Are you trying to create the perfect landing page to generate leads?
Because doing it can be challenging enough if you don’t know what landing page elements to include. (Hint: It’s not all about visual appeal.)
That’s why this article is here to help.
Keep reading to get a good landing page strategy so that you can give your audience what they want… and most importantly, achieve your marketing goals.
👉Bonus: Strategies to Easily Double Your Email List>>
What Is a Landing Page and Why Do You Need One?
A landing page is a page on your website that can be used to collect a prospect’s contact information — their email address. You can also ask for other details like their name, job title, etc.
To convince them to provide you with the information you ask for, you need to offer something valuable in return. It could be an ebook, online course, free trial of your product, or a prize (if you’re running a contest or giveaway).
Here’s one of the best landing page examples we’ve seen. It's from one of our UpViral users, Gabe Schillinger, who generated $200K with this contest.
This landing page promotes a contest to an audience in the music industry. A couple of things stood out:
- It uses clear copy. You’ll know immediately who the campaign is for and what the prize is.
- Below is a strong call-to-action that evokes a command in a way that convinces people to sign-up.
A well-crafted landing page provides clarity and focus on your offer. As a result, people take the specific action you want them to take — entering your contest, becoming part of your list, or downloading your lead magnet.
10 Essential Landing Page Elements
What makes a good landing page? When it’s time to create one, be sure to include these important elements:
1. Main headline
It all starts with a killer headline.
When people arrive on your landing page, they notice the headline first. According to Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people read your headline copy.
So… Your headline does two things:
Hold their attention or drive them away. Obviously, you’ll want to achieve the former.
This is why you need to spend enough time writing a headline that convinces your audience to read the rest of your copy and ultimately turn into a lead.
See this headline on Neil Patel’s landing page:
Visitors who land on this page will want to learn more about his offer by simply looking at the headline. In four words, the headline conveys the main message. It doesn’t beat around the bush.
Use these tips when writing a headline:
- First, know your audience. A headline can only be effective if you know who you’re talking to.
- Call out your audience. Speak directly to them.
- Spark emotion! Make them feel excited, hopeful, and empowered.
- Keep it short and to the point. Limit it to up to 8-10 words.
2. Subheadline
If the headline captures attention, the subheadline’s role is to provide supplementary information.
This means that the subheadline is much longer. However, one should be careful not to over-inform readers. You need to leave room for curiosity so that your audience will check out the rest of the page.
I’ve used Slack’s home page as an example. You can see that the subheadline appears right below the headline “Slack brings the team together, wherever you are”
While Slack’s headline announces the main purpose of their tool, the subheadline elaborates on it.
You can’t say everything you want to in a headline. This is why subheadlines are a vital part of your landing page anatomy.
3. Hero shot
The hero shot is your visual content — image or video. The best choice for this would be your offer.
If you’re offering a downloadable checklist or ebook, feature its front cover. Running a contest? Showcase the actual prize.
See the landing page example below. It’s from our UpViral user, Brett Whipp, who did a 13-day giveaway to promote a local event.
The prize was 3 golden tickets to the event. The winners would be able to use the tickets to get free mini prizes from several stalls during the event.
To make the reward tangible, Brett used a hero shot which was a teaser video of the event. See the actual video on the case study post right here.
Create a great impression by choosing high-quality visuals. Between a photo and video, video is a more compelling way to showcase your offer.
As much as possible, steer clear of generic stock images.
4. Summary of benefits
From the headline and subheadline, your audience now looks at the key benefits of your offer.
By definition, benefits tell how a person’s life can get better by using a product.
The best way to highlight the benefits is to list them in a bullet point format.
This makes them digestible and easy to remember.
Here’s an example of a bullet list of benefits from Keap:
If it’s a contest or giveaway landing page that features multiple prizes, list those prizes in bullet points — like this:
Make sure that those bullet points are in line with the hero shot on the landing page.
5. More detailed descriptions
Sometimes, you will feel the need to elaborate on your bullet point list by providing a more detailed explanation.If you think explanations offer clarity and help people appreciate your offer better, write them.Just be careful not to write too much copy, or it’ll overwhelm your audience and end up not being read.
6. Lead capture form
Since you’ll be collecting personal information from visitors, include a lead capture form. Keep in mind that lead capture forms as landing page elements only work if they’re optimized properly.
