Landing Page Design: 100 Strategies, Ideas and Examples

This resource will give you 100 landing page design strategies, ranging from copywriting to psychology, color, and building trust.

We’ll break down proven headline and calls-to-action formulas and give you over a dozen landing page design best practices and a dozen of the most influential design elements to test.

Use the Table of Contents below to navigate.

Table of Contents:

Copywriting Principles in Landing Page Design

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.

LEO BURNETT

1. AIDA

AIDA is probably the most well-known copywriting principle out there, and for good reason. Many of the highest-converting landing pages use it.

Attention

Attract the eye of your visitors with a question, a surprise, a value proposition or any strategy you can come up with.

Interest

Engage them with information relevant to them/your target market.

Desire

Tell them the value of your offer and why they want it.

Action

Make it easy for them to act on their interest and desire.

Here’s an example of the AIDA copywriting principle in a landing page from Mobify:

AIDA

2. ACCA

The ACCA principle is particularly relevant to nonprofit and charities looking to tweak the heartstrings of website visitors.

Here’s how the ACCA principle works:

  • Increase Awareness about your cause and problem.
  • Increase Comprehension through explanation of its results and relevancy to the visitor.
  • Create Conviction to act on the visitors Awareness and Comprehension.
  • Make it easy for them to take Action.

3. PAS

Sales guru and author Dan Kennedy had this to say about the PAS copywriting formula:

When you understand that people are more likely to act to avoid pain than to get gain, you’ll understand how powerful this first formula is. (…) It may be the most reliable sales formula ever invented.”

DAN KENNEDY

We’ll touch on this later in the psychology of landing page design (loss aversion) but, for now, let’s just break this formula down:

Problem

Present a known problem to your landing page visitor.

Agitation

Hammer home the severity and relevance of the problem.

Solution

Present your solution to the problem.

Here’s an example of the PAS formula in action on a Chartbeat landing page:

PAS

4. QUEST

The QUEST landing page copywriting formula differs from the others by starting with a qualifying statement. Not only does this prepare visitors for the subject of the landing page, it will also exclude any visitor who doesn’t fall within your target market.

Here’s how it works:

  • Qualify your landing page visitor (usually with a question).
  • Understand their experience and show your empathy.
  • Educate your visitor about a better option.
  • Stimulate their desire for that better option.
  • Transition to take action or towards a sales conversion.

5. AAPPA

In his book “How to Write an Advertisement” copywriter and author Victor O. Schwab outlined the AAPPA formula for persuasion.

The best part of this is the “Prove” section. Many formulas (the popular AIDA, for instance) leave that out, assuming you’ve done it. But explicit “proving” of the value of your offer is often the key component missing in un-optimized landing pages.

Let’s break it down and then take a look at an example from KlientBoost.

  • Grab the visitor’s attention.
  • Show them the advantage(s) of your offer.
  • Prove the value.
  • Persuade.
  • Encourage an action.

AAPPA

Landing Page Headline Formulas

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.

DAVID OGILVY

6. The Ultimate Guide to [Good, Bad or Desirable Thing]

This is the most straightforward landing page headline for gated content. It works because it claims a comprehensive-ness – if your visitor wants to know everything about something they’re interested in or needs to know, this is the guide.

Examples:

  • The Ultimate Guide to Google Advertising (Search, Display and Remarketing)
  • The Ultimate Guide to Landing Page Design
  • The Ultimate Guide to Using Customer Intelligence Data to Drive Retention

7. What Everybody Ought to Know About [Good, Bad or Desirable Thing]

“Everybody” is an extremely desirable clique to be a part of. If you don’t know something that “everybody” knows or needs to know then you feel a serious desire to fill that knowledge gap. Immediately.

Examples:

  • What Everybody Ought to Know About Running a Google Adword Campaign Before They Start
  • What Everybody Ought to Know before Starting the Hiring Process for Developers
  • What Everybody Ought to Know About Designing a Landing Page to Convert

8. X Lessons I Learned from [Person or Unusual Experience]

Whenever you add “I” to your landing page headline, you better have previously created some authority with your visitors. Otherwise, who cares about your thoughts?

If you have though, this is a winning formula. People love to hear stories, and they love to learn about the person behind the website or content.

Examples:

  • 11 Lessons I Learned About Landing Page Design from the 2017 Growth Conference
  • 5 Lessons I Learned About Presentation from Watching Guy Kawasaki Speak
  • 7 Surprising Lessons I Learned About Design from Machu Picchu.

