10 Reasons Your Landing Page Sucks and How to Improve It

Landing page creation is as much an art as it is a science. You want things to look good, but you also want your content to work for you. A landing page that looks pretty – but doesn’t bring you the results you want – isn’t a good landing page at all!

It’s true that a well-optimized landing page can significantly increase the success of your inbound marketing campaigns. But that said, most brands make a number of critical landing page mistakes that end up killing their conversions. In fact, research from Econsultancy suggests that only 22% of brands are satisfied with their landing page conversion rates – but few take the necessary steps to optimize them more effectively.

Revamp Your Landing Pages: Fix These Common Mistakes Now

Are you tired of complaining about the lackluster results of your landing pages? It's time to take action and make the necessary improvements. Here's a guide to help you get started:

Immediate Fixes for Landing Page Mistakes

Creating a landing page may seem like a simple task - you tell people what you want them to do and provide a way for them to do it. Voila! Instant conversions, right? Well, not quite. Running a successful landing page CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) program requires identifying and rectifying common mistakes that can hinder your website's overall performance.

1. Ensure Your Call-to-Action Stands Out

The call-to-action (CTA) is the most critical element of your landing page. If visitors can't immediately grasp what action they should take, they'll likely hit the back button and never return. Surprisingly, 53% of websites still lack a prominent call-to-action that captures visitors' attention within three seconds. Here are a few reasons your CTA might be falling short:

• Absence of a call-to-action on your landing page.
• Poor placement, such as below the fold (exceptions exist for long-form landing pages) or lack of visibility.
• Inadequate contrast between the CTA and other elements on your website, making it blend in.
• Generic or uninspiring wording, like "Click Here" or "Buy Now."

To boost conversions, your call-to-action must stand out. Make it visually distinct and test different variations to find the combination that delivers the best performance.

1. Optimize Image Usage

You've probably come across numerous studies emphasizing the significance of images in online experiences. While impactful visuals can enhance user engagement and improve your website's aesthetics, poorly chosen images can distract visitors and harm your brand.

When utilizing images on your landing pages, keep the following in mind:

• Ensure images are relevant to your content and support your message effectively.
• Avoid using excessive images that overwhelm or confuse visitors.
• Optimize image sizes to minimize page load times and improve overall performance.
• Choose high-quality visuals that enhance your brand's credibility and professionalism.

By selecting images thoughtfully and optimizing their usage, you can create a visually appealing and engaging experience for your landing page visitors.

Remember, achieving conversion success requires continuous improvement and monitoring. Regularly assess your landing pages for potential mistakes and make adjustments as needed. With proactive effort, you can transform your landing pages into powerful tools for driving conversions and achieving your business goals.

Here are a few common mistakes you’ll want to watch out for when selecting images for your landing pages:

Using stock photos or other subpar images

Using photos that aren’t relevant to your page

Using large photos that draw attention away from the call-to-action

As an example, consider that your visitors’ natural tendency is to follow the line of sight provided by any images of faces on your website. If you’ve included a picture of a smiling woman on your landing page, but her gaze is pointed away from your call-to-action, your readers’ attention will be naturally drawn away as well.

Make it a point to choose images that support the goals of your landing page. Original images of people interacting with your product, for example, are much more likely to generate conversions than stock photography. It doesn’t take much to create great product images these days – spend a few hours messing around with your smartphone camera or make a small investment in a product photographer to get the images that’ll best support your site’s CRO goals.

Your Landing Page is an Inappropriate Length

The conventional wisdom on the subject is that landing pages need to as short as possible. This rule of thumb usually holds up pretty well, as people often become overwhelmed reading large blocks of text – choosing instead to leave the site before making a purchase.

However, you should take this – along with any other rule of thumb – with a grain of salt. While experts like Tim Ash may argue that landing page copy should generally be under 200 words, it’s up to you to determine what’s appropriate for your audience, the product you’re selling and the price point you’re charging.

While shorter landing pages tend to convert better, some landing pages require more extensive information to convert leads – especially those selling bigger ticket items. According to Neil Patel, the ideal length of your landing page will generally be correlated with your sales price, because people usually want a lot more information before making a large purchase.

Of course, a number of different variables will come into play in terms of dictating page length, so you’ll want to set aside plenty of time for split-testing to determine your ideal word count.

You’re Failing to Maintain Relevancy Between Ads and Landing Pages

Have you ever clicked on a PPC ad, thinking you’ll get one thing and then being redirect to a page with entirely different information? Chances are you were pretty frustrated – so don’t leave your readers in the same boat!

You need to keep promises you made to your visitors while using media buys or PPC to drive traffic to your landing page. And the way that you do that is by making sure that the message between your ads and your landing pages is as consistent as possible.

Unfortunately, lack of consistency is a big mistake that even large brands make. In his book on landing page optimization, Tim Ash pointed to an example where Consumer Reports lost potential leads by advertising free reports in a PPC ad, but linked to a landing page for generating leads.

While the mistake was probably unintentionally overlooked, it caused the company to lose trust with customers and likely cost potential leads. Any of the following tips could have helped them to maintain consistency:

Use the same keywords in your ads and landing pages. A study from MecLabs found that one brand was able to increase its lead generation rate by 144% by using the same keywords on landing pages and ads. This will also likely have a positive impact on the quality scores associated with your PPC campaigns.

