Landing pages are made to drive conversions and are usually created as campaign-specific pages which focus on a very specific goal such as getting users to purchase a service/product, growing a mailing list, etc.
Creating high-converting landing pages is a bit of an art. You need to really know your audience and what they want while balancing a variety of design and marketing strategies that successfully capture attention and motivate action.
Knowing the current popular trends will help you how best to create your landing pages for upcoming campaigns or overhaul outdated pages.
Let’s take a look below…
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How Is A Landing Page Different From A Homepage? 🤷♀️
A homepage is a long-term investment (not changed regularly) that displays content such as your company's main message, mission, and a few top products/services.
It will often have several links to different sections of your website and is a far more open ended experience.
A landing page, however, is the page that a potential customer will land on after clicking an advertising link.
It contains elements which focus on a single goal with one CTA and it's sole purpose is to drive conversions. You can have several landing pages for different campaigns.
What Are The 8 Essential Elements Of A Landing Page 🧐
- Headline/subheadline: This is the very first thing your visitors will see. The message should be clear and grab the visitor's attention while communicating a benefit and articulating your offer.
- Visual aids/content: Visual elements that provide context, make your brand feel more human, and bring your offer to life. Keep in mind that color also plays an important role.
- Conversion design: Moves visitors down the page, draws attention to buttons or conversion opportunities, and reduces cognitive load.
- Benefit-focused copy: Copy that focuses more on benefits, less on features, and persuades visitors to take action now.
- Social proof: Build credibility and visitor trust with user stats, testimonials, star ratings, industry-relevant awards, etc.
- CTA: Give your visitors an enticing, action-oriented call to action that reminds them of the value that awaits them on the other side.
- Mobile optimized: Make sure your landing pages are optimized to look good and load quickly on any device or browser.
- 1:1 attention ratio: Aim for a 1:1 relationship between the number of links on a page and the number of conversion goals.
Top Landing Page Trends For 2023 🔥
Okay, we've covered the basics so let's jump into the must-know landing page trends for the coming year!
- Conversational Copy And Personalized CTAs 🎯
- Interactive Experience 🧙♂️
- Social Proof 📢
- Benefits Focused 🎁
- Simplified Forms 📝
- Competitor Comparisons 🔍
- Custom Illustrations And Photography 🎨
- Modern Minimalism 🧘♀️
- Bold Typography 👀
- Creative Use Of Color 🌈
1. Conversational Copy And Personalized CTAs 🎯
This trend is running through most online practices. Audiences are tired of cheesy sales lines and feeling like companies are just out to get their money.
Enter more personalized, conversational copy.
Conversational copy chucks out the industry jargon, cheesy lines, and fluffy sentences and instead makes the landing page visitor feel like you are having an authentic conversation with them.
A study of online customers found that adding words that created a sense of anticipation and joy to their copy resulted in more conversions.
The tone is natural, casual, and speaks to your target audience on their level while eliciting specific emotions that drive your visitors to take action.
Along with conversational copy, we're also seeing an increase in personalized CTAs. That is calls to action that are tailored to each visitor's individual persona/behavior.
Also called smart CTAs, these can be adapted using the visitor's location, browser language, history, and more.
Personalized CTAs convert 202% better than default versions.
2. Interactive Experience 🧙♂️
Static pages are a dime a dozen, and a little snooze-worthy if we're honest, especially when you consider that more than 50% of the population is now browsing on their mobile phones.
Companies are realizing that static landing pages are no longer enticing prospects and we're seeing more interactive elements being introduced.
Basically, interactive landing pages contain content with micro-interaction points along the sign-up process. Some examples of interactive content you could consider include:
- Animations/Mouse-hover animations
- Quizzes
- Mini-games
- Interactive tools
FedEx saw a 82% increase in month over month revenue by adding a freight shipping calculator on their landing page, along with other interactive tools.
- Explainer videos
- Storytelling that makes the user an active participant
- Chatbots
3. Social Proof 📢
Humans are social creatures. We like to know what others are doing and tend to fall into crowds of like-minded people we then call friends. 😋
88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
People are swayed by other's opinions and will copy the actions of others when they are uncertain about what to do. We also live in a day and age where scams are horribly abundant and shopping online means we don't actually know if we're going to get what we see in the pictures.
People are far more likely to trust a brand who has social proof to show that they really do provide the great product/service that they say they do.
Some great examples of social proof include testimonial cards, user stats, third-party star ratings, customers' average money saved, etc.
Landing pages with social proof in the copy convert at an average of 12.5%.
4. Benefits Focused 🎁
Generic sales pitches are tired practices and listing off a ton of features is just a form of information overload that doesn't really prompt the potential customer to make a decision.
Benefits, however, address objections, agitate pain points, and tell the visitor how the product will solve their problem now (why wait!).
This is not only true for the general landing page copy but also for CTAs.
CTAs should include a benefit and remind your potential customer of the reward that is waiting for them.
There isn't much more to say about this trend - visitors want to know why your product is great and how it's going to help them, so tell them and give the user an enticing reason to convert. 😎
5. Simplified Forms 📝
This trend ties in with the interactive content trend mentioned above and the minimalism trend mentioned below.
People are busy, time is precious, and no one wants to spend ages filling in multiple fields to sign up for a newsletter/ebook/free trial/etc. It's just too much of a mission.
