Liz MooreheadAt some point, every marketer or designer faces the same costly fear: a landing page that looks great, but doesn’t convert. Of course, this fear can manifest itself in a few different ways, depending on who you are:
- You might be a designer or CRO specialist building a landing page from scratch who wants to get things right the first time, so you don’t launch a dud destined to underperform.
- You might also be on a marketing team, managing paid media or overseeing performance, and you can’t help but wonder: “Are the landing pages we’ve already built helping us, or are they quietly sucking the potential out of our campaigns?”
- Or maybe you’re drowning somewhere in the messy middle: you’ve got a live landing page, but something is… off. Visitors are bouncing. Your conversions are nowhere near where you want them to be. Now leadership is asking questions, and you’ve got to figure out what’s wrong and where to start. Fast.
If you fall into one of these buckets, take a breath. Relax. I know exactly how you feel, and you’re in the right place.
Yes, there are “best practices” for landing pages. But there’s a big difference between a “pretty” landing page that seemingly checks all the boxes and a landing page that really connects with your ideal customers.
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That’s what I love most about this work. Building a successful landing page is part design, part psychology. It’s about understanding what makes someone stay on a page, what makes them trust you enough to act, and what makes them leave. When you nail those fundamentals, the rest of it (layout, copy, calls to action) falls into place, for the most part.
But it’s also harder than it used to be. What worked five or 10 years ago for landing pages doesn’t hold up now. Consumers have less patience, and they’re much more cautious about sharing personal data. On top of that, Google’s rules are constantly changing.
So, in this article, we’ll walk through what actually works in landing page best practices today and why it matters.
Specifically, I’ll cover how to:
- Speak to someone, not everyone, by understanding their mindset and motivations
- Align your message with the full user journey
- Balance value and trust in your forms
- Use tools and behavioral data to see what’s really happening on your page
By the end, you’ll not only know what to change on your landing pages, but also why each change impacts performance and how to explain those choices to your team with confidence. Because understanding the “why” behind every element is what separates a decent landing page from one that consistently converts.
1. Speak to someone, not everyone
The first thing I always tell people is to speak to someone, not everyone, with your landing page. That’s where everything starts. You have to know exactly who you’re building for and what moment they’re in.
That means aligning your page with the campaign you’re running, the audience you’re targeting, and the intent behind it. If you’re running Meta ads targeting male athletes between 20 and 40, that’s your someone. You’re not talking to every possible buyer; you’re talking to that person specifically.
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To do that well, you need to understand what motivates them to buy, what triggers a conversion, and what keeps them from it. If your team already has persona data or purchase trigger research, use it. If not, do some digging. Social listening is great for this. See what people say on Reddit, in Facebook comments, or in community threads. You can also ask your sales team what they hear when they talk to customers.
Empathy is the real skill here.
It’s recognizing exactly where someone is emotionally when they land on that page. Are they in problem-solving mode, ready to act? Or are they researching something big and need reassurance before making a decision? When you understand that, your language, visuals, and layout naturally follow.
2. Match your message to the user journey
One of the most important best practices for landing pages is making sure the message on the page matches the ad or keyword that brought someone there. Because if a person clicks an ad expecting to see one thing, but the landing page gives them something different, you’ve got a problem.
You’ll lose that visitor within seconds.
I see this a lot.
Someone clicks on a Facebook ad for a specific baby bottle and ends up on a general page about the company instead of the product. That disconnect breaks the user journey. They expected to learn more about the exact product they saw in the ad, but the page feels irrelevant, so they leave.
When your ad, your keyword, and your landing page are all aligned, visitors feel like they’re in the right place. That familiarity and consistency make them more likely to convert. It also matters to Google. If the keywords you’re targeting in your campaign don’t appear naturally on your landing page, your Quality Score drops, which raises your cost per click and acquisition cost.
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The reason this mistake happens so often is that different teams own different parts of the process. The paid media team runs the ads, the creative team builds the visuals, and the designer builds the page. When they don’t communicate, the message breaks somewhere in between. Fixing that alignment, making sure everyone knows who you’re targeting and what that person expects to see, can make a huge difference in performance.
3. Use keywords strategically
Landing page SEO still matters (even in the AI age), so of course, keywords are still important. The way you use keywords, however, has changed. You want the right keywords in the right places, written for humans first.
Start with your paid media team. Ask which keywords are driving the most traffic or conversions. Those should appear naturally in your headline, subhead, or main copy. Not every keyword belongs everywhere; you’re looking for balance. The goal is relevance, not overload.
For example, if you’re running a campaign for “cabinet resurfacing in Maryland,” your headline might simply say, “The best cabinet resurfacing in Maryland starts here.” That’s enough to tell Google what the page is about and reassure the visitor that they’ve landed in the right place.
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This balance of relevance and readability helps your page perform better in every direction. Google understands your content, your Quality Score improves, and your audience doesn’t feel like they’re reading content built for a robot. It’s strategic, not forced.
4. Create a balanced value exchange in your forms
Forms are one of the biggest elements on a landing page, and how you design them says a lot about what kind of interaction you want. A good form strikes a balance between what you ask for and what you offer in return. That balance builds trust.
