How to Achieve a 10% Landing Page Conversion Rate

How do you optimize your landing pages to propel your conversion rate from the standard two to three percent to upwards of 10 percent? Simply attend to these three key factors—considerate design, simplified content, and test and repeat.

Based on analysis of thousands of Google Ads campaigns, the median landing page conversion rate is two to three percent. At SHERPA Global, however, we aim for conversion rates of 10% plus. Here are three proven ways we help clients achieve this top one percent in landing page conversion rate performance.

1. Considerate Design

Ensuring your design is considerate to the needs and wants of your target audience means more than just attending to basic design practices of layout, colors, imagery, and font. Rather, it requires you start the design process with your audience in mind. Landing pages are the ultimate in hospitality—you need to make it so the landing page feels like it was made just for the visitor.

A key example is understanding the mobile usage of your target audience. If a large portion of your target audience visits the landing page while using a mobile device, a considerate design means attending to the specific needs of that mobile device:

• the page should display optimally on a small screen
• buttons should be easily visible and not just clickable, but "thumbable"
• images should be downscaled to load quickly on slower mobile bandwidths
• forms should be very short; consider even replacing them with a click-to-call action instead

Being considerate also means reducing surprises. You can achieve that by being consistent across the entire experience. If the visitor saw some specific content on a prior campaign ad—images or text—make sure you present that asset consistently throughout the landing page.

2. Simplified Content

Content is king, and even more so with landing pages. We want to remove all distractions that deter the visitor from completing the call-to-action conversion, such as extraneous required fields, photos, copy, and even navigation. A top-performing landing page ensures the value proposition is clear and concise, like in the example below of a client that we helped achieve a 24 percent conversion rate:

Also, video is an excellent means to ensure your story is told simply, but don't let it be a crutch. Consider the load time, and be careful the length isn't so long that they leave before they finish watching the video.

3. Test and Repeat

When you start your paid search campaign, check your ego at the door and prepare to be surprised. A/B test everything, including your assumptions! Even after years of designing top performing paid search campaigns we are still surprised.

Designing a top converting landing page is both an art and science. If you are investing in a campaign, don't skimp on these crucial parts. When done well, good landing pages will pay for themselves in leads and, ultimately, sales.