The trend of offering simplified forms, and even fun/interactive forms, is taking off in a big way.
Simplified forms can look like the following:
- Email-only forms.
Landing pages with sign-up forms asking for personal information like name, gender, or date of birth have the worst conversion rates - about 5-6%.
- Multi-step forms (breadcrub technique). Instead of asking all your questions in one long form, you employ 3-4 steps utilizing the "Yes Ladder" method, asking the questions you know they'll say "yes" to first and micro-converting potential customers through to the final conversion question.
- Google One Tap (evolution of "Sign up with Google"). Allow users to log in or sign up with their Gmail credentials instead of filling out a form.
If you decide to use forms, the highest-converting number of fields is 3, with an average conversion rate of 10%
If you're looking to increase your landing page conversion rates, make sure your forms are quick and easy to navigate.
6. Competitor Comparisons 🔍
It might seem counterintuitive to include a comparison with your competitors but keep this in mind: your leads will research your competitors regardless, so you may as well do it for them and keep them on your page!
Customers in the transactional intent phase of the marketing funnel will appreciate the ability to review features and pricing in one place and make a decision about the right fit for their needs.
You can build credibility by providing your visitors with an honest comparison, after all, if you don't do it chances are your competitor is, and that gives them the upper hand.
One final point is to make sure your comparison is fair. Discrediting your competitors will leave your potential customers wanting more accurate information and will only harm your own trust score.
7. Custom Illustrations And Photography 🎨
Now that we've looked at some landing page content and strategy trends, let's look at some landing page design trends...
First up: Throw out the stale stock because custom images are taking over!
Custom illustrations, video, and photography are the perfect way for a brand to express their unique personality and fully illustrate their USP.
Illustrations seem to be taking the lead at the moment, mostly due to the fact that they are cheaper than custom photography. However, if you have the budget, photographs of real people are winning with customers who are looking for more authenticity from brands in 2022 and 2023.
Images are an important part of any landing page as they attract attention quicker than written copy, create a positive user experience, and stir up emotions that persuade visitors to take action. In fact, around 40% of people respond better to visual content than to text.
Viewers are 80% more likely to read content that features colorful visuals.
If you're looking to make your landing page stand out from your competitors then custom visuals are one of the top trends to note moving forward.
8. Modern Minimalism 🧘♀️
We hate to harp on about it but less is definitely more! Minimalist designs are popping up everywhere in an attempt to combat consumers' information overload.
Does this mean your whole landing page needs to be full of white space and monotone accents? No! Colorful minimalism is 100% on trend right now and experimenting with some bold colors can make your page stand out even more.
Alongside improving cognitive load, minimalism also ensures a faster load time which increases conversion rates.
A one to ten-second delay in load speed increases the probability of the visitor bouncing by 123%.
Another aspect is the cutting out of exit opportunities such as mega navigation bars, social icons, footer links, and so on, in favor of a single primary link and conversion goal.
Reducing the number of choices your visitors need to make gives them a clearer direction and makes it easier to convert them.
Here are a few key factors to consider when employing a modern minimalist landing page:
- Simple, direct copy - fewer words, more impact!
- A clear, direct headline.
- White space, or yellow, or blue. Whichever you choose, keep your pages clean and uncluttered and use a select few colors.
- One clear CTA - using contrasting CTA colors to grab attention.
Lastly, keep in mind that readability increases roughly 11.8% in accordance with copy length so keep your landing page copy short - say 250-300 words - unless you’re selling software that is a more complicated, complex product like a SaaS product.
9. Bold Typography 👀
Tying in with the minimalism trend, over-sized typography is making big headlines (pun intended)!
With online reading behavior changing in the last few years, big headlines within hero sections/above the fold are driving the point home far more than any other written content.
When reading, online visitors often skim through the content. This means that businesses need to be very aware of the skimmable content on their landing pages.
Large fonts are easier to read and make your message stand out on the page, and while they're great for headers, they can also extend beyond that. Utilizing large, bold typefaces throughout your landing page adds a dramatic flair and makes your message more eye-catching.
Large, bold typography paired with smaller sub-text and eye-catching visuals creates interest and captures the users' attention. Use this bold script in headers, text, on buttons...you're imagination is the limit!
10. Creative Use Of Color 🌈
The psychology of color has been interwoven with marketing strategies for years. In fact, In a research study titled The Impact of Color on Marketing, researchers discovered that up to 90% of consumer decisions about particular products are based on color.
That's a rather large percentage!
What's interesting is that it's not so much the colors themselves that drive conversions but the contrast of colors used. It's why the red and green button debate yielded so many different results.
This contrast is also being seen in the form of drop-shadows and adding depth to landing pages which were previous flat.
In 2022 we saw creative use of various color combinations to express moods and emotions related to the brand/campaign.
We'll see this creativity continue into 2023 with bright colors making a return thanks to the 80's and 90's nostalgia trend that's permeating everything from fashion to kids toys.
You'll also want to start looking into the use of gradients, subtle color overlays, and eye-catching backdrops.
Conclusion 🙌
Creating a landing page that converts involves taking the 8 key landing page elements at the beginning of this article and weaving a few of the trends through them in a way that suits your campaign.
Focus on your conversion goal, create the layout with your unique audience in mind, and ensure that you make it interesting enough to entice your potential customers to follow through with your CTA.
With that in mind, we're sure you'll be creating high-converting landing pages in no time!