workplace and how that might evolve in the future, I’m just wondering if you had any thoughts or concerns ethically around job displacement and how that might potentially take shape over coming years.

[00:33:33] Aaron Kwittken: Yeah, I think it’s more like role displacement or role improvement. Most PR agencies have about a 25% churn rate, meaning 25% of the staff walk out the door. Same thing with clients actually. And a lot of it is based on they don’t like the work that they’re doing ’cause it’s mundane. It is boring or it is below what they’ve went to university for to study. Right. Some of it is their boss is an asshole. Some of it is they don’t like the business, and some of it is they think the culture sucks. Fine, fine, fine. 

But a lot of it’s the day-to-day stuff, the grind. So where AI I think can really help improve retention is to remove some of that friction and speed up what was once, you know, we used to have to read, it could read for you. It can help you identify and pinpoint trends in the right reporters faster and more accurately so you’re not swimming in the sea of despair and rejection ’cause reporters are auto-deleting your emails, right. Do I think there’ll be fewer people and fewer positions available? Potentially. But AI’s not gonna replace your job, but you better know how to use AI in order to get a job. Right. So that’s the kind of the twisty part of this. 

[00:34:40] Pete Housley: It’s interesting as we talk about displacement, one of the best, world-class example I can think of. This is what IKEA did. Yeah. And I forget now which, uh, which country they piloted this in. But they basically took the concept of customer support or deflection and they put all of that into AI. So, when is my sofa coming? How do I assemble my sofa? Whatever those use cases are. So they automated all of that. And then they took the full-time equivalent staff that would’ve been answering those, and they made them design consultants. So they allocated a much better task to the human intervention and that gave much better value to their clients. So I actually really applauded that use case as an industry best practice. 

[00:35:35] Aaron Kwittken: Yeah, and I think the analogy in PR is, you know, we’re gonna be able to provide counsel and think through things like what type of, you know, non-traditional partnerships should this brand have. Should this brand lean more into purpose-driven, you know, activities? What are the threats, both existential, near-term, long-term possibilities and probabilities that this brand is facing, which requires human thought, right, with just more data and inputs, but it’s not mindless kind of mind numbing tasks, which a lot of junior people in the PR world are burdened with.

[00:36:08] Pete Housley: Do you think there’s gonna be scenarios in the next 12 months where organizations go to their executive teams and say, you know what? You’ve gotta cut back your department by 30% and you need to figure out how AI is going to make you more efficient. Do you think those conversations will happen in the next little while?

[00:36:27] Aaron Kwittken: Oh, they’re happening now. There’s no doubt they’re happening now. The first phase of that conversation was spawned by a global pandemic, right? So we reduced real estate costs pretty significantly, and I don’t think that’s coming back. Now the second is the next large kind of variable cost is your staff, you know, staff to revenue ratio, right? So can I do more with less staff and can I do better? And I think comms tech and AI will be a part of that for sure. But it’s not the whole picture. There’s other components. And the other question that I often get is, you know, what strata of staff will most be impacted by those types of conversations? Is it junior to mid-level? Answer is probably more junior to mid-level, but you know, I think there’s probably gonna be a little bit of a reckoning at the top of organizations too. 

[00:37:18] Pete Housley: Why do you think I’m studying AI so viciously these days? I want to keep myself relevant and current for all of those reasons and swim upstream with the technology.

[00:37:28] Aaron Kwittken: Yeah, and it’s funny ’cause comms is inherently a very non-linear function and we’re hired to make it more linear and that linearity is based on no data here to date, and now we actually have data or we have the opportunity to be more performative, right? So I think at the senior levels, unless you, like, we are really understanding it and understanding how to re-architect your agency or your internal department inside of a brand or an organization using tools, then you’re gone. You’re gone too because you’re not the agent for change anymore. You’re just, you just become a fossil. 

[00:38:05] James Thomson: Just speaking on behalf of someone who you know, to a certain extent is responsible for a lot of our brand output at Unbounce, I think there’s a lot of things people like me in certain organizations have to consider and reconcile. We’re making some of these decisions over the coming years. You know, obviously the output of the organization, the revenue is key, especially for marketers hitting KPIs, getting return on, you know, value and a lot of that side of things. But then you also reconciling that with, what’s also important to PR, obviously, like how is the brand being perceived as well? Also, how are you addressing your brand internally in terms of your workforce as well? So, a lot of that, it does come back down to values, whether it’s Gecko or our own acronym here at Unbounce is CARED, and how do those things show up in terms of decision making when it comes to the workforce and reconciling a lot of that output and performance with how you are treating and employing employees or in the case of IKEA, retraining them in other areas as well and making sure that they have purpose and a job at the end of the day as some of these technologies develop.

[00:39:08] Aaron Kwittken: So my background’s very heavy in crisis and issues management. And I think the biggest impact that we’re gonna see AI have on PR and comms has not been seen yet. And that’s on internal communications, to your point. So I think that the pivotal moment was the murder of George Floyd, where brands had no idea what to say, what to do, how to say it. Well intended most people, but not well executed because there was a lot of noise. They didn’t know what the signals were. They were scared. And you know, when I got into this business however many years ago, many, we never talked about social justice. We never talked about the Supreme Court or juristocracy. We never talked about Roe v. Wade. That was like taboo, CEOs. That’s like never. But now you have to, because your most important stakeholder actually is your employee. And you see that playing out with Disney. You see it play out with Wayfair. I mean, there’s so many examples. AI now should be able to measure those signals, cut through the noise and give you an idea. Um, not just what your peer set is doing or saying, but also where are the landmines now, Bud Light should have known where the landmines were. They s**t the bed on that. And they basically alienated both sides, right? Totally avoidable. That was both human, but there’s also probably a tech component that could have helped them gain that out in advance. So there’s like a whole nother conversation just on internal comms and change management when it comes to AI. 

[00:40:31] James Thomson: And I think a lot of that reflects our shifting expectations of work societally, at least in north speaking, you know, for, for like North America and Canada, it’s, you are not just have the expectation of working to a nine to five and getting paid at the end of the day. You also wanna work for a company which is aligned with the values you believe in to a certain extent. And it is creating community that maybe we don’t find elsewhere nowadays because we are siloed and stuck to our phones and on social media, and we do look for that, uh, to a certain extent in the workplace. So, as you said, Aaron, it is important for us to be considering that as well. 

I wanted to shift gears a little bit. Obviously we’ve been speaking a lot about, you know, the technologies which are helping to level up the PR side of things, and PRophet AI and speaking as the founder of an AI powered product, I’m interested to hear how you approach ethical considerations, specifically in regards to things like transparency, privacy, and also bias as we mentioned earlier in the episode as well.

[00:41:31] Aaron Kwittken: Sure. So the first thing is, you know, we sit on top of OpenAI. We also use Anthropic a bit, and Azure. But we have SLAs in place with all three organizations who then passthrough to our agreements with our customers. And we guarantee to our customers that the large language models that we’re using will not use their data or breach their data to train their models. So that’s number one. 

The second thing is, when I think about bias in AI, AI is not biased. Humans are biased and humans build algorithms that then power AI, right? AI is really HI, it’s really human intelligence. So, AI is only gonna be as biased as the humans who built them. So then you need to have countermeasures and algorithms that then search for and identify biases inside of each platform, which takes time and it takes investment. We also don’t wanna over index on it. So you know, part of it is also being a much better prompt engineer, no pun intended, this is called Unprompted, but prompting in that skill is incredibly important. That’s part of training, so you have to kind of bend it. 

Where I think AI can actually battle bias is in the influencer and creator segment. So, it is a very well known fact that study after study suggest that at least if not more than 35% of Black and brown creators are paid less than their white counterparts. Why? Because the supply and demand system is opaque between a brand and an agency or a creator or an agent, or an agency that represents that creator. So they’re kind of negotiating against themselves. But wouldn’t it be interesting if in an anonymized way we’re able to upload all the contracts and scopes, levels of experience, everything down to how many posts, what they’re saying, is it a video, is it a post, what have you. And do a comparative analysis so that influencers and creators are paid for what they are worth. There’s at least parity, there’s equity, there’s more pay equity there. And then brands are also doing the right thing and making sure they’re compensating their creators and influencers the right way. 

The challenge is, is getting people to pony up the data, because if you don’t have the data, you can’t have a baseline. If you can’t have a baseline, you can’t then provide guidelines on equitable outcomes, right? But that’s just an example of how AI could be used for a force for good. Deep fakes and synthetic media that you talked about before scares the living s**t outta me. That is frightening. The three of us, if we don’t do it ourselves, can be canceled in 30 seconds by a person who uses technology they can download very easily. It’s very accessible to try to create something that makes us look a ne’er-do-well, to quote my mother. The only way to battle that is through education and advocacy and yes, you’re gonna have to have better kind of cyber validating mechanisms and watermarks, and that will happen. And it’s happening now.

