Last updated: October 2026.
Landing page optimisation is the work of changing a page so more of the people who arrive on it take the action you want, whether that is a call, a booking or a form submission. It matters because the visitors are already arriving. You are not buying more traffic, you are stopping the traffic you already paid for from leaving.
Key takeaways
- The average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate is 70.22 per cent, averaged across 50 studies (Baymard Institute, updated 22 September 2025).
- In Nielsen Norman Group eyetracking research, about 80 per cent of viewing time was spent above the fold, and attention drops sharply below it (NN/g).
- People read about 20 per cent of the words on an average page, rising to a 28 per cent ceiling, so most of your copy will never be read (NN/g, 5 May 2008).
- Google’s good thresholds are a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less (web.dev).
- Landing page experience is one of the three components of Google Ads Quality Score, and Quality Score is a diagnostic tool rather than a key performance indicator (Google Ads Help).
What is landing page optimisation?
Landing page optimisation is the process of improving one page so a higher share of its visitors convert, rather than improving the traffic that arrives on it. A landing page is any page you send traffic to with a single purpose, such as an ad, an email or a social post, and it differs from a normal website page because it should not ask the visitor to make choices.
The distinction that matters is arithmetic. If 1,000 people arrive and 2 per cent enquire, you have 20 enquiries. Doubling the traffic costs money and produces 40. Doubling the conversion rate costs nothing extra and also produces 40. Improving the page is usually the cheaper of the two, which is why it belongs before the ad budget increases.
For most Australian businesses the work is unglamorous. It is matching the headline to the promise that brought the visitor, removing the things that distract them, making the page fast on a phone and making the next step obvious.
Why do landing pages lose visitors?
Landing pages lose visitors for four reasons that are well documented: a mismatch between the promise and the page, low attention below the fold, slow loading on a phone, and too many choices. None of them require guesswork to fix, because the research is public and the measurement is available.
| What the research found | What it means for your page | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average documented cart abandonment rate of 70.22 per cent | Most people who start a purchase do not finish it | Baymard Institute, 2025 |
| About 80 per cent of viewing time spent above the fold | Your most important content cannot sit halfway down | NN/g eyetracking |
| Users have time to read at most 28 per cent of the words, and 20 per cent is more likely | Long paragraphs are decoration, not persuasion | NN/g, 2008 |
| Half the information is read only on pages of 111 words or fewer | Short pages get read, long pages get scanned | NN/g, 2008 |
| Good LCP is 2.5 seconds or less | A slow hero image costs you visitors before they read anything | web.dev |
| Landing page experience is one of three Quality Score components, compared over the last 90 days | Page quality affects your paid search performance too | Google Ads Help |
Two of those numbers come from research that is older than most landing pages in service today. The NN/g reading study dates from 2008, and the eyetracking figure is from 2010, when phones were not the primary screen. They remain in use because the underlying behaviour has not reversed, but treat them as directional rather than precise, and confirm with your own analytics where you can.
What are the 10 landing page optimisation tips?
The ten tips below are ordered by how much difference they usually make for an Australian small business, starting with the message and ending with the mechanics. Each one can be tested on its own, which matters because changing five things at once tells you nothing about which one worked.
1. Match the page to the promise that brought the visitor
The most common reason a landing page fails is that it does not continue the sentence the ad or email started. If the ad says same day blocked drains in Clayton, the page headline should say the same thing in the same words. Google evaluates the relevance between your ad and your landing page over the previous 90 days when it reports landing page experience, so this is not only a human consideration (Google Ads Help).
2. Write a headline that names the outcome
A headline should state what the visitor gets and who it is for, in one line they can read at a glance. The usual mistake is a headline about the business rather than the customer, such as Welcome to our website or Quality service you can trust, neither of which answers the question the visitor arrived with. Write the headline before the page, because a headline you cannot make concrete is a signal the offer is not clear yet.
3. Keep the branding consistent with the source
The page should look like the thing that sent the visitor, because a sudden change in colours, logo or tone reads as a different company. This is especially important when you send paid traffic to a page that looks nothing like your website, which is a pattern visitors associate with low quality offers. Same colours, same logo, same tone, and the visitor relaxes.