If your offer is small, like a downloadable guide or newsletter signup, keep the form simple. But if your offer is high-value (a quote, a consultation, or a major purchase) the form should reflect that. When someone is about to spend ten or twenty thousand dollars on something, a two-field form (name and phone number) doesn’t make them feel confident about what happens next.
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They want to know you’re serious.
People are also more protective of their data now, so it’s not just about length. It’s about perceived value. If the page gives them a clear reason to share more details (budget, location, or project scope) they’re more likely to follow through. A shorter form isn’t always a better form. The right form feels proportional to the size of what’s being offered.
When the amount of information you ask for matches what you’re promising, visitors trust the process. They know they’ll get a thoughtful response, not a generic sales email.
5. Use dynamic text to make every page relevant
Relevance is one of the simplest ways to increase conversions, and dynamic text makes that possible at scale. Dynamic text lets your headlines automatically adjust to match the exact keywords or phrases someone searched before clicking through.
Let’s go back to our cabinet company in Maryland, as an example.
Sure, your main page might say “The best cabinet resurfacing in Maryland.” But if someone searched “bathroom cabinet resurfacing,” that same headline can be updated to read “The best bathroom cabinet resurfacing in Maryland.” It’s a small change that instantly tells the visitor they’re in the right place.
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We use Unbounce to do this, since it allows easy control of dynamic text through URL parameters. You can select specific words on your page that update automatically based on what someone searched. It’s quick to set up and helps your content feel personalized without requiring dozens of separate landing pages.
The goal is to close the gap between what someone is thinking and what they see on your page. When that alignment is tight, you remove hesitation. Visitors stop scanning for confirmation and start engaging.
6. Build trust through social proof and thoughtful follow-through
People need to feel safe before they share information or make a purchase. There are plenty of scammy or low-quality experiences online, so credibility on a landing page is non-negotiable.
Add testimonials, client logos, certifications, or any visible proof that your business is real and trustworthy. Those small signals make a big difference. They help people feel confident that the brand behind the page actually exists and delivers what it promises.
Of course, there is such a thing as going overboard with social proof. Landing pages that have testimonials that require tons of scrolling to get through can feel like the website equivalent of an infomercial, actually diminishing trust.
But trust doesn’t stop at the conversion point.
What happens after someone fills out a form matters too. A lazy “Thanks, we’ll be in touch” thank-you page kills momentum. Instead, use that page to tell people exactly what happens next: how soon they’ll hear from you, what channel you’ll use, and what they can expect.
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Something as simple as, “Thank you. Our team will reach out within 24 hours by email to confirm your details,” keeps them engaged and lowers the chance they disappear. A good landing page doesn’t just collect leads; it guides people confidently into what comes next.
7. Use video thoughtfully
Sure, videos can be a great addition to a landing page, as long as they help the visitor, not distract them. A short video can quickly communicate information, show real people behind the brand, or walk someone through what happens next after they convert.
But video only works when it’s intentional.
For example, if it auto-plays, you’re going to lose people. Most users don’t want to be surprised by sound or motion they didn’t choose. That frustration leads to fast exits. The goal is to make the video something people want to engage with, not something they have to silence.
When someone clicks play, it should feel useful. Maybe it’s a testimonial, maybe it’s a founder explaining what to expect after submitting a form. Either way, it should add clarity, not noise. People often prefer watching to reading, so give them that option, but always let them control it.
8. Validate your assumptions with data
Even the best landing page is just a starting point. You can’t assume you got everything right on the first try. Validation is what turns a good guess into a reliable, repeatable, scalable landing page strategy.
Heat-mapping and behavioral tools help you see how people actually interact with your page:
- We use Microsoft Clarity because it’s free, easy to use, and provides both scroll-depth data and full session recordings. You can see where people click, how far they scroll, and where they drop off.
- Tools like Hotjar and lucky orange work too; the point is to have something in place that shows what’s really happening.
If visitors are only spending ten seconds on the page, that tells you the copy or imagery isn’t connecting. If they stop scrolling halfway down, you know exactly which section needs work. These small insights add up fast.
Never assume your first version is the final one. Validation isn’t about proving you were right; it’s about learning what’s true for your audience. The marketers who treat landing pages as living experiments (watching, testing, and adjusting) are the ones who see performance keep improving over time.
Remember, keep your focus on the person behind the click
Everything about a landing page should start with who it’s for. Every design choice, every line of copy, every headline… everything comes back to that person.
When you know who that person is and what they need, your landing page stops feeling like a guessing game. You make smarter choices. You build pages that feel intentional instead of generic. The copy fits. The visuals make sense. The form fields feel fair. The page as a whole feels like it was built for them, not for everyone.
That focus also gives you better data. When you build for a specific someone, you can actually measure what’s working and what isn’t. You can see what connects, what gets ignored, and what leads people to take action. That’s when optimization becomes useful: you’re no longer testing at random, you’re refining with purpose.
Landing pages are never one-size-fits-all.
They’re built one “someone” at a time.
When you stay anchored to that, you’ll always know where to start and how to keep improving.