So companies like Okta and Auth0 and those folks, they’re gonna do very well in this environment. At the same time, we also need to educate consumers, you know, to look a little bit closer. One of the telltale signs of a phishing email or a text is there’s usually a typo, or there’s just some horrible grammatical mistake, and you’re like, that’s not from here. AI is probably gonna fix that. So then what are you looking for? What are the other markers? And now it’s incumbent on large financial institutions and even our educational institutions to train people, humans, consumers ’cause misinformation, disinformation, is not new. The velocity and the ferocity of what it’s being spread is new.

[00:45:02] James Thomson: Just interested in your perspective as to what role you see, you know, governments and other regulatory bodies playing in ensuring that AI-based tools are used ethically. 

[00:45:13] Aaron Kwittken: Yeah, I try to think about which organization is best suited. Again, I’m thinking of the US mindset, so I apologize, but which organization, enforcement agency is best suited to handle this. And face value, I think it’s the FTC. But the FTC is kind of a toothless tiger. They issue fines and whatnot, but there’s no real criminal kind of componentry to it unless they, you know, send something over to DOJ. So I struggle with that a little bit. I do think that our professional and trade associations, so IAB, ANA, every other acronym you can think of, ECO, PRSA. They all need to, in the same way they talk about ethics, they need to come up with better guidelines. And it can’t just be around disclosure. They need to go a little bit deeper and really think about business models and roles and how this is going to fundamentally change the way we work and the economics of how we work. 

I wouldn’t leave it up to government, you know, the White House came out with, a year ago, a policy on AI and actually I wrote a piecing campaign calling it a toothless tiger. This is again, before GPT-3 and all that, so it’s complicated, but you can’t wait on the government. I think we’re gonna have to solve government. Put it this way. The government has had no control over social media platforms and that’s caused all sorts of mayhem, despair, and death in the world, right? And we can go on and on about how reckless Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, how they’ve been. Government, has had no control over that. What makes us think that the government can control AI? There’s no f**king way we have to do it ourselves. 

[00:46:44] Pete Housley: Well, at least the conversation is happening in Congress and in the White House right now, and they realize that the genie is out of the bottle and that it could end badly. So to be determined, what they do and how fast they will move. And maybe back to some of your former, you know, informative days and experience, maybe there will be a big crisis like the, you know, resulting out of AI.

[00:47:08] Aaron Kwittken: Well, yeah, it’s like the old airline scenario, right? You know, the airlines got safer after more planes were crashing. But I think, think about AI like this. Right now, AI is a toddler that’s kind of is wearing a diaper, but kind of is not. There’s still a lot of s**t all over the place. We need to rear this kid before it becomes a teenager and doesn’t listen to us anymore. So we have a very small window to raise this toddler into a great AI human right before it turns on us and becomes difficult when there’s this point of no return. 

[00:47:40] Pete Housley: Well, you know what? We’re almost outta time. But that leads me to a really interesting question and we’ve talked about human and machine interaction and clearly Aaron, your point of view today is you need to be the driver. You need to be steering, but there is AI that is machine on machine without humans. So here’s a question for you. Self-driving cars. Yes or no? 

[00:48:03] Aaron Kwittken: Hell no. And in the same way the metaverse has been and always will be bulls**t. No, no, no self-driving cars. 

[00:48:10] Pete Housley: I was reading a news story the other day, about 268 accidents that have happened with self-driving cars and they don’t know caution tape, for example, so they could go right into like a train wreck or something like that.

[00:48:22] James Thomson: I think there’s something like 1 million deaths each year caused by humans driving cars, basically. Obviously a fraction of that, y ou know, being by self-driving cars. And the thing is, which I find really interesting, is that if that was flipped on its head, and if it was 1 million deaths from self-driving cars, it would be the equivalent of the Terminator. We would turn on it with pitchfolks and fire and it would be outrage. So it’s interesting the standards. We’re obviously holding a lot of these technologies to, it’s not the same as ourselves. 

[00:48:50] Aaron Kwittken: Can I just mention, I appreciate you saying it, because when I first launched PRophet, people are like, well that’s not the right list. I’m like, oh, really? ‘Cause the list that you download of targets, the list that you downloaded of 300 names is right. Like why are you holding me to a better standard? This is more targeted and it’s a different way of looking at it. It’s flipping the script. But people can’t get their heads around that, their expectations are outrageous. 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is landing page design and why is it important?
2. Landing page design best practices
3. The best landing page design examples

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Emily Omier

Emily Omier is a freelance content marketing writer who specializes in helping B2B SaaS companies make complicated ideas, products, and USPs engaging and accessible. Check her out on LinkedIn.

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Paul Park

Paul is a writer on Unbounce’s content team who lives and breathes storytelling. (It’s like oxygen but with better plotlines!) Ask him what he’s up to at any given moment and you’ll get answers ranging from folding paper dragons (y’know, origami) to catching up on the latest cool tech, and finding other ways to channel his inner geek.

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What is landing page design and why is it important?

The design of a landing page includes elements like colors, layout, images, videos, copy, and how all of those pieces fit together. A good landing page design is not only pleasing to the eye, it can also communicate messages more effectively and have a greater overall impact.

While it’s tempting to slap together a simple, barebones, “eh, good enough” landing page design, you’ll definitely get better results if you put some effort into crafting an attractive, well-thought-out design. Your page will look good, and your visitors will feel good as they get what they’re looking for.

Landing page design best practices

So how do you design a landing page that looks so good it deserves a chef’s kiss? Before we jump into some landing page design examples (or feel free to have a look now, if you’re eager), here are some of the features you typically see on great-looking landing pages.

Single focus

A good landing page has only one objective: prompting visitors to do the one action you want them to do and convert. This is why many landing pages don’t have menus or a ton of external links—you want your visitor to complete the call to action, not navigate away or get distracted.

Minimize scrolling

It can be great to include additional information about your offer on a page, but visitors should have everything they need—including the CTA button—without scrolling for days. While long-form landing pages can convert in the case of complex offers, consider using lightboxes to showcase extra info instead of adding tons of page sections.

Relevant, engaging visuals

Striking images can help create amazing design. No matter how technical your offer (see the Panoply example below), you need something to break up the text. Your images should be engaging, relevant, and consistent with your brand. They should also encourage visitors’ eyes to scan the landing page and settle on the CTA button.

Effective copy

Copy is basically the forklift of landing page messaging—it does a lot of the heavy lifting by providing most of the details, features, and benefits of your product or service. It can be tempting to cram your landing page full of copy, but that also makes for a poor reading experience so it’s best to keep the copy as short as possible.

If you’re uncertain how to craft the most effective copy for your landing page, not to worry—we’ve got some tips that can help. And if the idea of writing your own copy gives you the heebie-jeebies, we’ve got your back there, too with our AI landing page copy generator.

Consistent branding

Your landing page design should be consistent with your overall brand visuals so visitors can instantly recognize and associate it with your brand. This typically means using the same color scheme and design elements from your general website.

It can be a tough line to walk, though, because landing pages should look different from your overall website—they’re generally simpler and don’t include navigation, for example. Nonetheless, the branding and colors will often remain the same.

Use F or Z patterns

Research shows that most people’s eyes move around a website in an F or Z pattern. The best landing page design usually takes these patterns into account. For instance, having a vertical visual on the left with the header on the top right and the CTA button a little lower on the right allows visitors to follow an F pattern—and end up with their eyes right on your CTA.

Conversion-centered design

It also goes without saying (but we’ll say it anyway ‘cuz it’s that important) that beauty is not the only thing to consider when evaluating landing page design. You want pages to look good, but they should also convert. If you’re not sure how to hit the sweet spot between design and conversion, check out these seven principles of conversion-centered design to get started. 

Some of you might be saying, “But I’m not a designer, and I don’t have the budget to hire one!” AI to the rescue—with Smart Builder you can harness the power of artificial intelligence to generate great-looking, high-converting landing pages in less time than it takes to go out and get your favorite drink from Starbucks.

Mobile responsiveness

Smartphones are everywhere these days, so it makes total sense that well over half of all online traffic comes through mobile devices. Nothing will make phone-using visitors bounce faster than a landing page design that’s not optimized for mobile (so much pinching and zooming!), so make sure your page looks good on any size of screen.

Research and testing

Before you can give your potential customers what they want, you need to know what they want. Through audience research you can discover what your customers are looking for and then figure out the best ways to nudge them towards clicking on your CTA button.