9. Break all the Rules and [World-class Outcome]

People love to hear success stories brought about by breaking the rules. It triggers our desire to “be bad” yet suffer no consequences.

Examples:

  • Break all the Rules and Create a Landing Page Optimized for Conversion
  • Break all the Rules and Increase Ecommerce Checkouts by 112%
  • How We Broke all the Rules at Content Marketing World and Got a Speaking Gig

10. How Your [Service Provider] Is Ripping You Off, And What to Do About it Right Now

Being “ripped off” is one of the biggest motivators for change. Being cheated drives anger, frustration and (most importantly) a desire to DO something about it. Nobody who’s been ripped off just moves on with their life.

No, if you feel you’ve been ripped off by a cable service, software provider or any other company, you write a negative review, tell all your friends and swear to never work with that company ever again. Even if it’s over $7.

Creating fear, therefore, of being ripped off, is a powerful headline for your landing page.

This headline is also an excellent qualifier. If people respond to it and convert on your landing page you can be assured they’re previous users of that service, and can nurture them towards a sale with that information in mind.

Examples:

  • How [Big Corporate Company] is Ripping You Off, and How You Can Pay a Tenth the Price for the Same Service
  • How Time Warner Cable is Ripping You Off, and What You Can Do About it
  • How Paying for Printer Ink is Ripping You Off, and What to Do About it Right Now

11. I Found a [Adjective] Way to [Get Incredible Outcome]

This headline also uses “I,” but it’s actually the adjective which will drive the visitor to keep reading and engage.

Adjectives, when used correctly, are the best way to create a feeling in your landing page visitor.

They’re also an excellent way to get people to doubt you (which can be a powerful motivator for conversion as well, interestingly).

Examples:

  • I Found the Best Way to Generate Leads from a Business Blog
  • I Found a Reliable Way to Turn Top-of-Funnel Leads into MQLs with a Single Email
  • I Found the Proven Lead-Nurturing Drip Campaign Used by the Top Marketers

12. Let me Show you the Secrets of [Powerful Group]

Secrets. They’re the basis of success for everything from TMZ to Dan Brown and Indiana Jones.

And revealing the secrets of a well-known success story is even more appealing than a stranger’s.

This headline also taps into personal pronouns to effectively communicate the idea that the offer is for you, from me. It’s a personal exchange.

Examples:

  • Let me Show You the Secrets of the Most Successful Sales Teams
  • Let me Show You the Secrets of the Banks That They Don’t Want You to Know
  • Let me Show You the 10 Secrets of Mailchimp’s Success

13. People Regularly Pay Me [$] for This Information, But You Can Have It FREE.

Putting a dollar value on your landing page offer makes it more concrete. People are comforted when they know how something is worth. And, if they know that people will pay “X” dollar amount for what you’re offering and they can have it for free?

Win.

Examples:

  • People Regularly Pay Me $250/hour for This Information, But You Can Have It FREE.
  • Major Corporations Pay Me $250/hour for a Consultation, But (for a Limited Time) Get my Top 10 Sales Strategies for FREE.
  • Microsoft Paid Me $2,500 for these Strategies, but You Can Get Them for FREE.

14. How to Make [$] With Your ____________, Step-by-Step

Dollar signs breed attention, it’s just the way of the world.

And “step-by-step” is also appealing, as it tells readers they can expect a complete walkthrough for a specific strategy.

Examples:

  • How to Make $10,000 a Month With Your Blog – A Step by Step Guide
  • How to Save $1000s on Google Adwords – A Step by Step Guide
  • How I Made $13,540 from a Conference – A Step by Step Guide

15. The Complete Library of [large #] Free and Low-cost [Desirable Resources]

This kind of landing page offer has proven to work many times for our business. It’s super top-of-funnel, but an awesome way for you to generate brand awareness and drive high numbers of leads you can nurture with more specific content.

Examples:

  • The Complete LIbrary of 501 Free and Low-Cost Stock Photos
  • The Complete LIbrary of 100 Content Marketing Tools
  • The Complete LIbrary of 200 Landing Page Examples to Inspire Your Business

16. Here Is a Method/System That’s Helping [Blank] to [Blank]

It’s the specificity which makes this headline such a good one:

  • Here’s the specific strategy
  • Here’s the specific person/company affected (case study)
  • Here’s the concrete result

If your business can get specific with your headline, without getting too long, I’d definitely test it.

