• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 10 hours ago

Among the many tasks facing small to mid-sized businesses is the optimization of their landing pages. But it isn’t easy.  

While 95% say they are successful at it and 31% say they are very successful, they are hindered by many factors, judging by a study from Unbounce and Ascend2 titled Landing Page Optimization: Strategies, challenges, and opportunities for SMBs in 2026.

The biggest challenges include: 

• Low traffic volume for testing — 41% 
• Limited time or resources to design and build test variants — 37%
• Slow page-load times or poor technical performance — 33% 
• Difficulty with message or design consistency across ads and pages — 33%
• Lack of access to testing tools or platforms — 30%
• Not knowing what or how to prioritize with tests — 24% 
• Difficulty running effective A/B tests — 22% 

Despite these issues, SMBs are bravely pushing forward. Of those polled, 22% say they optimize their landing pages weekly, while 31% do so biweekly and 30% do this monthly. Lesser numbers do so quarterly (9%), and quarterly (less than 8%).

Their goals include:  

• Brand awareness or education — 65%
• Product sales — 56% 
• Lead generation — 44% 
• Newsletter sign-ups — 30% 
• Content downloads — 25% 
• Free trial or demo sign-up — 22%
• Event registration — 21%

Testing is critical, and when SMBs do so, they focus on:

• Images or videos — 59% 
• Page layout — 53%
• Headlines — 47%
• Call-to-action (CTA) text or placement — 41% 
• Message matching/ad-to-page relevance — 39%
• Button colors/design — 34%
• Form lengths or fields — 26%
• Above-the-fold content — 24%
• None of these — 3% 

Mobile design is also critical — 54% make moderate layout and design tweaks, but 20% make significant changes.  

Predictably, AI is starting to creep into the process in these ways:

• AI-driven design or layout recommendations — 31% 
• AI-generated copy (e.g., headlines, body text) — 27%
• Dynamic content personalization — 26% 
• Chatbots or virtual assistants on landing pages — 26% 
• Predictive A/B testing or multivariate testing — 25% 
• AI-based traffic optimization or visitor routing — 25%
• Automated performance analysis and insights — 23% 
• We are not currently using AI for landing page optimization — 31%

Is it working? Of the firms surveyed, 29% find AI extremely effective, while 47% say it is somewhat effective, 7% say it is not very effective and 3% say it is not at all effective. Another 14% said they are not sure or have not yet used AI.  

Meanwhile, 50% say personalization is very important to their landing-page strategy and 41% say it is somewhat important.

Ascend2 surveyed 264 small business people at firms with 500 employees or less in July 2025. Of these, 42% were owners or partners, 33% were vice presidents or managers and 25% were non-managers.  

Of the businesses represented, 22% were in B2B, while 53% were in B2C and 25% were in B2B and B2C equally.