9 Landing Page Best Practices That Still Convert 

1 – One reader, one promise, one offer.
2 – Write for the visitor’s stage of awareness.
3 – Match the headline to the ad or email they clicked.
4 – Put proof where doubt shows up.
5 – Sell outcomes in your bullets, not features.
6 – Cut everything that isn’t helping.
7 – Make it fast.
8 – Sound like a person.
9 – Tell people exactly what to do… then edit mercilessly.

A while back, I wanted one of my landing pages to be as “Light” Yagami as possible.

So I stripped it down to almost nothing.

A headline. A subheadline. A picture of the book. A big red button. Two testimonials.

That was it.

Version #1 of that page converted at 55% right off the bat (measured after about 300 signups).

Another one of my pages – for a lead magnet called The Ultimate Email Checklist – hit 68% within a few days. Without a big following behind it.

Not because I’m a design genius (I’m really not)…

But because both pages followed the same handful of rules.

I first wrote these up in 2019. I still use every single one of them on my own pages and on client pages. So here’s the updated version – with the examples I trust most: my own.

1. Follow the rule of one

Before you write a single word, make sure your page has:

One reader. A specific person, not “everyone who might be interested.”

One promise. The one big result they get.

One offer. One thing to do on this page.

Sounds too simple?

That’s kind of the point.

Most landing pages try to talk to everybody… and end up hooking nobody. The second you add a second audience, a second promise or a second button, every part of the page gets weaker.

So write to the 20-30% of your traffic that’s most likely to be your ideal customer. Speak to their pains, fears, hopes and dreams. Let the rest go.

(Yes, a narrower page brings in fewer “maybe” people. That’s a feature, not a bug.)

2. Write for the visitor’s stage of awareness

Your visitor arrives at your page with a certain amount of knowledge. Eugene Schwartz called this their stage of awareness – unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware or most aware.

And it changes what your page should say.

A rough guide for landing pages:

Opt-in pages (free book, checklist, tool) work best for problem-aware and solution-aware people. Name the problem, hint at a better way, give them the free thing.

Free trial or demo pages can work for product-aware visitors who already know you.

Straight sales pages work for the most aware – the people who just need the offer and a reason to act now.

Unaware people are the tricky ones. A landing page usually can’t sell to them on its own, because they don’t think they have a problem yet. Let the ad or the content do that job first.

(The full breakdown of all 5 stages, with examples, is here.)

3. Match the headline to whatever they clicked

The headline is the first thing people see. If it doesn’t feel like the next step after the ad or email they just clicked… they’re gone in a couple of seconds.

So the #1 rule for landing page headlines:

The headline should continue the promise of the link that brought them there.

If your ad says “Get 5 welcome emails written for you,” your page shouldn’t open with “Welcome to my world of copywriting.”

Two ways to write a strong headline:

Option 1: dig through your customer research – reviews, survey answers, replies – pull out the exact phrases people use, and test a few versions. Best results. Slowest.

Option 2: start from your reader’s main pain and their stage of awareness, pick a proven headline formula that fits, and make it yours. (Here are 39 proven headline formulas to start from.)

Option 2 won’t beat Option 1 every time.

But it gets you most of the way there in a fraction of the time.

4. Put proof exactly where doubt shows up

People are terrified of looking like a fool.

Even for something small, like giving you their email address.

So proof isn’t decoration. It’s how you take that fear away.

Here’s the test I use for every line on a landing page:

“Would this be more believable if someone else said it?”

If the answer is yes, that’s where proof goes. A testimonial. A number. A logo. A screenshot.

And a few rules that have served me well:

Put proof close to the button – that’s where doubt peaks.

Use testimonials with specifics (before, after, what changed), not one-liners like “Great stuff!”

And don’t stack 40 testimonials just because you have them. The right two beat the wrong twenty. My 55% page had exactly two.

5. Sell outcomes in your bullets, not features

Bullets are where a lot of the selling happens on a landing page.

And most bullets are boring, because they describe features – what the thing is.

People don’t care what it is. They care what it does for THEM.

Old saying, still true: nobody wants a drill. They want the hole in the wall.

So:

Feature: “A 47-page PDF with 12 templates.”

Benefit: “12 fill-in-the-blank templates you can turn into a sales email in about 10 minutes.”

Use concrete, vivid language. Add curiosity where you can. Make the reader see their better situation.

(If you want to go deeper, here are 7 proven bullet formulas – and I built Bulletsmith to get AI to write them about what you sell.)

6. Cut everything that isn’t helping

Remember that 55% page?

Its main secret wasn’t something I added. It was everything I took away.

No menu. No sidebar. No five different links. No “about me” essay.

Every extra element on a landing page is another exit. Another decision. Another reason to put it off till later… which usually means never.

Three quick fixes:

1 – Remove the clutter. If it doesn’t move people toward the button, it goes.

2 – Add white space and keep paragraphs short. Nobody reads a wall of text on a phone.

3 – Check it on your phone first. That’s where a big chunk of your visitors are – and where most pages look the worst.

7. Make it fast

This one surprised me.

A while ago I moved my website from Namecheap hosting to SiteGround – at about 4x the price.

My landing pages went from converting at around 45% to 52%.

I didn’t change a single word of copy.

Here’s what I’d been telling myself before that: “Yeah, yeah, I know… I have to resize my images, add caching, compress some files. But 1-2 seconds probably don’t matter as much as people think.”

Well… I was wrong.

Website speed matters. A LOT. Sometimes even more than the messaging itself.

So compress your images, cut the heavy scripts you don’t need, and test your page speed before you spend a cent on traffic. Otherwise you’re just bleeding visitors.

8. Sound like a person

A lot of businesses think they need to sound “professional.”

So their pages end up sounding like every other page on the internet.

Look… people buy from people. Even in B2B.

Seth Godin’s Purple Cow makes this point beautifully: people remember the remarkable and forget the rest. And personality is one of the easiest ways to be remarkable.

So let your voice come through. Your opinions. Your humour. The way you actually talk.

(One of my favourite examples is still Jon Buchan from Charm Offensive – even his cold emails make you smile.)

Some people won’t like it.

Gooood. They weren’t your people anyway.

9. Tell people exactly what to do… then edit mercilessly

There’s so much going on online that you can’t leave the next step to chance.

Your call to action should be impossible to miss and impossible to misunderstand.

Here’s how I build mine:

Step 1: Go back to your headline and the visitor’s stage of awareness.

Step 2: Think of the page as a short journey – from their problem to your solution.

Step 3: Tell them exactly what to do next, and what they’ll get right after they do it.

Step 4: Write 3 versions with benefit-driven wording. Pick a winner. Keep the other 2 for testing.

(And yes, put a button near the top AND at the bottom. Different people are ready at different moments.)

Then edit.

Nobody writes a great landing page on the first try (me included… not even close). Here’s my quick editing pass:

First, cut the fluff, the repeated words and the passive voice.

Second, shorten your sentences. One thought per sentence.

Third, swap complicated words for simple ones. Aim for a reading level a 12-year-old could follow.

Fourth, cut the “warm-up” paragraphs and start where the reader’s interest is.

Fifth, turn your “I” and “we” into “you.” The page is about the reader, not about you.

Once the page is about 90% there, ship it.

A good page that’s live beats a perfect page in your drafts folder.

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-Csaba