4. Use real images of your own work
Photographs of your actual team, vehicles, premises and completed jobs do more than stock imagery, because they are evidence rather than decoration. Stock photos are recognisable and they quietly signal that the page was assembled rather than earned. Two real photos of finished work will outperform ten generic ones, and they cost nothing if you already take them on the job.
5. Lead with the benefit, not the feature
A feature describes what you do and a benefit describes what changes for the customer, and the benefit wins every time. Licensed and insured matters less than no mess left behind, and 15 years experience matters less than you will not need to explain the job twice. Convert each feature into its consequence, then lead with the consequence.
6. Place social proof where the doubt appears
Reviews, ratings and client logos should sit next to the point where a visitor hesitates, which is usually beside the form or the price, not in a strip at the very bottom. A single specific review from a customer in the same suburb does more than twenty anonymous ones, because it is checkable. If you can show a Google rating with the number of reviews behind it, use that.
7. Use one primary call to action, repeated
A landing page should have one primary action, offered several times down the page, rather than three competing ones at the top. Every additional choice divides attention, and reading behaviour research shows attention is already limited and concentrated near the top. Repeat the same button text each time, because changing the wording mid page makes visitors wonder whether the offer changed too.
8. Remove the navigation and competing links
Standard website navigation gives a visitor dozens of ways to leave, and on a landing page that is the opposite of what you want. Hide the menu, remove the sidebar and take out any link that does not lead towards the conversion. If the page must keep navigation for compliance or trust reasons, keep it visually quiet.
9. Cut the form down to what you actually need
Every field you add removes some of the people who would have completed the form, so ask only for what you need to respond. A name and a phone number is usually enough for a trades or service enquiry, and anything more can wait until the conversation. If a field exists because the back office likes it, check whether it is worth the enquiries it costs.
10. Make the page fast on a phone
Speed is a conversion factor before it is a ranking factor, because a page that takes four seconds to show its main content has already lost part of its audience. Target a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile on mobile (web.dev). In practice that means compressed hero images, no layout shift from late loading fonts, and no heavy scripts blocking the first render.
The mobile case is not theoretical in Australia. DataReportal’s Digital 2026 Australia report records 34.1 million cellular mobile connections at the end of 2025, equivalent to 126 per cent of the population, alongside 26.2 million internet users at 97.1 per cent penetration (DataReportal, 2026). Most of your visitors are arriving on a phone, often on mobile data rather than office wifi.
| Metric | Good | Needs improvement | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint | 2.5 seconds or less | 2.5 to 4.0 seconds | Over 4.0 seconds |
| Interaction to Next Paint | 200 milliseconds or less | 200 to 500 milliseconds | Over 500 milliseconds |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0.1 or less | 0.1 to 0.25 | Over 0.25 |
All three metrics are assessed at the 75th percentile of page loads, segmented across mobile and desktop, which means a good average is not enough (web.dev). If a quarter of your mobile visitors wait longer than 2.5 seconds, the page fails the threshold however good the other three quarters look.
Not sure why your page is not converting?
DigiFix reviews landing pages for Australian businesses, then tells you which single change is most likely to move the number.
What should be above the fold?
Above the fold should carry four things: what you do, who it is for, the proof that you are credible and the next step. Everything else can live further down, because the research shows attention is concentrated in the top of the page and falls away quickly below it.
Nielsen Norman Group’s eyetracking work found that about 80 per cent of users’ viewing time was spent above the fold, and that a sharp drop in attention after the fold has persisted across studies from 2010 to 2018 (NN/g). That does not mean long pages fail, and NN/g notes that users now scroll more than they once did. It means the top of the page has to earn the scroll.
| Position | What belongs there |
|---|---|
| Above the fold | Outcome headline, one line of who it is for, proof, primary call to action |
| Second screen | The three problems you solve, with real photos of your work |
| Middle | Process, pricing guidance and specific reviews |
| Bottom | Answers to the last objections, contact details and a final call to action |
Sending paid traffic to a page that is not working?
DigiFix rebuilds landing pages to match the ad promise, then keeps testing the parts that move enquiries.
How do you test landing page changes?
Test one change at a time, run it long enough to produce a meaningful number, and keep a written record of what you changed and what happened. A test that changes the headline, the image and the button at once cannot tell you which of the three caused the result, which means you cannot repeat it.