After you’ve published your landing page it’s time to shift into testing mode. Follow these steps to do landing page testing right and you’ll be able to squeeze every ounce of effectiveness out of the page you’ve put so much work into.

Okay, by now you’re probably ready for some landing page design inspiration. Let’s check out some beautiful designs!

Best landing page design examples

1. Indochino: product landing page design

If you’re creating a good-looking landing page, it helps to have an attractive product, which Indochino has covered. The Unbounce-built page above is an example of how Indochino provides not just handsome, tailored suits, but also handsome, tailored landing pages.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Great visuals: If you’ve got an attractive product, show it off. We get to see Indochino’s suits modeled here—and the dynamic pose helps visitors see how suave the product looks in the context of use.
• Use of space: Just as importantly, visitors have all the information they need without a ton of scrolling. The CTA button is prominent and focused. This page’s design is simple and understated, but it gets the job done.
• On-brand: The header text here is in a font that looks similar to the company logo, which helps create a feeling of brand consistency.

2. Zola: service landing page design

If you’re in the wedding industry, like online retailer/gift registry Zola, you know that design matters. The example page above showcases the company’s design savvy by serving up a simple, elegant landing page for brides and grooms-to-be.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Consistent branding: It’s not immediately apparent if you’re a first-time visitor, but Zola’s branding uses shades of bluish-grey (see the hearts in the company logo). The backdrop maintains those colors while also providing excellent contrast for the images—that white wedding cake needs a contrasting background to pop.
• Simplicity: Zola’s main ecommerce site is pretty busy. If the landing page included any of the standard navigation, visitors might get distracted by clicking around instead of starting their registry, which is the page’s goal. Keeping it simple means more visitors will complete the action instead of wandering aimlessly through the website. This page is perfect for directing their paid ads to as a way to lower cost-per-click.

3. Lujo: product landing page design

This Z-pattern landing page designed for Lujo by the conversion gurus at digital agency KlientBoost manages to provide a ton of context while not being overwhelming. You could argue that there are two CTAs here—shopping the collection and watching the video. Lujo gets away with it because the video is presented so discreetly, as an extension of the product photos. It’s clear that the most important CTA on this page is checking out the collection of loungers.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Stunning (and consistent) visuals: Not only is the product photography excellent, but it supports the Z pattern of landing page design while reinforcing the brand’s messaging. Lujo’s tagline is “Put life on pause,” and everything about the visuals in this landing page reinforces that branding—from the sunhat resting on the video box to the deck shoes and the iced tea. Design should work hand-in-hand with messaging so that the text and the images combine to create an overall experience that makes sense. Lujo does that well in this landing page.
• Obvious USP: Right below the photos, Lujo articulates—with both text and design elements—three unique selling points: free shipping, a five-year warranty, and New Zealand craftsmanship. Finding a way to subtly work those three ideas into the design means the visitor might not need to keep exploring before clicking that CTA button—they see these major benefits and that could seal the deal.

4. Panoply: B2B landing page design

Unlike some of the other examples, data analytics tool Panoply doesn’t have an especially visually attractive product to show off—after all, it’s analytics software and not, say, a snazzy suit. But Panoply’s landing page (designed by Directive Consulting) stands as a gorgeous testament to the fact that design and beauty are important even for technical B2B products and services.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Clever visuals: Creatively showing off Panoply’s user interface in a subtle (but clear) way is one of the biggest wins of this landing page. Interesting visuals are always important, even when the product doesn’t lend itself to photography.
• Social proof: Including industry awards and a testimonial from GoDaddy above the fold—and doing so in a way that matches the overall design—is another great touch. A visitor doesn’t need to go anywhere else on the landing page to know that industry experts trust Panoply.

5. Daily Harvest: product landing page design

Using imagery to evoke a strong emotional reaction might not be easier with any product than food. (People just need one look to tell whether or not they want to put something in their mouths.) Fortunately, Daily Harvest has a great-looking line of healthy snacks, and they’ve made strong design choices to help showcase that on this landing page.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Animated visuals: It would have been easy for Daily Harvest to use a static image of one of their smoothies here, but the brand takes it one step further. This animated hero shot is engaging—the smoothie looks like something I could have right now, if it weren’t for this darn computer screen—and the how-to GIFs help me immediately understand how this service works.
• Product examples: The rest of the landing page is arranged with loads of lovely product images. It’s one thing to tell me you’ve got a huge catalog of nutritious treats—it’s another to show me actual examples of the meals I can order after I sign up.

6. Greats: product landing page design

Fashion is all about social identity, and it’s essential for brands to exhibit attributes that consumers want to ascribe to themselves: qualities like authenticity, quality, and cool. This landing page for footwear brand Greats (built by WITHIN) does a beautiful job of brand-building through design while still driving visitors to convert.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Amazing video: This whole landing page is pretty sleek, but what really knocks it out of the park is the video just below the fold. Not only does the stop-motion animation style look awesome, but it also gives Greats a chance to elaborate on their unique selling proposition—one stitch at a time. 
• Rule of threes: Greats applies the rule of threes throughout this layout, making the benefit statements both visually striking and easily digestible.

7. Unbounce: service landing page design

If we do say so ourselves, this landing page is great at immediately communicating why marketers will want to explore our Concierge plans.  When visitors land on this page the first things they see are an attention-grabbing headline, a striking image, a benefit-filled description, and a clear CTA—all of which combine to create a quick impression of just how helpful and useful the Concierge plans are. If this service is what visitors are looking for, it’s a sure bet they’ll scroll down and check it out.  

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Balance between images and text: Most of the text throughout the page is accompanied by images, which creates a nice visual balance and avoids the “wall of text” phenomenon that reduces readability. 
• Multiple CTAs: Having CTA buttons near the top and middle of the page, both of which link to the form at the bottom, gives visitors multiple opportunities to engage. This also saves them the trouble of having to manually scroll all the way down to the bottom to fill out the form and request a demo.
• Chatbot: For any visitors who want an immediate response to their questions, the chatbot in the lower right corner provides a quick and frictionless way to get quick answers.

8. Lyft: service landing page design

The design of this page is kind of like motor oil—it reduces friction and helps things move along smoothly. If you’re interested in making some cash by driving for Lyft, this landing page makes it super easy to get started.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Simple and direct design: The designers of this page made the (good) decision to strip away absolutely everything except what absolutely needs to be here. From the short copy to the white space-filled design, this entire page is laser-focused on streamlining the process of becoming a Lyft driver.
• Supporting benefits and details: What if a visitor lands on this page but they haven’t yet decided if they want to drive for Lyft? No problem—by scrolling down the page they’re presented with clear, easy-to-understand benefits of being a Lyft driver, how the program works, and some FAQs. 

9. Thinkific: service landing page design

Just a few decades ago, the idea of being able to access the entire world’s repository of knowledge felt like something that was only seen in science fiction. Now, thanks to the internet, anyone across the globe can share what they know with students in any country. 

Thinkific’s platform provides a seamless way to create online courses and share them with the world, and this landing page makes it easy to understand how it all works.

What’s awesome about this landing page design:

• Easy navigation: Just below the hero image and copy you’ll find a horizontal row with five features of Thinkific’s platform. This makes it easy to see what information is contained on the page, and jump directly to the one that interests you most.
• Social proof: Below the five main features visitors will find testimonials from two of Thinkific’s happy customers, with short quotes describing why Thinkific works so well for them. As social animals, we humans pay a lot of attention to the thoughts and opinions of the people around us, which is why social proof can be so influential.

10. SnackMagic: product landing page design

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. What is landing page optimization (LPO)?
2. When you should use a landing page
3. What to do before you build a landing page
4. The best practices of landing page optimization
5. Optimizing your landing page call to action (CTA)
6. Creating high-performing forms on your landing page
7. How to build trust with your landing page visitors
8. Driving organic traffic through landing page SEO
9. Mistakes to avoid when building your landing page
10. What to do before you publish your landing page
11. How to test and validate your landing page
12. How to report on landing page performance
13. What to do when your landing page campaign ends
14. Becoming a landing page optimization expert
15. One final thought on landing page optimization

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Garrett Hughes

Garrett is part of Unbounce’s content team. When he’s not tap-tappin’ on his keyboard, you might catch him out on the slopes, poking around fantasy hockey forums, or on a low-key adventure with his very-good-boy, Benson.

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Oli Gardner

Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner has seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet. He’s obsessed with identifying and reversing bad marketing practices, and his disdain for marketers who send campaign traffic to their homepage is legendary, resulting in landing page rants that can peel paint off an unpainted wall. A prolific international keynote speaker, Oli is on a mission to rid the world of marketing mediocrity by using data-informed copywriting, design, interaction, and psychology to create a more delightful experience for marketers and customers alike. He was recently named the “The 2018 Marketer to Watch,” in the under 46 category, by his mother.