Examples:

  • Here is the System That’s Helping Freelance Content Marketers Break the Bank
  • Get the System That’s Helping Facebook Advertisers to Double their ROI
  • Get a Guide to the Strategy Groove used to Grow a 500,000 Visitors/Month Blog

17. Little Known Ways to [Blank]

Like the use of “Secret” above, “little-known” communicates insight that not everyone has. This increases its subjective value and makes the offer more desirable.

Examples:

  • Little Known Ways to Turn Leads into Sales Without Email
  • Little Known Ways to Turn your Blog into a Conversion Machine
  • Little Known Ways to Use Everyday Household Items into Cleaners Better than the Store’s

18. [X] Factors That Could Affect Your [Thing in Which Reader Has a Vested Interest]

This taps into the pain-points of your visitors. If they have a vested interest in something, the threat of something messing with it is a powerful motivator.

People are more affected by loss than they are by gain, so if you can draw a visitor’s attention to a prospective loss (something only held off by downloading your ebook, attending your webinar or starting your free trial) they’ll be motivated to take you up on it.

Examples:

  • 10 Factors That Are Affecting your Blog’s Bottom Line (Without You Even Knowing It)
  • 10 Factors That Are Ruining Your Chances of Adwords Success
  • 15 Factors That Could Affect Your Email Open and Clickthrough Rates

19. The Secret of [Desirable Thing]

Simple and to-the-point, this headline formula also taps into the appeal of learning secrets, but this time we’re just appealing to something our visitor wants.

Everybody wants to think that there’s some reason – beyond hard work – that they haven’t yet attained their dream. And sometimes there is. This headline taps into that want.

Examples:

  • The Secret to a 20 Hour Work Week
  • The Secret of Successful Blog Promotion
  • The Secret of Tracking Social Media ROI

20. Do you Have the Courage to [do Something very Desirable]?

Bringing attention to someone’s courage is a very effective strategy to both grab the eye of your visitor and get them to read on. Immediately (and subconsciously) we have a desire to prove ourselves.

Is this landing page calling me out? I’ll show them!

Examples:

  • Do You Have the Courage to Start Your Own Online Business?
  • Do You Have the Courage to Venture into Freelance Blogging?
  • Do You Have the Courage to Stop Caring about Blog Traffic?

21. I Stopped [Doing Common Thing] Today. You Should Too. Here’s Why.

This is about shocking your landing page visitor – getting them to ask the question (in their head, of course) “They did what?! Why?”

Examples:

  • I Stopped Tracking my Social Media ROI Today. You Should Too. Here’s Why.
  • I Stopped Caring about Blog Traffic Today. You Should Too. Here’s Why.
  • We’ve Completely Stopped Guest Blogging. Here’s Why You Should do the Same.

22. The Personal Testimonial

When it comes to your own brand or content, anybody is more trustworthy than you are. You’re an incredibly biased point of view, when it comes to… you.

And your landing page visitors know that. A testimonial is a third-party endorsement – someone objective and trustworthy.

This formula is used in the KlientBoost landing page above.

Examples:

  • “This guide trumps anything I’ve ever seen on the subject of Google Adwords”
  • “I never thought I could lose weight without surgery. Now look at me!”
  • “The premier guide to SEO. Strategies from this book increased my blog traffic by 250%.”

23. The Test

We all want to see where we rank. We want to test ourselves to determine where we stand against our competitors (everybody else on earth).

Just ask Buzzfeed.

It’s important to our sense of self. We like knowing who we are, and a test can give us that.

Examples:

  • Does Your Living Room Pass this Feng Shui Test?
  • What Kind of Content Marketer are You?
  • Download Our Landing Page A/B Test, Test! Which Do You Think Won?

Landing Page Call-to-Action

A strong CTA is far more than a combination of words that hopefully compels people to click on a button – it’s a powerful statement of intent, a rallying cry to our tribe, the crescendo of a rousing speech that leaves the audience exhilarated, clenched fists raised triumphantly to the sky.

DAN SHEWAN

24. Learn More

Here’s an example of this CTA from Neil Patel:

inline image CTA

25. Reserve my Seat

Here’s an example of this CTA from Amy Porterfield:

Course Landing Page

panda

Landing Pages
500 Strategies, Ideas & Examples

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