How to Create a Landing Page That Converts (2026 Guide)

What Makes a Landing Page Different from a Website Page

A landing page is a standalone web page designed with a single conversion goal—capturing leads, registering for a webinar, or downloading a resource. Unlike general website pages that serve multiple purposes and offer navigation to other areas, landing pages remove distractions and focus entirely on one action. This singular focus is what makes landing pages so effective for B2B lead generation.

According to research from Sender, businesses with 40+ landing pages generate 12 times more leads than those with only one to five pages. The reason is straightforward: dedicated landing pages can be precisely matched to specific campaigns, audiences, and offers—creating message match that improves both conversion rates and quality scores for paid campaigns.

For B2B marketers, landing pages bridge the gap between marketing campaigns and pipeline generation. When someone clicks your LinkedIn ad or email CTA, a well-designed landing page continues the conversation and captures the lead directly into your CRM. If you're running HubSpot, this integration happens automatically—which is why understanding what a landing page is matters for your attribution and reporting accuracy.

Landing Page Conversion Rates by Industry (2026 Benchmarks)

Before optimising your landing pages, you need to know what "good" looks like for your industry. Unbounce's analysis of 41,000+ landing pages and 464 million visitors provides the most authoritative benchmarks available for B2B marketers in 2026.

Source: Unbounce Conversion Benchmark Report 2024

Notice the gap between median and top performers—in SaaS, top 25% pages convert three times better than average. This isn't luck. Top performers optimise systematically using A/B testing, personalisation, and the best practices covered throughout this guide. Whitehat SEO's website audit service helps identify exactly where your pages are underperforming against these benchmarks.

Essential Elements of a High-Converting Landing Page

High-converting landing pages share common structural elements that guide visitors toward conversion. Nielsen Norman Group research shows visitors form aesthetic judgements within 50 milliseconds, and 57% of viewing time occurs above the fold. Every element must earn its place on the page.

Headline and Value Proposition

Your headline is the most critical element on any landing page—five times more people read headlines than body copy. Leadpages research found that well-crafted headlines alone can increase conversions by 307%. The best landing page headlines communicate what visitors will receive and why it matters to them, not what your company does. Focus on outcomes, not features.

Form Design and Field Count

Form friction kills landing page conversions. HubSpot's research shows forms with three fields achieve the highest conversion rates (approximately 25%), while forms with five or fewer fields convert 120% better than those with ten or more. For B2B landing pages, Whitehat SEO recommends progressive profiling—starting with minimal fields and collecting additional information through follow-up interactions and marketing automation workflows.

Call-to-Action Design

CTA buttons should use action-oriented language and contrasting colours that stand out from your page design. First-person phrasing ("Get My Free Guide") typically outperforms second-person ("Get Your Free Guide") in A/B tests. According to HubSpot's marketing statistics, personalised CTAs convert 202% better than generic ones. Learn more about creating effective calls-to-action that drive conversions.

Social Proof and Trust Signals

Trust signals reduce perceived risk for landing page visitors. Research shows that 91% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and displaying reviews can boost conversions by up to 270%. For B2B landing pages, client logos, case studies with quantifiable results, and industry certifications work particularly well to build credibility.

How Page Speed Affects Landing Page Conversions

Page speed isn't just a technical metric—it directly impacts revenue and conversion rates. Google's research published on Think with Google shows that a 0.1-second improvement in load time drives an 8.4% to 10.1% increase in conversion rates. Conversely, each additional second of load time (from 0 to 5 seconds) causes a 4.42% conversion rate drop per second.

The data is clear: landing pages loading in one second achieve approximately three times higher conversion rates than pages loading in five seconds. Additionally, 53% of mobile users abandon pages taking more than three seconds to load completely. For landing pages where every visitor counts toward your cost per acquisition, speed optimisation delivers immediate ROI.

Whitehat SEO's SEO services include comprehensive technical audits that identify speed issues and provide actionable fixes. Performance optimisation typically yields the fastest improvements in landing page conversion rates—often before any copy or design changes are needed.

Creating a Landing Page in HubSpot (Step-by-Step Guide)

HubSpot's landing page builder offers one of the most intuitive experiences available for B2B marketers, with drag-and-drop editing, built-in A/B testing, and native CRM integration. Here's how to create a landing page that converts using HubSpot's 2026 platform capabilities.

Step 1: Access the Landing Page Tool

Navigate to Marketing → Website → Landing Pages in your HubSpot portal. Click "Create" in the upper right corner. HubSpot offers 420+ templates in the marketplace—filter by purpose (lead generation, event registration, product launch) to find templates aligned with your specific conversion goals.

Step 2: Configure Page Settings

Before designing, set your page title (appears in browser tabs and search results), URL slug, and campaign association. Choose a page title that accurately describes your offer and includes your primary keyword. Associate the landing page with a HubSpot campaign to enable proper attribution in reporting and analytics dashboards.

Step 3: Build Your Page Structure

Use HubSpot's drag-and-drop editor to add modules for your headline, supporting copy, hero image, form, and social proof elements. For Content Hub Professional users, HubSpot's Breeze AI can generate entire landing pages from natural language prompts describing your purpose, target audience, and desired outcomes—saving significant development time.

Step 4: Add and Configure Your Form

Insert a form module and either create a new form or select an existing one from your HubSpot library. Configure form fields based on your conversion goal—remember, fewer fields typically mean higher conversion rates. HubSpot's progressive profiling (available on Professional and Enterprise tiers) automatically shows different fields to returning visitors, allowing you to build contact profiles over time.