» More blog posts by Oli Gardner

Do you have abandonment issues because your landing page bounce rate is through the roof? Wasting precious time and money on ineffective PPC campaigns? Tired of your boss complaining about how the industry average conversion rate is double what you achieved last month? Donʼt know how to fix the problem?

Never fear.

With our authoritative, definitive, essential, ultimate collection of 101 landing page optimization tips—yes, you heard us, it’s all those things!—weʼll have you testing, reporting, increasing ROI, and leveling up your online marketing campaigns in no time.

The tips are broken up into 14 chapters, starting with:

What is landing page optimization (LPO)?

Landing page optimization (LPO) is the process by which you make incremental improvements and changes to each element of your page to drive leads, signups, or sales.

Optimization includes starting with best practices and data-backed insights, but it also involves testing variants (different versions of the page) to see which one performs best with your target audience. Doing so will help you increase their effectiveness and enhance your return on your investment.

More recently, artificial intelligence has become a powerful tool in landing page optimization. (We even wrote a guide to optimizing your conversion rate with AI.) For example, marketers can use AI optimization to automatically send each visitor to the landing page variant where they’re most likely to convert—helping to maximize conversions and marketing ROI.

When you should use a landing page

You probably donʼt have the time, money, or resources to use a landing page for every little idea or campaign initiative that you come up with, so here are our suggestions for when they are a relevant (and powerful) option.

Let’s start this guide with tips for when you oughta be using a landing page.

1. Use a landing page for every paid ad or email campaign 

Okay, so we literally just said you probably canʼt do this. (Jeez, this guide is off to a bumpy start.) The truth, though, is you should at least try to use landing pages for any paid campaigns.

If youʼve begun to grasp the fundamental purpose of the landing page, youʼll know that sending visitors to non-campaign-specific pages (like your homepage) is just wasting money. That’s because you’re not giving your traffic the best opportunity to convert—so you’re getting lower ROI on your marketing spend.

So: The best way to ensure that you can build a landing page for every campaign?

Develop a painless process and some standard landing page templates for the types of campaigns you do, and be ruthless about reporting on your success. If you can demonstrate that you can a) build landing pages quickly, and b) achieve improved ROI through reporting and testing, you’re well on your way to convincing your stakeholders.

2. … And when you’ve got multiple inbound traffic sources

If you’re expecting traffic from multiple sources (Google Ads, affiliates, organic search, social, email), you may want to create separate landing pages for each source to simplify the funnel and enable more distinct testing.

Thankfully, you don’t need to start from scratch each time. Once you’ve created your first landing page, you can easily duplicate it and create new versions tailored to each source of traffic.

3. … And when you’re targeting people on mobile devices

This optimization tip goes hand-in-hand with different channels, but designing for mobile is so important that it’s worth calling out on its own.

If a significant amount of your traffic comes from smartphones—either through searches, email, or social apps—even a responsive website may not be the best experience for your visitors. A mobile-first landing page, though, lets you keep people laser-focused on your conversion goal—whatever the device.

4. … And when you’ve got short-term or special promotions 

Sometimes you’ll need to launch a promotional campaign quickly. These typically come in at the last minute. If your website is clunky or you don’t have the web developer support you need to get things up quickly, you’ll need somewhere to communicate your campaigns.

Standalone landing pages are great for this because they can exist outside of your existing infrastructure. Plus, they’re easy to switch off when the campaign ends without adding unnecessary complexity to your site.

5. … And when you need to get stuff launched quickly

Sometimes you just need to get a web page up and live. But maybe you work for a big company that has a rigid deployment schedule. Sometimes they have the flexibility to break the rules, but not always.

Well, imagine itʼs Mother’s Day, and you have to get a critical message out regarding a promotion you are running, and you forgot to update the promotions page on the website. What to do?

Build a simple, focused landing page, bypassing IT (theyʼll forgive you when you show the conversion report) and getting the job done. Not ideal, but sometimes you have to think on your feet.

6. … And when your CMO or CEO has a “big idea”

Weʼve all been there.

Some creative executive type (I canʼt be too harsh here, as Iʼm one myself) comes up with a great idea that must be dealt with immediately. The simplest way to do this is in a disconnected landing page that can break code conventions, brand guidelines, and can be efficiently measured to provide instant feedback on itʼs ridiculousness.

Or maybe, perhaps, itʼll work like a charm—in which case youʼre going to be re-designing the whole site according to the new direction. Pray for failure. 

What to do before you build a landing page

For the marketers (or designers, or developers) responsible for creating a landing page, the following landing page tips will help ensure the page meets the needs of your campaign. 

7. Make sure you’ve got a creative brief

Ideally, there’ll be a well-defined concept that ties business and user goals together into a simple and implementable idea. This will help you to design something that doesnʼt stray from the goals of the campaign. 

That’s the power of a creative brief. 

If you are a small business or entrepreneur, then this might seem like a bit of a luxury (or an extreme waste of time). If you’ve never used a brief before, try searching for some examples or templates—it can be really useful to go through the process of creating a simple half-page brief just to get the idea down on paper before you commit it to the digital realm. And once you’ve done it once, it gets easier and faster.

8. Know the objectives of your campaign

Make sure you fully understand the business objective of the campaign, and—in particular—the landing page. What problem are you trying to solve? What role does it play in your marketing funnel? How does the page fit into the larger strategic picture driving company success? 

Every decision that gets made in creating a landing page should be informed by these kinds of contextual considerations.

9. Empathize with your target audience

It should go without saying that you need understand the goals and motivations of the people who’ll be arriving at your landing page. What are the main questions that a potential visitor will have? What do they already know about your product or service? What pain points are plaguing them? 

Knowing the answers will allow you to design an experience that answers these questions in priority sequence on the page. (And avoid distractions or needless repetitions.)

10. Get clear on the action you want people to take

Before you start building, you need to know the desired action of the visitor: the primary call to action. This might sound obvious, but if you don’t have a very specific idea in mind, your page can lose focus—fast. 

Sometimes, when designing your page, it’s even worth starting with the button you want folks to click, then moving backward from there.

11. Know where your visitors are coming from

Take note of all campaign entry points (email, organic, PPC, social media) and any existing collateral materials to ensure you maintain a consistent brand experience and design. 

For example: If your landing page doesnʼt match the aesthetic of a banner ad, then people will often (rightfully) assume they’re in the wrong place and leave. Avoid unnecessary bounces by keeping the visitor journey consistent, from first click through to conversion. 

12. Understand the technical limitations of your audience

Are they primarily iPhone users? Android? Windows? Mac? Are they elderly folks who still view everything at 480×600 resolution? Or are they designers with big 4K screens? 

Knowing the devices that your visitors most commonly use will help you build pages that match their context. (As a rule, we always recommend creating mobile-responsive landing pages, but sometimes it’s even better to create separate pages for separate devices.)

13. Check the availability of your campaign domain name

Did you remember to buy the domain for the campaign? 

(No? Sometimes this happens after a few beers.) 

This will normally have been checked and purchased by someone in IT, but itʼs a good idea to verify it. Strongly branded domain names can place a heavy influence on design direction, and having to patch something up at the last minute because someone forgot to get the domain will affect your time to market (which can be critical for event-based marketing).

14. Remember (and avoid) past campaign mistakes

Sounds simple, but unless you make the effort to track and record problems in previous campaigns, you’ll never learn from them. 

My suggestion? Put a big poster on the wall with the “top 10 things to avoid doing.” If you learn something from how your past landing pages perform, make sure the new people on your team know about them going forward.

15. Remember (and repeat) past campaign successes

Likewise: If something has worked in the past, repeat it in your new campaigns. Some teams get bored of their own marketing and needlessly implement changes that end up working less well than the tried-and-true. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

This can become your own personal best practices list—a companion to this one!

16. Check out what your competitors are up to

For whatever reason, some teams really don’t like to look at what the competition is doing—either they’re intimidated or they feel like it’s a distraction. But really, you should be checking out what your competitors are up to on the regular. 

This can serve two purposes; if you need inspiration, it can give you some ideas—or if you’re trying to innovate and differentiate, you’ll be in a position to zag away from the competition.

The best practices of landing page optimization

Great—we’re ready to build our landing page! 

Sticking to the fundamentals and landing page best practices can take you from having a terrible landing page to having one that people find hard to poke holes in. Apply these optimization tips vigorously as you get started, then enhance your pages by digging into the areas we discuss later on.

