How to Create Landing Pages That Convert

Building an effective landing page that features a form users need to fill out can help any online business skyrocket the amount of business they are able to generate. This makes it one of the most important parts of any website that is looking to create new leads and business from its website's users. Understanding what goes into a great landing page where users convert can help your business take a good online presence and make it even better by focusing on improving just a single page. Seeing as one form can be the difference between a successful website and one that is underperforming, a Reddit user wanted to know: "How do I create a landing page that actually converts?" This is a million dollar question that will vary depending on what kind of website you have and what your landing page form is trying to get from your audience. However, I try and discuss some of most important features of any good landing page and how you can help tailor your form fields so that your audience actually fills them out. To view more of our videos answering questions from around the web and for more information about video marketing, you can check out our other work here. If you have a question that you would like answered, leave it in the comments section below or tweet it at us at @BFMweb.


Hey, I'm Dan Morosi from Blue Fountain Media. I'm a Senior Marketing Specialist and I'm responsible for the paid media, paid search and display efforts here. We had a question from Reddit - a user asked: "How do you go about making a landing page where people actually convert?" That's a million dollar question (literally), and there are some obviously basic things that every landing page should have. If you're using it for paid search and you know exactly which campaign and keywords are going there, obviously those keywords should be used and targeted on that landing page, it should be relevant to what people are searching - this is step 1. Step 2? Clear call to action. You can't just sort of hope that someone is going to know that they should be filling out this form - just ask them. "Start your trail today." "Learn more." Things like that - you can include that right in the button of course. The next question would be the form that you're trying to fill out. Is it impossible to fill out? Are you asking too many questions? There is a fine balance between asking too many questions, which people get halfway through and then say, "Alright, whatever, I'm gonna leave and go somewhere else." There's also the need to get enough information and find out if you even care about this person as a potential customer and if it will work out for you. So, you're gonna have to balance in between those and furthermore, you should be A/B testing many of these features. You could have a landing page with one call to action vs. another. You could have a landing page with a lengthy form vs. a short form. See how much information you can get from your users without sacrificing your conversion rate too much. I think part of the larger conversation is really stepping outside of "what's that magic thing I can do to my landing page that people will just start sending me their information and buying my product." You really need to focus on some of the larger concepts here. 1, are you getting the correct audience to begin with? Maybe you're sending users who are searching keywords that really are irrelevant and they don't have anything to do with what you're actually trying to sell. 2, maybe your audience is incredibly qualified - you can lead the thirstiest horse to water and if it's mud they won't drink it. So you need to have a page that actually speaks to them and will engage them. Third, you might be asking a conversion that isn't the right conversion. If you're business to business and you're asking someone immediately to submit a contact or to download a free trial, maybe that's not right. Try to imagine you're on date 1 and your date says: "Man, I'm having a great time, do you want to meet my mother?" 1, they're crazy and 2, you'd be crazy to say yes - this is the first time you've ever been to their website. I'm not saying that websites are comparable to long term relationships - anyway, well, maybe they are. Including a relevant conversion, something that is actually attainable. Something that is high level enough where it is the next proper step. So if it is, say, some extreme piece of software that is really expensive but is a very long decision process before someone would actually buy it, maybe it's just "Learn More" or "Download a Whitepaper", not necessarily "Contact Us Today to have us set up an appointment to talk about this incredibly large purchase." People require time to make these decisions. I think making sure you have the right audience, the right message when they actually get there, and asking them to commit the proper next step action - that needs to be factored in to the whole landing page conversation.