Small improvements to your landing page performance can yield noticeable results. Whether you’re trying to get visitors to sign up for SMS marketing updates, join your loyalty program, or purchase from your newest collection, minor tweaks can increase your success rate. Effective landing pages turn visitors into customers, minimize bounce rates, and keep folks browsing instead of leaving your site.
If your landing page converts at 4%, for example, and you’re driving 3,000 visitors per month with an average order value of $50, that’s $6,000 in monthly revenue. Bump that conversion rate to just 5%, and you’re looking at $7,500—an extra $1,500 per month from the same traffic.
Here are nine ways to improve landing page performance—from speeding up load times to crafting irresistible calls to action.
What is landing page optimization?
Landing page optimization (LPO) is improving your landing pages to increase conversions and revenue. Using analytics and testing, you can adjust elements like headlines, calls to action, forms, copy, images, and layout based on real user behavior. For ecommerce merchants, these data-backed adjustments guide more visitors toward completing desired actions like making a purchase, signing up for an email list, or starting a subscription trial.
Landing page optimization works within your broader conversion rate optimization strategy, zeroing in on the single-purpose pages that convert traffic from specific marketing campaigns or channels. The goal is to make your web page better at converting visitors by removing friction, building trust, and lowering customer acquisition costs.
Why landing pages perform poorly
- Multiple goals
- Slow page load times
- Mismatched intent
- Forms requesting too much information
- Poor mobile experience
Even successful ecommerce stores struggle with landing page performance. Maybe visitors aren’t signing up for your email newsletter, your free sample offer isn’t converting, or your new collection launch page suffers from a sky-high bounce rate. The culprit often isn’t the product or offer itself; it’s how you’re presenting it.
Here are some of the most common reasons landing pages underperform:
Multiple goals
When your landing page tries to accomplish too many objectives at once, visitors can get confused about what action they should take. If your page promotes a specific product, focus on getting people to add it to their cart. Don’t also ask them to follow your Instagram, read your latest blog post, and browse other collections.
Slow page load times
Pages that take too long to load cause visitors to abandon before they even see your offer. Research shows that visitors grow impatient and disproportionately bounce after just 2.75 seconds.
Mismatched intent
If someone clicks an ad for “organic cotton baby blankets” and lands on a generic homepage or a page about bedding, they probably leave. Your landing page should immediately address the problem that prompted the click in the first place.
Forms requesting too much information
Long forms with too many required fields create unnecessary friction. Asking for a phone number, birthday, and mailing address just to download a sizing guide or join an email list will send most people running.
Poor mobile experience
Non-responsive designs, tiny buttons that are impossible to tap, difficult-to-read text, and slow mobile load times alienate shoppers. With more than 62% of worldwide web traffic coming from mobile devices, a subpar mobile landing page experience tanks your conversion rate across the board.
How to measure landing page performance
Tracking landing page performance data tells you what’s working and what needs fixing, so you can make smarter choices about where to invest your optimization efforts. Tools like Shopify Analytics, Google Analytics, Looker, or Amplitude make it easy to keep a beat on these metrics and spot problems before they impact your bottom line.
Here are the landing page metrics every ecommerce merchant can track:
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of landing page visitors who carry out your desired action—like making a purchase or starting a free trial. An analysis from Unbounce of more than 41,000 landing pages found that the median conversion rate across all industries is just 6.6%, meaning there’s usually room for improvement.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your landing page after viewing only that page without taking any action. A high bounce rate means your page isn’t meeting visitor expectations, your offer isn’t compelling enough, or technical issues are pushing people away before they engage.
Page load speed
Load speed is how quickly your page loads. Pages with swifter load times achieve higher conversion rates, while slower pages see conversions drop. Google also considers load speed in search rankings; speeding up your page supports search engine optimization efforts.
Time on page
Time on page shows the average duration on your landing page, indicating whether your content is compelling enough to hold attention. Higher time on page suggests visitors read your copy, watch videos, and seriously consider your offer.