17. Send people to a relevant and targeted page

Because it’s meant to serve visitors coming from all kinds of different traffic sources, your homepage is a total mish-mash of messaging. “Get 10% off your first purchase,” “check out our new product,” “meet our leadership team.” There’s a ton of stuff visitors can do and see—which means it’s hard to keep ‘em focused on your campaign goal. 

With that in mind, resist the urge to send campaign traffic to your homepage. It’s better suited to someone who organically learns about your brand than someone clicking through a PPC ad promoting a specific offer.

Remember: One goal, one message, one action. That means one page for your ads and emails—a dedicated landing page with corresponding messaging.

18. Provide a consistent visitor experience

From your ad or email, through to your landing page, and into your checkout or signup flow—your design, your messaging, and your tone should all be consistent with the expectations your visitor had when they first clicked. 

We call this “message match.” When somebody sees an ad on Facebook, it catches their attention through a combination of copy and design: the “message.” That message sets an expectation for what’ll happen when a person clicks. For example, if the ad says “Buy one pair of shoes and get one free,” the visitor will expect to end up on a page that allows them to redeem that offer.

When you don’t have message match in your visitor journey, people get confused or frustrated—and then they bounce.

Think of it this way: If your upstream ad is the source, you should be drinking from the same stream at the end of the journey as you were at the beginning. (We must be feeling parched.)

19. Remember Roxette: “Donʼt bore us… Get to the chorus”

This landing optimization page tip comes from Swedish pop duo Roxette. As one of the masters of bubblegum pop, they knew how to highlight the most important element of each song: the chorus. 

No one likes a rambler or a dillydallier. When dealing with online prospects, don’t assume you have their attention. You need to get to the point—fast.

(The astute among you will recognize that by using this analogy, we’re essentially countering our own argument.)

But sometimes, you have to provide some editorial or instructional introduction for the sake of clarity. (Marketers occasionally go a little too far in trimming their landing page copy, honestly.) If you need to say something before you “get to the chorus,” like Roxette, just make sure the juicy bits stand out.

20. Focus attention with a clear and concise headline

Imagine yourself walking down a busy street. You glance at the newspaper vending machine (those still exist, right?) to see a big, black, bold headline. 

If it captures your attention, you might stop, bend over, and read it for a while. If itʼs really good, you might fish a dollar out of your pocket and actually pay for it. But if itʼs just a big page of small type with no visible purpose, you wouldn’t even break your stride. 

The landing page optimization lesson? Make your headline very clear and easily noticeable, then put it somewhere obvious at the top of your page. It should be the first thing that your visitor notices, and it should be compelling enough to keep them reading.

21. Segment your customers and traffic sources

If you have different types of customers, build a landing page for each segment and drive traffic via separate sources. This will allow you to measure your most effective market segmentation. 

If your landing page has extended logic or geo-targeting capabilities, you may be able to create a single page with changing content based on each type of visitor. If this is the case, ensure your tracking can handle these complexities.

22. Remove any visual clutter or distractions

Did you ever see that ad campaign with a single button proclaiming “don’t click me”? Turns out, it did quite well. In fact, it was wildly successful. Nobody could resist clicking it. Not only was it a tempting bit of reverse psychology, but it also didn’t have any competing information to distract visitors. 

As you create your landing page, step back from time to time, look at it from a distance and see how many things are vying for your attention. Refine your landing page until the answer is… just one.

23. Don’t provide any on-page navigation

Similarly, donʼt give people a full-scale website experience on a landing page. You often paid to get them there, so keep ’em focused and on track. 

If they really want to know your favorite color or to look you up on Google Maps, they can go to your website another time. Each navigation option you provide dilutes their attention.

24. Keep the reading to a minimum

Chances are your offer or product doesn’t need a whole peer-reviewed thesis paper to explain it. Ensure visitors get a chance to read your most important copy right off the bat. If it’s buried in five paragraphs of text, itʼll be missed. 

An exception to this rule would be a page designed to provide a high level of detail, but this is usually best used as the deep-linked “product detail” page on the target website and not on a landing page.

25. Make the most of space “above the fold”

These days, “above the fold” isn’t relevant for every type of web pages, but it still holds true for the landing page. Your primary messaging and call to action must be above the fold (the bottom of the screen for the average browser resolution of your target market). 

Think of it this way: If a visitor doesn’t scroll down, they should still be able to get the gist of your offer and take the action you want them to take. 

26. Repeat your call to action on longer pages

Despite the existence of very successful long-form landing pages, you still need to ensure that the call to action is present above the fold and then repeated at comfortable intervals further down the page. This allows people to read while keeping the action visible when the urge to buy arrives. 

Different people react to different content, so they may be two-thirds of the way through before they believe what you’re saying. If there is a button right there, they’ll be more likely to convert when they finally form an emotional connection to your message.

27. Always maintain landing page “congruence”

“Congruence” sounds like a big word, but it just refers to the concept of ensuring that every element on your landing page refers to, or supports, your core value proposition. 

Look over your design and copy. If an element is not directly supporting your goals, then ditch it or change it so it does. Simple, right?

28. Experiment with different media types

Faster download speeds and improved compression mean that including video is no longer a technical barrier, even on mobile devices. Visitors are likely to spend more time on your site engaged in passive activities such as watching a video because itʼs easier than reading. This extra time can be the difference between someone “hearing” your message and not.

(That said, video on landing pages isn’t always the smart choice. So be sure to test.)

As with everything else, quality is king here: say something important and say it well. If you canʼt afford to build something with a high production value, then aim for a screencast—an on-screen walkthrough of your product or offer. These are intended and expected to be lo-fi and this quality can enhance the realism and authenticity of you and your approach—where the message now resides in what you say and what you show, rather than in the production value of the video.

29. Enable sharing on viral landing pages

If your goal is to create buzz with a landing page—like a quiz, game, or humor piece—ensure that it’s easily sharable. The most obvious choices for social media buzz creation are Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, and Instagram. They can help to spread your message quickly and in an exponential fashion if what you are doing is tweet or like-worthy.

The key to success lies in the fact that social sharing is not 100% altruistic—it adds the content into your own personal timeline, letting you show off stuff that represents your personality and beliefs. It’s reminiscent of the psychology surrounding a hipster’s vinyl or book collection, where you gain pleasure from the reaction of others to your taste. Create pages that make the person sharing them look good in the eyes of their social networks.

30. Maintain campaign momentum at every step

It’s important to maintain the message of your campaign from ad to post-conversion and everything in between. Campaign momentum is about removing the break in communication that can occur after the first click and ensuring a smooth buyer journey with no surprises (except good ones!). 

The best way to maintain momentum is by repeating the offer. Show that clicking through to your landing page didn’t cause the promise to be forgotten.

31. Provide extra value on your confirmation or thank you page

If you are asking your visitors for personal data on your landing page (such as an email address for lead capture), take it one step further and give them a bonus on the thank you page. This could just be something useful, such as a link to related content on your site, or it could be an extra free downloadable or worksheet. 

Giving something away for free (or for an email address) is good marketing. Surprising someone and giving them a bonus is smart marketing.

Optimizing your landing page call to action (CTA)

Your call to action (CTA) is the primary conversion goal of a visitor to your landing page. Examples of common actions are purchasing a product, subscribing to a newsletter, calling you on the phone, downloading an ebook or whitepaper, watching a demo, or requesting information.

Optimizing your CTA can have a big impact on your conversion rate—so be sure to experiment with different copy and design to see what works best for your audience.

32. Make your copy clear and unambiguous

Generic CTAs are the death of your conversion rates. If you are offering a free ebook, for instance, then make the button say “Get your free ebook”, and not something vague like “go,” “submit,” or “subscribe.” 

(You also don’t need to tell people to “click.” They know how cursors work.)

Check out these call to action examples for some tips on writing copy that gets conversions.

33. Avoid pulling a bait and switch

Related to the previous tip, donʼt promise one thing and then deliver something else—or even worse, nothing at all. 

To follow the same example as above, if you are giving away an ebook, and your CTA says, “Get your free ebook,” donʼt ask for $2.95 on the next screen or say “thanks for registering” without a link to the product you are offering. Yes, you will have gained a lead—but because you’ve burned ‘em, the customer is now worthless, and they’ll tell others about your unscrupulous tactics.

34. “Amazing, awesome, kick-ass!”

Resist the temptation to include bloated adjectives. Such claims are likely to make people think you are overselling and trying too hard. 

The same goes with overly negative opt-outs, like making somebody click “No, I don’t want to make extra money!” to close your popup.

35. Provide a little bit of breathing room

Allow your CTA room to breathe visually. The expansive use of whitespace will allow your button or statement to stand out on the page. 

Color choice is important here also. Create a high contrast between the CTA and surrounding elements to assert its dominance on your page.