Step 5: Preview, Test, and Publish

Use HubSpot's preview function to check your landing page across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Run the built-in SEO recommendations checker before publishing. When satisfied, click "Publish"—or schedule for a future date. For Professional users, consider creating an A/B test variation before launch to optimise conversion rates from day one.

Need help getting HubSpot set up properly? Whitehat SEO's HubSpot onboarding service ensures your landing pages integrate correctly with your CRM, workflows, and reporting from day one—so you can prove ROI from every campaign.

AI-Powered Landing Page Optimisation in 2026

Artificial intelligence has transformed landing page creation and optimisation over the past two years. The AI landing page builder market has grown significantly, with platforms now offering sophisticated optimisation capabilities that were previously only available to enterprise organisations with dedicated data science teams.

Unbounce's Smart Traffic feature, which automatically routes visitors to the highest-converting landing page variant based on their characteristics, reports an average 30% conversion improvement for customers using the tool. The system learns from visitor attributes including device type, geographic location, referral source, and behaviour patterns to personalise experiences at scale without manual intervention.

HubSpot's Breeze AI, introduced at INBOUND 2024, enables users to generate complete landing pages from natural language prompts. The tool creates compelling copy, selects appropriate images, configures forms, and optimises for mobile—all based on your described purpose and target audience. This capability is available to Content Hub Professional and Enterprise subscribers.

The personalisation data speaks for itself: McKinsey research shows companies excelling at personalisation grow approximately 10 percentage points faster annually than competitors who don't prioritise personalised experiences. For landing pages specifically, AI-driven personalisation can deliver up to 40% conversion lifts compared to generic page experiences. Whitehat SEO's Answer Engine Optimisation services help ensure your landing pages are structured for both human visitors and AI systems.

B2B Landing Page Best Practices and Considerations

B2B landing pages differ fundamentally from B2C in several important ways. Decision cycles are longer (averaging 102 days, extending up to 16 months for complex enterprise purchases), involve multiple stakeholders (10-11 on average according to Gartner research), and require different conversion strategies than consumer-focused pages.

A Kissmetrics study reveals that 52% of B2B PPC ads point to homepages rather than dedicated landing pages—described as "just about the worst mistake you can make" for paid campaign performance. B2B buyers research extensively before contacting vendors; 57-70% of the buying decision is made before a prospect reaches out to speak with sales.

For B2B landing pages, focus on soft conversions (whitepaper downloads, webinar registrations, assessment tools) rather than immediate purchase requests. Display trust signals prominently—client logos, case studies with ROI data, and industry certifications. Consider your buying committee carefully: technical evaluators need features and integration details, while executives need strategic alignment and risk mitigation messaging.

The gated versus ungated content debate has evolved significantly. Top-performing B2B brands now gate less than 3% of their content, though leads from gated content still produce 31% more sales-qualified leads than ungated visitors. Whitehat SEO recommends gating high-value content like original research reports and ROI calculators while keeping awareness-stage content freely accessible to build trust.

Optimising Your Thank You Page for Further Engagement

Thank you pages represent an underutilised conversion opportunity that most B2B marketers overlook entirely. After someone completes your landing page form, they're at peak engagement with your brand—yet most companies display nothing more than a brief confirmation message and leave money on the table.

Amazon attributes 35% of its total revenue to upsells and cross-sells, many originating on confirmation and thank you pages. For B2B marketers, thank you pages should accomplish three things: confirm the conversion clearly, deliver the promised asset immediately, and present a logical next step—perhaps a demo booking, newsletter subscription, or related resource download.

Essential thank you page elements include a clear confirmation message, immediate asset delivery (opening in a new tab so visitors can return to share or take secondary actions), social sharing links pointing to the landing page (not the thank you page), and a secondary CTA that moves visitors further into your marketing funnel. Read our complete guide on creating landing pages and thank you pages in HubSpot.

A/B Testing Landing Pages for Continuous Improvement

Landing page optimisation is never truly finished—it's an ongoing process of testing, learning, and improving. Companies that implement systematic A/B testing programmes see a 70% increase in revenue from their landing pages, yet only 17% of marketers currently test their pages systematically.

Start by testing high-impact elements first: headlines, CTA button copy, form field count, and hero images. HubSpot's A/B testing capability (available on Professional and Enterprise tiers) splits traffic 50/50 between variants and tracks form submissions, page views, and conversions automatically. For Enterprise users, Adaptive Testing tests up to five variations simultaneously, automatically shifting traffic toward winning variants using machine learning.

Be realistic about sample sizes—only one in eight A/B tests achieves statistical significance with typical traffic volumes. Focus on changes likely to produce meaningful differences rather than minor tweaks. Companies testing 10+ variations see 86% better results than those running single tests, so commit to continuous optimisation rather than one-off experiments.

Explore our comprehensive conversion optimisation strategies guide for more techniques to improve landing page performance across your entire marketing funnel.

Frequently Asked Questions About Landing Pages

References and Sources

1. Unbounce – Conversion Benchmark Report (2024)
2. HubSpot – Landing Page Best Practices
3. HubSpot Knowledge Base – Create and Customise Pages
4. Wyzowl – Video Marketing Statistics 2025
5. Google web.dev – Core Web Vitals
6. Think with Google – Mobile Page Speed Benchmarks
7. W3C – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
8. EUR-Lex – European Accessibility Act Directive