Landing pages that convert have one goal, a headline that matches the ad or email that sent people there, a clear promise, proof near the top, as few form fields as possible and one obvious button. Unbounce's benchmark puts the median landing page conversion rate at 6.6%. Test everything, including removing steps, and fix your checkout, where around 70% of carts are abandoned.
Key takeaways
- Copy beats design, but a page has to look trustworthy enough for a cautious buyer.
- Unbounce's benchmark data puts the median landing page conversion rate across industries at 6.6%.
- Simple often wins: removing bullets, removing words like "claim your" and removing a whole funnel step all improved results in my tests.
- Baymard's 2026 figure for average cart abandonment is 70.22%. Fixing the checkout is usually the fastest win.
- Don't assume. Test adding steps and test taking them away.
One of my mentors has a horrible website.
It's one massive long page all about him. It would come last in any design contest. But I still hired him, because what was written on that page was so good.
So does design matter at all?
Yes. It's the icing on the cake. I'm a hardened, cynical marketer, so an ugly layout doesn't bother me. But my wife would never buy from a site that didn't look professional. She wouldn't trust it.
Most of your customers are more like my wife than like me.
So you need both. Copy that sells, and a design that earns enough trust for people to read it.
Do landing pages still work in 2026?
Yes. A landing page is just a page built for one job: get one type of visitor to take one action. That will never go out of style.
What's changed is the competition. Your visitor arrives from a short video, an AI assistant's answer, a newsletter or a search result, and they've seen a hundred polished pages this week.
Unbounce's Conversion Benchmark Report, built from tens of thousands of landing pages, puts the median conversion rate across industries at 6.6%. Unbounce treats 10% or more as good. Use that as a rough baseline, but compare yourself with your own last result first. A waitlist for a warm audience and a paid offer for cold traffic are different games.
Is a landing page the same as a website?
No. A website has many jobs: explain who you are, rank in search, support existing customers, recruit staff. It has menus, links and lots of choices.
A landing page has one job. Fewer choices, one button. You might have one website and twenty landing pages, one for each campaign, audience or offer.
What does a battle-tested landing page look like?
Ryan Deiss is a well-known online marketer who tests fanatically. When I wrote the book, his top-performing landing page of all time was almost embarrassingly simple: a headline, an email box, a red arrow pointing at the box and a button that said "Click Here to Continue." No navigation. Not one image.
It worked because there was nothing to distract anyone.
The problem? You'd struggle to get it past your boss or your client. And ad networks don't like pages like that. They want visitors to land somewhere with real content.
So here's Deiss's better-looking version, element by element:
- A strong, easy-to-read headline
- An image of exactly what people are getting
- A full-width opt-in bar you can't miss
- Short copy with only four bullets
- Captions that describe each free resource and point back to the form
- A second opt-in form further down for people who scroll
That's still a great template for a free lead magnet in 2026. Swap the image of a PDF for a preview of your checklist, calculator or mini-course.
How did one page get 7,991 webinar registrations for less than $2,000?
I'm very proud of this one, mostly because the results were so good.
My team sent traffic to a webinar registration page from the client's email list and from cold Facebook ads. Total ad spend was under $2,000. The page got 7,991 registrations.
The design was simple. The copy was built around the top symptoms women feel when their health isn't right, so anyone with those symptoms felt the page was talking to them.
What we learned:
- Offer two sessions. Almost exactly as many people chose 5 p.m. as 7 p.m.
- Remind people to show up. Five follow-up emails plus a text message reminder gave us a 60% show rate, which is very high for an online event.
- Mobile matters. We ran out of time to make the page mobile-friendly, so phone users had to pinch and zoom. We still got a 40% opt-in rate. Imagine what it would have been on a proper mobile page. (Every page we built after that was mobile-first.)
- Make time zones easy. A "check your local time" link helped because people joined from all over the world.
How long should a landing page be?
As long as it takes to answer the visitor's questions, and no longer. But for a free offer, shorter usually wins.
How James Schramko doubled conversions by deleting two words
Aussie online marketer James Schramko built a webinar page that broke the usual rules. There was no form on the page, just a button that opened a pop-up asking for an email. Behind the headline sat a blurred preview of a mind map, which made people curious. He found that a page with no bullets at all converted better than one with bullets. And when he removed the words "claim your" from the call to action, conversions doubled again. Green header text beat orange, too. Lesson: when you're asking for a free opt-in, don't overwrite it.
For a paid offer, length depends on price and trust. A $20 trial for people who know you can be a short page. A $2,000 program for strangers needs the full sales sequence from my guide to copy that makes people buy, or a video sales letter.
Should landing pages have navigation?
For a pure opt-in or sales page, I usually remove the menu. Every link is an exit.
Two exceptions:
- Paid search and some ad platforms may want visitors to land on a page with real content and a clear way to learn about the business. A few links in the header or footer can help.
- Pages meant to rank in search need content, internal links and navigation. A thin squeeze page won't rank.
And once someone clicks "checkout," always remove the navigation. Enough browsing. Time to buy.
Which button text converts better: "Tell me more" or "Notify me"?
LeadPages shared a split test with me from Maggie Percy, who ran a "coming soon" page. Two identical pages, except the button. One said "Notify me." The other said "Tell me more."
"Tell me more" converted about 30% better.
Why? The urge to know more is usually stronger than the urge to be told when something launches. Curiosity beats patience.
The humble "coming soon" page is underrated, too. LaunchRock's simple template had collected more than 7 million sign-ups when I wrote the book. If you're testing an idea, a one-screen waitlist page is the fastest way to find out if anyone cares. I cover this in launch fast and cheap.
What happened when we removed a whole step from the funnel?