Most Australian small businesses do not have enough traffic for a statistically clean test, and that is worth being honest about. With a few hundred visitors a month, a genuine 10 per cent improvement will be invisible. In that situation, make the changes the research supports, compare month against month rather than day against day, and avoid calling a good week a result.
| Change to test | What usually moves | How to measure it |
|---|---|---|
| Headline wording | Time on page and scroll depth | Scroll tracking in your analytics |
| Button text | Click rate to the form or phone | Click events on the button |
| Number of form fields | Form completion rate | Form starts against submissions |
| Hero image | Load speed and bounce | Core Web Vitals plus bounce rate |
| Placement of reviews | Form submissions from cold traffic | Conversion rate segmented by source |
See landing pages and sites DigiFix has delivered
Every project in the portfolio includes the reasoning behind the structure, not just the finished design.
What does this look like for an Australian business?
The starting point
A Melbourne solar installer runs Google Ads to a page that lists nine panel brands, includes the full website menu, and uses a stock photo of a rooftop at sunset. Around 1,100 people visit a month and seven enquire, and the owner has twice raised the ad budget without the enquiry count moving.
What DigiFix would do, in order
- Rewrite the headline to match the ad promise and name the suburb, in week one
- Remove the navigation and the nine brand logos, leaving one offer, in week one
- Replace the stock hero with a photo of the crew on a completed Melbourne installation, in week one
- Add a Google rating with review count beside the form, in week two
- Cut the form from eleven fields to name and phone, in week two
- Compress the hero image and remove the blocking script so mobile LCP drops under 2.5 seconds, in week two
- Compare enquiries month against month for eight weeks before touching the ad budget, from month two
What it costs to wait
Raising the budget on a page that converts at 0.6 per cent buys more expensive enquiries, because the traffic is not the constraint. Every month the page stays as it is, roughly 1,100 visitors arrive and about 1,090 of them leave without enquiring, most of them for reasons that have nothing to do with price.
What other landing page questions do owners ask?
How long should a landing page be?
A landing page should be as long as it takes to answer the visitor’s objections, which is usually shorter than people expect. Research from Nielsen Norman Group found that users read half the information only on pages of 111 words or fewer, and have time to read at most 28 per cent of the words on an average page. For a straightforward service enquiry, a short page with a clear offer beats a long one every time. Add length only when the decision is genuinely complex or expensive.
Should a landing page have a menu?
A landing page should usually not have a full menu, because navigation gives visitors a way to leave without converting. The exception is when the page needs to feel part of a legitimate business for trust reasons, such as a regulated service. If you keep navigation, keep it visually quiet and do not let it compete with the primary call to action.
Do landing pages help SEO?
Landing pages help SEO when they answer a specific search intent better than a general page can, and hurt it when they duplicate an existing page. A page built only for a paid ad and hidden from search is a separate tool and will not rank. If you want organic traffic, build the page so it stands alone as useful content, keep one page per topic, and link it from your site properly.
How many call to action buttons should a page have?
A landing page should have one primary action repeated several times, rather than several different actions. Repeating the same offer down the page catches visitors at whatever point they become ready, without making them choose between options. If you genuinely need a second action, such as calling versus booking, make one clearly primary and the other visually secondary.
Does Google rank landing pages differently?
Google does not have a separate ranking system for landing pages, but page experience measures apply to them as they do to any page. Core Web Vitals are assessed per page rather than across a whole site, which is why one slow page can underperform while the rest of the site is fine. For paid search, landing page experience is also one of the three components of Quality Score.
What is a good conversion rate for a landing page?
A good conversion rate depends on what you are asking for, because a free phone call converts far more often than a quote form requesting a budget. Benchmarks quoted across industries are usually too broad to be useful, and the honest comparison is your own page against your own page last month. Track the direction and size of your own change rather than chasing a number from a blog post.
Landing page optimisation is mostly the discipline of removing obstacles rather than adding persuasion. Fix the match between the promise and the page, make the top of it count, keep the form short and make the page load quickly, and you will usually find the improvement was there to take all along. More walkthroughs are on the DigiFix blog, the guide to optimising website content covers the content side, and the technical SEO guide covers the speed work. The wider range sits under digital marketing services, and you can read about the team behind the work.
Get a straight answer about your own page
Send DigiFix the page you send traffic to. You will get a clear view of what is stopping people converting, in priority order.