The Key Stages of Any Professional Website Design Project
If you’re investing in a new website (or a serious redesign), you want more than something that “looks nice”. A professional website design project is a structured process that takes…
If you run any small or medium-sized business and you’ve looked into running a marketing campaign or SEO, then you’ll have come across the term “Landing Page”. After reviewing and testing dozens of high-performing and some less high-performing landing pages across SaaS, eCommerce, and service businesses, we’ve found the key elements that make a landing page successful, so you can make sure you know what to ask for when you’re next looking for a website designer.
This guide breaks down what actually works, not just in theory, but the real-world patterns that connect the worlds best performing landing pages.
A landing page isn’t about design trends or clever copy; it’s simply a standalone page that:
According to research from Unbounce, users typically decide whether to stay or leave within 10–20 seconds. That’s your window.
There are two primary types of landing pages, and they are similar in their main goal; convert a visitor into a customer, but they vary in how they get that visitor in the first place.
These are what people most commonly refer to when they say a “landing page”, as this is where the term originated. It’s a standalone page that is part of a wider marketing campaign and is typically where the visitor lands once they’ve clicked on an ad or scanned a QR code. Hence the name landing page.
The goal of this type of page is to educate and sell the prospect on the product or service and then make it incredibly easy for them to take the next step. Be that purchasing or filling in a highly optimised form.
SEO landing pages are a slightly more unique version of a landing page; they still share the same overarching goal of converting a visitor into a customer, but the way that they get those visitors is different. Instead of relying on a marketing campaign or advert, they are built to target specific search terms that your ideal customer may be searching on Google.
They are built to include these specific search terms in their content so they rank on Google for said search terms. This type of landing page can be dangerously effective because you know the exact intent of the visitor. If the visitor searches “how to fix a sink drain”, you know they’ve probably got a blocked sink, and that’s when your plumbing business can show up with a perfectly placed landing page to help.
A lot of the time, when I talk to people about landing pages, they get confused and ask, “well isn’t that just my homepage?”, and I understand the confusion. If you’re running ads, the temptation just to send people directly to your homepage is real.
But the difference between a home page and a landing page is how focused the page is. A home page may have 15 different links to different services, maybe an about us section, and your blog. A landing page is designed to do one thing and one thing only. Convert the customer, so there are no distractions on a landing page, no unnecessary links, just the primary campaign focus, whatever that may be.
Across our testing of nearly 100 landing pages, we found 5 key factors that determine the success of any landing page:
One of the things we found most common among the highest performing landing pages is that their headline answered three questions instantly: who they are, what they do, and who it’s for. A weak headline tries to be clever or funny; high-performing headlines are clear and specific. They answer the question “Does this company solve my problem?” instantly.
We found that the more specific the headline was, the higher-performing the landing page was. You’re not trying to please everyone, just a small number of niche people with the exact problem you solve.
What works here:
The next thing we noticed among all the landing pages we tested was that their call to actions (the bit that asks for you to do something) was always clear and scroll-stopping. Now, what do I mean by scroll stopping? It was in contrast to the rest of the page, or it jumped out at you, it made you stop scrolling and think, “Am I ready to take the next step?”
Another thing we noticed is that on average, the best performing landing pages had on average only 2 call to actions, one below the headline, and one near the bottom of the page.
Social proof is one of those things that looks simple on the surface, but the difference between social proof that converts and social proof that does nothing is massive.
The worst offenders we saw were the generic “5 stars, great service!” type testimonials with a stock photo and a first name. Nobody believes those. The best performing landing pages had testimonials that were specific, named real people with real job titles or business names, and ideally addressed the exact objection a visitor might have before converting.
Think about it from the visitor’s perspective. They’re looking at your page, wondering whether you can actually deliver. A testimonial that says “We were sceptical at first, but within six weeks our leads had doubled” does infinitely more work than “Really great team, would recommend.”
What works here:
Related to social proof but slightly different. Where a testimonial is someone saying something worked, visual proof is showing it. Before and after screenshots, case study results, dashboards, graphs, and real numbers. Anything that makes the outcome tangible.
The landing pages that performed best didn’t just tell you they’d get results, they showed you what those results looked like. If you’re a web design agency, show the before and after of a client’s website. If you’re a marketing tool, show the actual dashboard with actual numbers in it.
People are sceptical, and rightly so. Visual proof short-circuits that scepticism in a way that written copy simply can’t.
What works here:
Every extra step you ask a visitor to take is a reason for them to leave. The best landing pages we tested were almost paranoid about removing friction. Short forms, clear next steps, no unnecessary clicks, no confusing navigation, no moment where the visitor had to think too hard about what to do next.
This one is more about what you remove than what you add. Strip out anything that doesn’t directly serve the conversion goal. If a form field isn’t essential, cut it. If a paragraph doesn’t push the visitor closer to acting, cut it. If a link takes them somewhere else on your site, cut it.
The simpler you make it to say yes, the more people will.
What works here:
The honest answer is that a landing page is never truly finished. The best performing pages we’ve come across aren’t the ones that were built perfectly on day one; they’re the ones that have been continuously tested and refined over time.
Start by identifying the single biggest point of friction on your current page. Is your headline vague? Is your form too long? Is your CTA buried? Pick the one thing most likely to be costing you conversions and fix that first before moving on to the next.
From there, landing page optimisation becomes an ongoing process. Small changes to your headline, your CTA wording, or the placement of your social proof can have an outsized impact on conversion rate. Tools like A/B testing let you make data-driven decisions rather than guessing, and over time, those incremental improvements compound into a page that consistently converts.
If you want a deeper dive into the optimisation process, CXL’s guide to landing page optimisation is one of the more thorough resources out there and well worth a read.
The five elements we’ve covered in this post are your foundation. Get those right first, then optimise from there. And if you’re looking to get one built for you or need help with your current one, then feel free to check out our website design service.