For one client, we had to fill three seminar rooms with people interested in investing. It's one of the toughest markets online, full of advertisers with deep pockets.
From experience, we used a two-step funnel: visitors entered their name and email to watch a free video, and the thank-you page invited them to the seminar. Logical. It converted at 2.7%.
Then we tried something that felt wrong. We cut the video and sent people straight to the seminar registration page.
It converted at 5.5%. That halved the cost per lead.
Lesson: don't assume anything. Test adding steps to your funnel, and test taking them away.
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Why is the checkout the most neglected page?
Everyone obsesses over the homepage, the opt-in and the sales page. Then they forget the poor old checkout.
Baymard Institute's running average of 50 studies puts the cart abandonment rate at 70.22% in its 2026 figures. Picture six or seven out of ten people bringing a product to the counter, then turning around and walking out. A shop manager would go crazy. Most businesses online don't even measure it.
How we doubled mobile revenue by fixing one checkout
For one E-Web client, the site-wide e-commerce conversion rate was 3.59%, which is decent. But mobile was converting at just 0.89%. The checkout wasn't mobile-friendly and forced people to create a username and password. We rebuilt it using Baymard's checkout usability guidelines. Overall conversion improved by 18.7%, and mobile conversion rose from 0.89% to 1.90%. We doubled mobile revenue without spending another cent on traffic.
The four fixes that made the biggest difference:
- Minimize typing. We questioned every field. We negotiated with the payment provider so digital-only purchases didn't need a billing address (five fields gone). We auto-detected the country and the card type. We dropped the compulsory phone number. Nobody thanks you for removing a field, but together it halves the time to pay.
- Remove navigation in the checkout. Keep people focused.
- Format the card expiry date exactly as it appears on the card (for example, 01/27), not as a month name and a year.
- Let people pay in their own currency. It costs a little more in fees, but it reduces complaints and lifts conversion.
In 2026 I'd add: offer the digital wallets your customers use, allow guest checkout, and for subscriptions, show the renewal price and terms right next to the pay button.
The 2026 landing page checklist
Before any page goes live, I check:
- One goal. One action, one button (repeated if the page is long).
- Message match. The headline repeats the promise from the ad, email or post.
- Mobile first. Designed and tested on a phone before a desktop.
- Fast. Loads quickly on a mobile connection.
- Proof near the top. A number, a face, a logo or a demonstration above the fold.
- Show what they get. An image or preview of the product, download or result.
- Minimal form. Only the fields you'll actually use.
- A real reason to act now, if there is one. (See scarcity without being slimy.)
- Clear price and terms for paid offers, including any renewal.
- A test planned. Know what you'll test next before you launch.
Selling a subscription? There's more to get right, from monthly versus annual to trial terms. Read landing pages for subscription offers, and if your page includes a pricing table, see my guides to pricing page design and annotated pricing page examples.
Website Subscription AuditEnter your URL and get a subscription and pricing audit.Open the free tool →When is a landing page the wrong tool?
- When you need to rank in search. A short, single-purpose page usually won't rank. Write a genuinely useful guide and put the call to action inside it.
- When the buyer needs a conversation. Complex B2B deals and high-trust services often convert better from a page whose only goal is booking a call.
- When the traffic is wrong. No page can convert visitors who were never hungry for the offer. Fix the targeting first. My guide to Meta ads on a small budget covers that side.
What to do next
- Pick your most important page and write down its one goal.
- Describe the offer in three sentences. If you can't, the page will be unclear.
- Delete something. A field, a bullet, a step. Then test it.
- Measure your checkout abandonment this week.
- Run one split test a month. I once watched a page fatigue after 280,000 paid visitors. It took 121 split tests to comprehensively beat it, and most businesses never run even one. Marketing is like a video game: you're always trying to beat your high score.
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Frequently asked questions
What is a good landing page conversion rate?
It depends on the offer and the traffic. Unbounce's Conversion Benchmark Report, based on tens of thousands of landing pages, puts the median at 6.6% across industries, and Unbounce treats 10% or more as good. A free download for a warm email list should convert far higher than a paid product for cold ad traffic. Compare yourself with your own past results first.
How many fields should a landing page form have?
As few as you can get away with. For a free download or waitlist, an email address alone is often enough. Add a first name if you'll personalize follow-up. Every extra field is a reason to leave, so question each one: will I actually use this? For a paid checkout, remove phone numbers and addresses you don't need, especially for digital products.
Should a landing page have a video?
Often, yes, if the video is good and short. A video can carry a demonstration or a story far better than text. But a video shouldn't replace the headline or the button. People need to understand the offer without pressing play. If you use video, test the page with and without it, and make sure it loads quickly on mobile.
How do I write a landing page headline?
Match the promise that got the click. If the ad said "How to cut your restaurant's delivery fees", the page headline should say the same thing, not your company slogan. Then make it specific and surprising. My copywriting guide covers the "How to plus benefit plus specific" formula that works in almost any market.
What tools can I use to build landing pages in 2026?
Most website builders and email platforms now include landing page templates, and dedicated landing page tools add split testing and integrations. AI website builders can produce a decent first draft from a description in minutes. The tool matters far less than the offer, the copy and whether you actually test. Pick whatever lets you change a headline without waiting on a developer.
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Robert Coorey, MBA
Robert is the author of The Subscription Playbook and Feed a Starving Crowd and a Director at BPAG Accountants in Sydney. More about Robert.
Sources
- Robert Coorey, Feed a Starving Crowd, Chapter 5 (2013/14)
- Unbounce, Conversion Benchmark Report
- Unbounce, What's a good conversion rate? (Based on 41,000 landing pages)
- Baymard Institute, 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2026
Facts and prices checked 27 October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.