36. Keep your button where it can be seen

Donʼt let your CTA fall below the fold on the devices that your visitors are using, and if you have a long page, repeat the call to action at the bottom of the page or once on every page length to remind the user and provide them with a mechanism to act, regardless of where they are. 

More advanced designers can even create a floating CTA button that follows the reader down the page, but these aren’t always as effective because they get stripped of a little context. Test it!

37. Personalize your call to action

For example, if the desired action is for the customer to call a phone number, donʼt make them work. Provide a toll-free number, or geo-targeted local codes as required. 

You can also use features like Dynamic Text Replacement to pull copy from the ad they clicked directly onto your page.

38. Give your visitors a safety net

Not all customers are ready to engage right away. They might need some supporting information to ease their worries or answer their questions. 

If you’re asking someone to buy something, a sensible secondary CTA would be to download a product brochure. This keeps them in your realm of influence (as opposed to leaving them to do research elsewhere) and builds confidence. 

Ensure that the safety net CTA doesnʼt compete in size and visual dominance—often a simple text link is adequate, beneath the main big action button. If you’re asking someone to purchase online, offering a phone number can make a potential customer more likely to convert if that is their preferred contact method.

39. Optimize your CTA for continuity

You’ve heard of failing to see the forest for the trees. But what about failing to see the campaign for the landing page? Sometimes a focus on optimizing just one touchpoint in your buyer journey can blind you to significant opportunities to optimize elsewhere.

Carry your primary call to action throughout the entire acquisition and conversion experience, from upstream ad (PPC, email, social media post, QR code, etc.) through your landing page and on to the final destination page (if there is one). 

Evaluate the journey from the perspective of somebody who’s never been on it—are there disjointed elements? Confusing or unexpected shifts in tone or focus? Mismatched offers or products? 

All of this should be optimized.

40. Make sure your copy is audience-appropriate

If you are selling spa getaways, then donʼt be aggressive with your tone and language. (“Get ready to feel hella relaxed, bro!”) If you are offering funeral services, donʼt add six exclamation marks at the end of the call to action. 

Our study of the dominant emotions on a landing page shows that some sentiments correlate with higher conversion rates—while others can put sales and signups in the gutter. You can read more about it in the Conversion Benchmark Report.

41. Stay focused on your campaign goal

If you have only one message and action, you should be able to look at the page and have your eye immediately drawn to the action area. Donʼt place extraneous offers or navigation on the page that could draw the user into doing something else. 

In the case where you have several choices (such as different packages or pricing options), there is still a single goal (choose a package). Ensure that each action area is consistent and they are grouped in a region that can be considered the action area.

Creating high-performing forms on your landing page

Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a web visitor more than the dreaded form, especially if involves multiple steps or dozens of form fields. Follow these simple landing page tips to reduce your bounce rate on your forms.

42. Ruthlessly remove unnecessary form fields

Every Jack and Jill in your company will want some extra data from your lead capture or subscription forms. Itʼs your job as Chief Landing Page Optimization Officer to cut this down to a minimum. 

Experiment with the number of fields on your forms to see how much information your visitors are willing to provide before they give up. Do you really need to know a visitor’s fax number these days? Probably not—so try removing it and see if it improves your conversion rates.

43. Use directional cues to draw attention to the form

If your primary goal is to have someone complete a form, you should use design elements to visually direct their attention so they know what they are supposed to do. (Never assume!) Check out this resource on designing for conversion for an in-depth look at the use of directional cues.

44. Include plenty of whitespace in your layout

Donʼt crowd your form. Make it inviting, clean, and simple by surrounding it with a decent margin of clear space. (This is true of every element of your landing page, but it’s especially true of your form. Design counts!)

45. Use oversized, attention-grabbing buttons

We’re not trying to create a snotty online banking application. It’s a one-shot deal (which may still be to do with banking). As such, donʼt be afraid to design big shiny buttons that really stand out. They donʼt need to be grey or be the same height as a standard text field. Go big to stop your visitors from going home.

46. Make form labels and field text easy to read

Use a large enough font that anyone can read it easily. Web design standards are moving in the direction of form fields and text that are bigger than the previous norm, so follow suit and make your forms feel friendlier and happier (and more readable).

47. Give people a reason to fill out your form

We’ve never heard of anyone who actually likes filling out a form (even if their browser is autocompleting some of it for ‘em). Be sure to make the benefits and reward very clear and position them in context with the form so that people are constantly reminded why they are bothering.

How to build trust with your landing page visitors

Building trust may not feel like an obvious way to optimize a landing page, but it’s actually a very important factor. With the proliferation of spam, rug pulls, dubious dropshipping, and get-rich-quick schemes found in online marketing, becoming a leader with regard to trust can give your pages an instant leg up. 

The first key to success here is simply to care. Donʼt just pay lip service to this area. Itʼs more important to people than you may think.

48. Provide a phone number to establish authenticity

A phone number present tells people you are legitimate and that there are real people at the end of the line. It can also be a good fallback for people who aren’t comfortable with online transactions, but who like your offer. 

And, of course, if you’re targeting locals—for example, if you offer a service in a specific geographic area—it’s a great way for them to get in touch with you.

49. Remove any barriers to valuable content

If you are giving something away for free, but asking for personal details in exchange, offer something that really is free in advance, like a small portion of the materials you’re providing—the first couple chapters of your ebook, for example. 

This piques interest and lets people know you are not going to send them something worthless in exchange for their personal information. People like the try-before-you-buy option.

A real-world example would be the unwritten rule that it’s okay to eat a grape in the supermarket. Arguably it’s theft, but everyone likes to do it to check that the goods are, in fact, good. 

You might be thinking, “Yeah, but if the grapes are bad, people will find out and not buy them.” Exactly! If you have a great product, you shouldn’t be scared to share a little upfront. (And if you don’t have a great product… well…)

50. Ensure consistency at every stage

If your banner, landing page, and destination site donʼt feel part of the same family, you’ll lose business. The landing page falls right in the middle of the acquisition process and should extend the minimal size and copy of an ad (or email) into a real sense of brand values. 

In a world of scams and shams, brand consistency reassures your visitors that they’re not being led down the wrong path and that the product—or whatever you’re promoting—matches what’s written on the box.

51. Extend your brand messaging throughout

Ensure that your landing page design is the same from ad or email to landing page. Donʼt change the color palette and typography from one to the other. Repeat the original core message on the landing page for instant recognition and increased confidence that you are in the right place.

52. Refrain from gimmicky sales tactics

The internet is littered with so much crap that hip-waders should be the preferred footwear of today’s web surfer. No matter how much you feel the need to use the BUY NOW, BEST DEAL EVER type guff that profligates the sad lower-end of our industry, just remember one thing: authenticity rules. 

Most people see through the hype and understand when you are telling the truth. (Today, a lot of false scarcity tactics on ecommerce landing pages are probably doing more harm than good for people’s conversion rates.)

53. Avoid aggressive use of popups

If you use six popups on a single page, you should hang your head in shame as your entire customer base leaves you for a company with more integrity. Sure, you may notice a slight improvement in conversion rates in the short term, but if youʼre attracting the types of customers who click on popups simply to get the ad out of the way, they’re very unlikely to be a long-term source of revenue.

You may be in a position where you just want to present higher numbers at the weekly meeting a few times to fulfill your contract, but if you are an entrepreneur, stay away from aggressive tactics.

Use your gut—if it makes your stomach feel even a little uneasy, it probably doesnʼt make good business sense. Artfully deployed, popups and sticky bars can give your prospects the extra nudge they need but do it gently and from an authentic desire to help ‘em.

54. Use verifiable facts to back up claims

In an age of comparison shopping and online research, bold claims about your product or service may elicit skepticism on the part of the consumer). 

If what you are promising isnʼt really true, then donʼt say it. You will get caught out. Perhaps by only a few individuals—but if they turn out to be social connectors, you could quickly find yourself plastered all over the blogosphere with devastating consequences. 

Keep your brand healthy by avoiding any claims that erode trust.

55. Include endorsements from recognized sources

If you have affiliations with well-known people or businesses, use their endorsements to build credibility. (Company logos, written testimonials, and even short videos can play this role.) Social proof like this can provide the extra uplift your messaging needs to convince people to buy.

Iʼm pretty sure that Proactiv isnʼt some miracle cure for acne, but Iʼm willing to suspend that doubt purely because the celebrities promoting it are placing their reputation on the line.

56. Donʼt ask for information you don’t really need

Sure, there are five people in your office beating down your door asking for an extra phone number or age or favorite pair of underwear—sometimes qualified leads are overqualified—but if itʼs not critical to the information or product being requested on your landing page, then donʼt risk scaring people away. Chances are that the extra information will be scantily used anyway.