Just because you have a form that asks for details, doesn’t mean everybody is going to fill them up.
Here’s a key tip:
Keep your forms as short as possible. Meaning, you need to request only the essentials. This way, people can enter their details immediately.
Also, place the lead capture form above-the-fold so that people can easily see it.
For example, check out this landing page from Corey Richard’s travel giveaway:
To reduce the friction of joining his giveaway, he limits his form to only two fields: The visitor’s name and email address.
If people feel that you’re asking for too much, they might lose motivation to grab your offer.
A really great technique:
Ask those extra details later. If you’re running a contest, present a survey as an opportunity to earn extra points that will increase their chances of winning the prize.
You’ll be able to do this using UpViral’s Custom Actions feature. Higher points motivate them to complete the survey.
Mark those required questions with an asterisk to signify that they must be answered.
Related: How to Create a Lead Capture Form That Converts
7. Call-to-action button
The call-to-action (CTA) should be considered in the landing page design process. It plays an important role in getting people to click submit in order to claim your offer.
Here are tips for creating an effective CTA:
Write it in the first person.
Using this point of view in writing helps people visualize themselves taking action. For example, in Gabe Schillinger’s giveaway, he uses the CTA, “YES, I WANT TO GO TO CALIFORNIA!”
Consider size and color.
Obviously, you’ll want your CTA to be big enough for visitors to notice.
When it comes to the color, red and green are two common choices. But keep in mind that there is no one perfect button color. However, always use contrast to ensure that it stands out against the landing page background.
Use power words.
These are words that make your copy more impactful because they spark emotion and invoke curiosity. Such words include free, huge, discover, magic, and never.
Need more ideas? Check out this list of 101 marketing power words.
8. Trust signals
When people visit your landing page for the first time, will they be able to say, “I can trust this brand”?
It is, for this reason, that trust signals matter as one of your landing page elements.
Trust signals are elements that evoke trust. They enable people to go from plain visitors to actual leads… even customers.
Luckily, there are various forms of trust signals to include on your landing page. It depends on what you already have on your end.
If you have testimonials from customers and users, take advantage of them. Medium did an outstanding job of incorporating some testimonials (with a photo of each user) on its homepage:
Reviews also work well if you’re promoting a specific product or service as a free offer or giveaway prize.
Another form of trust signal is a Privacy Policy. Include a link to a privacy policy page that explains how their information will be used or shared. Add the link at the bottom of the CTA button.
Here’s a cool trust signal for contests or giveaways:
A link to the list of previous winners. Dave Statler used this strategy in his UpViral contest. In the screenshot below, you’ll see that he added the link below the hero shot and copy, just right above the lead capture form:
Awards, certifications, mentions, and a count of your customers are also forms of trust signals.
9. Urgency
Another subtle way to make your landing page much more powerful is to incorporate urgency.
Let your audience know that they can only access your offer for a limited amount of time. Doing this increases its perceived value.
There are two ways to do this:
- Method #1: Imply urgency in your copy
- Method #2: Add a countdown timer
For the first method, use certain words such as hurry, close, temporary, ending, final, deadline, and today. Take a look at how Corey Richard does it on his contest landing page:
He mentions the contest end date. To draw attention to it, he adds an alarm clock emoji. ⏰
Meanwhile, I used the countdown timer method on my webinar training landing page:
10. Design or template
Last but not least on our list of landing page elements is the design. Keep these in mind:
- A clean and simple design will keep your audience focused on your copy. Avoid unnecessary pop-ups and distracting elements.
- To ensure readability, use shorter sentences and paragraphs. Add more white space.
- Make your landing page mobile-friendly. It should look good on mobile devices and must also load fast.
- Do A/B testing! It lets you know whether a certain variation of a color or position of an element works better than the other. (Note: UpViral allows you to split test landing pages. But if you’re not an UpViral user, you can use Google Optimize)
👉Bonus: Strategies to Easily Double Your Email List>>
Final Thoughts
These are all the landing page elements to include in your marketing campaigns. How you construct these elements will impact your conversions. That is why it’s always a good practice to split test them. A small tweak in your copy or hero shot could double your results.
So there you have it. We hope you gained value from this post and can start implementing the tips we shared.
Haven’t tried UpViral yet? Why don’t you check it out today and see how our tool helps you create landing pages that grow your leads and go viral? Learn more here.
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