Scroll depth
Scroll depth reveals how far down the page visitors scroll, showing whether they engage with your site content below the fold (i.e., top of the page). If most visitors seldom scroll past your hero image, that means they’re ignoring important information, testimonials, or CTAs placed further down the page.
Click-through rate on CTAs
Your click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage or ratio of visitors who click on your CTA buttons or links. Tracking this tells you if your buttons are noticeable, persuasive, and strategically placed throughout the page.
Strategies to improve landing page performance
- Cut page load speed
- Highlight your value proposition
- Align your ads and landing page
- Simplify landing page design
- Use action-oriented CTAs
- Reduce form fields
- Sprinkle in social proof
- Design for mobile
- A/B test key elements
For the following strategies, start with quick wins like improving page speed or clarifying your CTA. Measure the impact, then optimize further. Over time, you can tackle all of these strategies for high-performing landing pages:
Cut page load speed
One analysis found that when pages loaded in under less than seconds, visitors browsed 60% more pages. Speed is critical for conversions because visitors abandon slow pages quickly, and faster load times directly improve conversion rates. Here’s what you can do:
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Start by compressing your product photos. Unoptimized images—too large, wrong file format—are the most common culprit for slow ecommerce pages.
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Turn on browser caching. This stores web content locally for faster reloading, so returning visitors don’t have to reload all your page assets from scratch.
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Consider using a content delivery network (CDN). This serves images and scripts from servers closer to your customers.
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Minimize redirects. Also, reduce heavy scripts or unnecessary plug-ins that slow down load times.
Don’t know where to start? PageSpeed Insights surfaces specific bottlenecks and gives you recommendations for speeding up your pages.
Highlight your value proposition
Your value proposition—the specific benefit customers gain from your product—needs to hit page visitors immediately. Place your headline and primary message above the fold—visible without scrolling—so visitors instantly understand what you do and why it matters. For ecommerce product pages, communicate what makes your product unique or superior to alternatives, not just what it is.
Use clear and benefit-focused language instead of convoluted marketing speak. “Sleep better tonight with organic bamboo sheets that stay cool all night” is more compelling than “Premium bedding products for the modern home.” Test different value propositions to see which resonates most with your visitors. What you think is your strongest selling point might not be what actually converts customers.
Pair your headline with a strong hero image—a large, prominent banner image at the top of your page—that reinforces your value proposition. Show your product in use rather than just on a white background.
Align your ads and landing page
Message match means your landing page delivers on the promise made in the ad or link that brought visitors there. If your Google ads promote “25% off summer dresses,” your headline should instantly confirm the offer—not bury it at the bottom of the page, or worse, not mention it at all.
Match your landing page’s wording, imagery, and details to those used in your ad. If the ad highlights a specific product, make it the focal point on the page. Maintain congruence across your imagery, too. If your ad has a bright and fun energy with bold colors, don’t send people to a minimalist black-and-white landing page.
The goal? Create a landing page arrival where visitors are confident they’ve arrived at the right place and the offer they clicked for is real and available. Even small inconsistencies in wording, imagery, or offer messaging can generate doubt and lead to a bounce.
Simplify landing page design
Landing pages aren’t homepages—they exist to drive one specific action. Every element that doesn’t support your goal works against you.
Strip away sidebar content, excessive internal links, and secondary offers that compete for attention with your primary CTA. Consider removing your main navigation menu entirely from landing pages. Those tempting links to About Us, Blog, and All Products give visitors an escape route when the goal is to keep them focused on your desired action. Use generous white space around your most important landing page elements—headline, product images, and CTA buttons—so they stand out.
Use action-oriented CTAs
Your CTA button is where conversions happen. Don’t default to boring button copy like “Submit” or “Click here.” Make CTAs specific and action-oriented so visitors know exactly what they’re getting when they click. “Add to Cart,” “Get My 20% Discount,” or “Start My Free Trial” all clearly communicate the result.
Get your buttons to pop with colors that break from the background. They should be impossible to miss when scanning the page. Make buttons large enough for easy clickability on mobile devices—at least 44 by 44 pixels—and position them at regular intervals on longer pages so there’s always a CTA within reach. Or, consider making buttons sticky, so they stay visible as users scroll.