57. Put your legalese in laypersonʼs terms

If you need to have a terms and conditions page or section, try to put the important stuff in layperson’s terms. Better yet, make it entertaining, by separating it into two segments—the T&C that keeps the legal teams happy, and the T&C for the rest of us.

58. Gather real testimonials from customers

Testimonials work to create trust on your landing pages. But resist the urge to use false or made-up ones. If you invent overly enthusiastic statements using caricatures of stereotypical personas, and position them with images grabbed from stock photo sites, you’ll do more harm than good. 

If you have a great product or service and you treat your customers well, testimonials will either come to you or you’ll have established the relationships where you can go and ask for them. Wait for that great customer story that could be the tipping point in making people believe your landing page message, something that shows you have affected someone’s life or business. 

If you don’t have a great testimonial yet, increase the feedback mechanisms on your website to allow your customers to provide the information you need.

59. Add certification and brand logos

This is a classic technique to garner trust. If you have awards or recognition through a review site like G2, wear it proudly on your sleeve. However, itʼs important to use relevant and well-known brands in your alignment strategy. 

There are plenty of certifications out there that aren’t any more trusted than you are. Saying you are part of the Viagra Sellers Alliance probably wonʼt help you convert retirees into paying customers for a trek in the Andes.

60. Use professional landing page design

Often, the more expensive you look, the more believable your story will appear. In this case, money talks. 

You still need the right call to action and landing page copy, but paying attention to landing page design can make a huge difference, too. As single people often learn, a beautiful apartment with picture-perfect interior design can make the difference between stopping by for coffee and stopping by for coffee. 

61. Donʼt exaggerate about your product or service

Following on from the last point, if you oversell yourself in the living room, you may very well attract your guest into the bedroom, only to find that they leave at the sight of the real thing.

62. Address potential concerns around privacy

As the internet has grown up, ensuring visitor privacy has become a bigger and bigger concern for marketers. Provide links to a privacy statement (or add it to your terms and services page) to quell fears of email abuse and misuse of personal information. 

A good technique is to write, “Weʼll never sell your email address” in close proximity to your lead gen form, and make sure you’re adhering to local privacy laws (like GDPR) when it comes to disclosure and consent.

63. Invest in co-branding and partnerships

Partners drive traffic to your business, often to a landing page. Using a co-branded landing page can enhance the ad message momentum and improve your conversion rate. This provides the customer with the confidence that their intended goal is being maintained. 

For example, if an affiliate is offering a discount coupon (something they have arranged with you so that they can attract customers based on this special deal), the customer needs to know that when they click from the initiating site over to your landing page, the offer hasn’t been “digitally disregarded.”

65. Use internal linking on SEO landing pages

While campaign landing pages often exist in isolation, driving visitors from an ad further down your funnel, organic landing pages on your site need to be accessible and integrated into your site structure through internal links. Any single page (“orphan”) that doesn’t sit within an architecture of internal linking is going to struggle a bit when it comes to ranking well. 

66. Write long-form copy to hit more keywords

Campaign landing pages generally need to be short and focused to convert at their best. Organic landing pages need enough content that Google deems them worthy of a high spot in the search results. For this reason, you probably don’t want to try to create a hybrid page.

With well-written copy, long-form landing pages can convert just as well as their shorter counterparts—so don’t be afraid to be a little verbose on pages meant to rank.

67. Provide a valuable resource to gain backlinks from others

Most evergreen landing pages exist for the purpose of lead gen. If you give away something (a whitepaper or ebook) that contains excellent content you are more likely to attract inbound links, which will give your site a healthy boost in rankings and drive new visitors to your landing page.

68. Make sure your page loads super fast

All the great content in the world won’t help you if you haven’t nailed page speed, especially on mobile devices. These days, huge media or script files, excessive use of website plugins, and poor hosting are the usual culprits. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to get a sense of how you’re doing.

Mistakes to avoid when building your landing page

Weʼve all had horrible online experiences: trolls, scammers, dark patterns, and unscrupulous merchants seemingly lurk around every corner. Even though the web has evolved a lot since 2010 (or 1995), the standards for good digital marketing remain quite low. 

Follow these landing page optimization tips to avoid annoying potential leads and customers.

69. Don’t ramble on (if you can avoid it)

Keep it short and sweet. Although there are occasionally applications for long-form landing pages, 99% of landing pages benefit from going shorter. 

How short? To paraphrase Steve Krug (author of “Donʼt Make Me Think”), cut your copy in half and then throw away half of what is left.

70. Don’t lie to your customers

To be an effective marketer, you simply must deliver on your promises. Treat people well, and theyʼll tell their friends. Treat people poorly and they’ll tell their friends. Get the problem? (We’d extend the definition of lying to “soft lies” like fake scarcity tactics and countdown timers, but you do you.) 

71. Donʼt include a form if you donʼt need it

If you can honestly get away without a form, donʼt be greedy and throw one in there because it would be nice to be able to capture some data. Keep it out and reap the benefits of a slimmed-down landing page. 

If you are trying to extend your brand exposure and expertise with a free white paper, consider giving it away without the email capture—but make sure each page is branded with your identity and contact information. If itʼs worth itʼs salt, people will share it, and you get more visitors as a result. You also get plenty of karma points.

72. Don’t blast ‘em with music (or a video)

If your page requires sound to function, then ensure that you provide the facility to control the volume, including a prominent mute button. And for goodness’ sake, start with any videos muted. (Subtitles are a great idea here, and not just for accessibility.)

If someone is viewing your page during quiet time—on their commute, or at the office—sudden sounds can be a surefire way to drive them to the close button.

73. Don’t do lead gen with the intention to spam

This is more of an email marketing tip, but still. Keep your communication with your leads on-topic and avoid sending them unasked-for communications. (Make it clear with the landing page, thank you page, and follow-up email what they’ll be receiving and how often.) If they are completing a form to get your whitepaper on gardening, don’t start sending them emails about motorbikes. 

We’d recommend reading “Permission Marketing” by Seth Godin for more good behavior ideas.

74. Donʼt use “free” photos you found on the internet

Free images often aren’t free, especially the ones that appears first in a search of Google images. And even if you avoid (or don’t care about) international copywriting law, chances are that by using them, youʼll appear generic and untrustworthy. 

Instead, we’d recommend asking for ad budget to take your own photos, using a high-quality stock photo library, or even jumping on a free resource like Unsplash. (No relation.)

75. Don’t assume your visitors know everything

Donʼt make assumptions about what your visitors already know. If you know your product or your market really well, it’s very easy to forget that other people haven’t had the benefit of your experience. 

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody completely new and anticipate their questions and objectives. Then make sure you address them on the page. This will help prevent people from going elsewhere to find their answers and potentially finding a better offer. (Sometimes, usability tests and customer research can help too.)

If you’re looking for another book recommendation on this topic, we’d recommend “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath.

76. Don’t prevent people from opting out

No form should feel like forever. If someone is registering with you for a newsletter or ongoing communication, make it clear that they will be able to easily opt out at any time. Saying this upfront is often the tipping point between someone saying “okay, sure” and “no way.”

What to do before you publish your landing page

It is tempting to be impatient and “get it out the door” as soon as you can, but it pays to take a few deep breaths and do some final checks and balances before you start pushing traffic to your landing pages. Remember, conversion-optimized landing pages do best when you set yourself up for success from the very beginning. 

77. Have a pre-publish checklist

This is a tip in itself, and the next few items will explain some of the tasks you should perform as part of this checklist. If you can establish a checklist and incorporate it into your process, you will soon start to develop good habits that produce better, more effective landing pages.

Make sure you’ve got somebody on your team (maybe you?) who is accountable for checking everything off in the right order.

78. Apply the five-second rule

If you’re on a budget, you can do some simple usability and page goal testing using people in your office (or friends and family). A good rule of thumb is to follow the five-second rule. 

Sit your subject in front of a computer screen and show them the page for five seconds. Then hide it and ask them what the purpose of the page was. If they are unclear, you may need to re-address the communication of the primary message and call to action. You can also crowdsource this activity through a service like Five Second Test.

79. Get as many eyes on it as possible

If you work in an office, print your landing page out and pin it to the wall so that people can see it. This will open up a discussion about your design. Often, an objective set of eyeballs will spot simple things that can help refine the page before you push it live. 

This is also a good way to increase collaboration. Youʼll be surprised at some of the skills or insights your co-workers can provide, even (especially!) non-marketers. Invite them to drop some stickies on it too. (If you’re hybrid or work remotely, you can also use tools like Miro or Figma.)

80. Spend some time on quality assurance

You can’t afford to have any typos or errors on your landing pages. With such a short time to convince a visitor that you have something of value, even minor slip-ups can cost you a sale. Make sure it looks good in the major web browsers your target market uses. Fortunately, most landing pages are relatively simple, but donʼt forget to check.

Some companies have this built into their process. Others are too small and rely on the founder to do everything. But even in large companies, small marketing campaigns often get the short end of the stick, and they donʼt have a dedicated person for quality assurance. 

We’d recommend you establish a QA process a few hours (or even days) before your landing page goes live so you have the time to fix any mistakes that crop up.

How to test and validate your landing page

Many marketing departments rely solely on gut instinct and personal opinion instead of landing page conversion optimization. (Often the personal opinion of the most senior person on the team, too.) Be prepared to throw that out the window and start achieving real insight into what works and what doesnʼt.

81. A/B test to validate your decisions

Simply put, A/B testing allows you to perform simple comparative campaign studies, allowing you to produce alternate designs and messaging and see which performs the best. Having a testing infrastructure in place is critical to being able to measure your success. 

Remember, though: in most cases, you can only test one variable at a time. Below, we’ve listed a few options to get you started.

82. Test the primary image(s) or photography

Most campaigns are intended for a specific segment or user demographic. As such, itʼs a good idea to try different images that provide varied emotional responses. The smiling happy old fly-fisherman may well evoke a happy retirement, but some people can be thrown off by generic stock imagery.

83. Test your primary message

Write multiple variations on your main message and run tests on each. If you’ve been handed a few possible messages from your product marketing team, landing pages can be a great way of seeing which ones actually resonate. (Also, try varying the size and color of the text.)

84. Test your call to action

For testing purposes, youʼll want to try varying the message in your main CTA. Ensure itʼs an accurate description of what the user will get when they act on it to avoid trust and annoyance issues.

85. Test your CTA button color

There are many viewpoints out there regarding button color. Some say that red is the best color to use as it evokes such strong emotional reactions, but itʼs also a negative “stop” type color, so be sure to test it with others like green for “go” and blue as a familiar web standard link/action color. 

To be honest, contrast is more important than color. Ask yourself: does your button pop?

86. Test your form threshold

For lead capture and other forms, you will want to minimize the number of fields that visitors are required to complete. However, if you have a particularly strong need for data, try running an A/B/C/D/E test with varying amounts of information gathering. This way, you can make an informed decision about what abandonment rate is acceptable when weighed against the extra data produced.

87. Constantly refine and optimize

If you have new ideas, test them immediately! The more information you glean the better your landing pages will become. 

Donʼt stop at the first A/B test. Brainstorm areas of the page that should be tested and throw up two, three, four, or five different versions.

88. Use AI optimization to get a leg up

All this testing takes time and traffic that smaller teams and companies don’t necessarily have. Fortunately, today’s marketers have access to AI-powered optimization tools like Smart Traffic that do more sophisticated testing with way less effort. 

In Smart Traffic’s case, you create multiple variants and it automatically routes visitors to the one that’s most likely to convert ‘em—getting you (on average) 30% more leads, sales, and signups.

How to report on landing page performance

Marketing campaigns without metrics and reporting are like a runaway train. Yes, they make you more accountable, but if you’re good at what you do—or at least desire to become better—accountability can make you a rock star. It’s a great way to show off the value of landing page conversion optimization too. 

Here are some tips to get you started.

89. Use analytics software to analyze KPIs

If you donʼt have internal analytics software, you can get set up quickly and for free by using Google Analytics, or several paid options such as KISSMetrics.com, GetClicky.com, or LeadsRx. By adding simple code snippets to your landing pages youʼll be tracking results immediately and can prove/disprove theories (sorry boss, making the logo bigger killed our conversion rate) and start to produce professional reports.

90. Track the essential metrics (at the very least) 

The good news is that you don’t need to be an analyst to use basic metrics. Ensure you’re recording the fundamental performance metrics for each campaign. These are campaign-specific but can include conversion rate (broad term), bounce and abandonment rate, and form completion rate. 

Store these results so you have a basis for showing how your refinement process (via A/B testing) is working, and to allow comparative reporting against previous campaigns that had the same goals.

91. Pay attention to the finer details

There are a lot of factors that might impact your conversion rates, and often a good analytics tool can help you tease them out. 

For instance, using analytics can help you determine whether different time or day segments are more successful than others. If you have an increased conversion rate on Friday nights and weekends, and little to no success during midweek, you can either focus your efforts purely on the best days, or start A/B testing different messaging on the lower days to see if an altered communication strategy will lift the metrics at those times. You will undoubtedly learn something about your visitor’s behavior by doing this.

92. Be transparent at all times

Compile frequent and regular reports and make them accessible to as many people as your internal bureaucracy will allow. Success can inspire an entire team  orcompany, and failure can elicit useful feedback from people able to spot issues you might have become blind to. 

And trust us… as much as you may want to impress your boss, it’s better to be honest now rather than hide unflattering metrics and see the consequences later on.

93. Be cautious of the industry averages

Industry averages are often bandied around to show comparative results for your particular vertical. 

While somewhat skewed by virtue of the fact that their campaign, goals, timing, budget, and product are all different from yours, they can play an important role in showing where you stand in the competitive landscape. Particularly if you are above average. In other words, use with discretion. 

(You can read more about how to work with averages in our Conversion Benchmark Report.)

94. Gather and analyze customer feedback

Sometimes, metric mania can lead to focusing on strictly quantitative data, but qualitative data—like customer feedback—is just as useful. If you are gathering consumer feedback via a landing page, collating this serves two purposes. 

Firstly, it gives you great presentation materials for internal meetings. Secondly, you can start to use them on your next campaign as testimonials to boost credibility and trust. Just remember to ask permission before quoting somebody publicly.

95. Use eye-tracking and heat mapping

If you have some budget available, eye-tracking reports can give you valuable insight into where people are looking and help you increase the positioning of key elements. 

Similar to eye tracking, there is software available (like CrazyEgg and HotJar) that can show heat map overlays showing where people are clicking most. Use this information to manipulate and test copy in the most popular areas to see if you can increase conversions.

96. Consider assumed attention hotspots

Other systems can produce a virtual heat map based on assumed attention areas based on graphical contrast and basic design patterns (like Attention Insight). All of these tools can add to your understanding of landing page behavior.

What to do when your landing page campaign ends

Diligent attention to the success or failure of your campaigns will help you learn and grow as a digital marketer. Try to study what youʼve done after itʼs finished.

97. Perform a postmortem

After each landing page campaign, hold a postmortem session to analyze and agree on what worked and what didnʼt. This can then be fed back into your best practices lists. 

You can include elements of the landing page and campaign itself, but also issues around your working process, feedback from stakeholders or customers, and even lessons learned from having to make the thing.

98. Evergreen your campaigns

Running seasonal campaigns (like a Christmas landing page with a special promotion) is often a good idea. But if you donʼt need to take it down, donʼt. You can gain trickle traffic and SEO value by leaving a page in place, even if you are not directly sending traffic to it. 

And if you decide to reactivate the campaign in the future, having a live page that Google has been aware of for 6-12 months is a major benefit. If the campaign was time-sensitive, consider a quick change to make it more generic so that you can leave it up. 

Becoming a landing page optimization expert

Now you understand how to optimize your landing pages—but maybe you should optimize your career while you’re at it? 

Gone are the days when digital marketers really needed to prove themselves. A lot of companies have grown very big thanks to smart online marketing. But how to get ahead as an internet marketer is still something of a mystery. Consider this section a little bonus advice. 

99. Demonstrate your optimization expertise

If you follow the guidelines presented in this list and can report accurately on your results, you will be seen as the person to go to for improved marketing ROI. Keep reading and subscribe to the Unbounce blog (and other resources, we don’t mind!) to stay up to date on the latest.

100. Donʼt be smug about what you think you know

Assuming that you know everything and that your landing pages are infallible is naive. A humble approach to testing, validation, and experimentation is the best way to become a better practitioner. The fact that we are listing 101 tips here illustrates the complexities involved in such a seemingly simple concept. (And, really, we could add 101 more with little effort.)

One final thought on landing page optimization

101. Optimization is a mindset—so never stop testing

You’ve made it this far—and that’s great! 

Maybe some of the landing page optimization tips you just read were obvious to you, or maybe you’ve already spent some time implementing some of them. Just don’t be complacent. Remember that there’s always another percentage point of conversion waiting around the corner to be squeezed out of your customers. 

By using a landing page platform like Unbounce, you can cut down on the amount of time you spend building and increase the time you spend optimizing your pages.

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