Create urgency when appropriate with copy like “Claim your limited-time offer!” or “Sale ends tomorrow!” but avoid false scarcity tactics that feel disingenuous.
Reduce form fields
Every landing page form field you ask visitors to complete is a potential point of abandonment. When optimizing landing pages focused on email capture or lead generation, stick to the absolute essentials—usually just email address and maybe first name.
You can always collect additional information later after you’ve established trust. For checkout pages, consider implementing guest checkout that doesn’t require account creation, and use autofill capabilities that pull information from browsers to speed up the process.
Break longer forms into multiple sections, and include progress indicators so visitors know how close they are to completion. Always explain why you’re asking for each bit of info. “We’ll text your tracking number” justifies requesting a phone number, while “We promise not to spam you” reassures hesitant email subscribers.
Sprinkle in social proof
New visitors may not trust you yet. Social proof—evidence that other people have used and loved your products—can help overcome skepticism and bridge that gap.
Consider adding reviews and testimonials to your landing page. Detailed reviews like “These lasted through 50+ washes and still look brand new” are more convincing than generic “Great product!” comments. User-generated content, like customer photos showing your products in actual homes or on real people, builds trust better than any stock photography.
Place trust badges near your CTA buttons and checkout areas. Security seals, payment icons, and money-back guarantees all help reduce purchase anxiety. Show real figures when possible: “Join 70,000+ customers,” or “4.9 stars from 2,300+ reviews,” give concrete proof of popularity and credibility.
If you’ve been featured in media or won awards, prominently display your laurels if they’re genuinely recognizable to your target audience.
Design for mobile
Mobile phones now drive the majority of ecommerce traffic. Your landing page needs to work flawlessly on smartphones. Opt for responsive design elements that flex for different screen sizes.
But go beyond basic responsiveness. Test your pages on mobile devices to find issues that desktop previews miss. Make buttons prominent enough to tap with a thumb and add plenty of space between clickable elements so visitors don’t accidentally tap the wrong thing. Use legible font sizes for mobile—16 pixels for body text—so visitors don’t have to zoom in to read your copy.
Also, think about using the WebP format for serving smaller files without cutting quality. Simplify your mobile forms even more aggressively than desktop versions, and test your checkout flow on mobile.
A/B test key elements
The only way to know what actually improves landing page performance is to test it. A/B testing—a.k.a. split testing—compares two versions of a page element to understand which achieves better outcomes with real visitors. Test different button copy, colors, and locations. Sometimes changing “Buy Now” to “Add to Cart” or moving a CTA button 100 pixels up or down can positively impact conversion. Assess one portion at a time so you can isolate and identify changes in performance.
Let tests run until you have statistically significant results—most testing tools will determine this for you. Document your results even when tests fail. Knowing what does not work is valuable information that prevents you from making the same mistakes on other pages.
For solopreneurs and small teams, consider AI-powered optimization tools that automatically test variations and send visitors to the versions where they’re more likely to convert.
Improving landing page performance FAQ
How do I optimize my landing page?
Identify your biggest performance issues using analytics data. Look at bounce rate, average time on page, click-through, conversion rate, and where visitors drop off. Then implement other improvements. Speed up your pageload times, clarify your value proposition above the fold, remove distracting navigation elements, and keep your CTA buttons impossible to miss.
What two actions are needed to optimize landing pages?
Landing page optimization requires more than just two actions. However, two you should start with are boosting page load speed (push for under 2.75 seconds) and verifying message match between your landing page content and ads. Fast load times prevent visitors from bouncing before they even see your offer, while message match confirms visitors are in the right place.
What is a good conversion rate for a landing page?
The median landing page conversion rate across industries is around 6.6%; however, this varies by industry. Ecommerce landing pages have a median conversion rate of 4.2%, while events and entertainment pages observe a median conversion rate of 12.3%. What matters most is improving your own baseline through testing and optimization; a 1% improvement in conversion rate can equate to thousands of dollars in additional revenue.