Tell visitors what to expect. Your advertisement needs to clearly communicate the goal of your landing page. If, for example, you’re using your landing page to get visitors to create free accounts on your website, then that target goal needs to be emphasized in your ads.

Use a uniform message. Finally, make sure that the point you’re trying to get across on all ads and landing pages is as consistent as possible. Don’t confuse your prospects by giving them one message in one place, and an entirely different one in another.

When it comes down to it, consistency is the key to improving your brand recognition and, correspondingly, increasing conversions. Communicating the same message across all mediums – especially those that link to your landing pages – will go a long way towards improving your results.

Your Page Load Times are Too High

Modern Internet users very impatient – you’ve got to deliver content to them quickly if you want them to convert. Recently, Moz conducted a study that found that landing page conversions can be increased by 14% by reducing the load time of landing pages from 5 seconds to 2 seconds. Similar research from Forrester shows that 47% of visitors expect landing pages to load in two seconds or less, making it a good idea to reduce them even further.

Your conversions may be seriously suffering if your landing page is taking too long to load. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to speed things up…

The best way to reduce your landing page load time is by reducing HTTP requests. According to Yahoo, about 80% of web page loading time is due to downloading images, scripts and other elements on your page. Use CSS, rather than embedded images, whenever possible, and minimize the number of images and other elements on your page overall for best results.

It’s also important to identify and resolve any problems with your web server that may be causing delays. A web application monitoring solution such as SingleHop can help you diagnose them.

You’re Losing Traffic to Other Pages

The goal of every landing page is to get your visitors to convert. So then, it follows that you won’t be able to convert these visitors if they leave your landing page by clicking a link to another page on your own site or to an external site.

The clear solution to this mistake is to remove any unnecessary links on your landing page. You should never have ads to any other site on your target landing page, but you may also want to take things a step further by removing your navigation menu from your landing pages. A/B testing experiments conducted by HubSpot have determined that taking this step can boost conversion rates by up to 28%.

Beyond this, one of the most overlooked traffic sinks for most landing pages is the attribution links on the bottom of the page that refers back to the theme designer or website design company that created your site. While these links aren’t as visible as your navigation bar or contextual links, they can still cost conversions. You may need to pay a premium to have these links removed, but doing so will be worth the cost if it boosts your conversion rates.

Your Formatting is Terrible

Fixing formatting problems is one of the easiest things that you can do to improve your user experience and overall conversion rate. Start with the following steps to help improve your landing page:

Your font selection matters! Apart from removing comic sans from your site (and, let’s face it, from the world entirely), one of the most important things you can do is to make sure your text is as crisp and consistent as possible. Your spacing should be uniform and the same easy-to-read font should be used throughout the page.

Organize your copy with headers, sub-headers, bullet points, numbered bullet points and other formatting features so that readers can easily follow your copy.

Keep your colors simple. Your landing page isn’t the place for your black background, bright pink text Geocities throwback. Unless you have a truly compelling reason not to, stick with black text on a white background for clarity.

You Aren’t Optimized for Mobile responsive-mobile

In 2014, mobile traffic exceeded desktop for the first time in history, so it’s no surprise that industry analysts all agree that optimizing for mobile will be more important than ever before for the years to come. But despite this, more than nine out of ten small business websites still aren’t optimized for mobile traffic. This is one of the reasons that responsive design has become so important.

To determine how well your site functions on mobile devices, test your landing pages on different device emulators. Check to see if all of your elements are organized properly, but also determine whether or not users can interact easily with your pages. If they can’t, there’s no way you’re going to meet your conversion goals.

As you’re doing your testing, make sure that any shopping cart applications, email management solutions or other interactive elements you’re using work seamlessly with mobile devices. The last thing you want is to have visitors turned away because you forgot to turn off a pop-up that makes mobile users unable to access your site’s content!

You’re Offering the Same Incentives as Your Competitors

Most business owners know that they need to differentiate themselves from their competitors if they want to be successful. So why is it that you turn around, and these business owners are following the exact same strategy as their competitors? If a dozen different companies are all offering the same bonus ebook to potential buyers, it’s no wonder their landing page conversions aren’t meeting expectations!

Revamp Your Content Strategy to Stand Out

In the world of business, standing out from the crowd is crucial. Customers are naturally drawn to brands that offer something unique or provide a higher perceived value. If your competitors are all offering a standard free consultation, it's time to break free from the norm and come up with an intriguing offer. By offering something that sets you apart and delivers more value for your customers' money, you'll significantly boost your lead generation and conversion rates.

Avoid the Pitfall of Targeting the Wrong Leads

Beware of falling into the trap of capturing as many leads as possible. While it may seem like more leads would result in more conversions, this mindset can actually pose several problems:

1. Targeting everybody means you resonate with nobody. Having a clearly defined pitch makes you irresistible to the people who genuinely need and are likely to buy your products or services.
2. If you resort to buying leads (which is not advisable at this stage), you'll end up wasting money that could be better invested elsewhere.
3. Targeting everyone also attracts "tire kickers" who are merely interested in claiming your free incentives without any intention of making a purchase. By designing your landing pages to filter out these users, you save everyone the hassle and headache of dealing with low-quality leads.

A common mistake is giving away a teaser product for free. Although it may attract attention, it won't necessarily come from the right people. This approach wastes both your time and theirs.

Consider experimenting with a different approach, such as requiring potential leads to pay a small fee upfront. For instance, they could purchase a white paper or make a deposit for an in-person consultation. This not only encourages prospects to demonstrate their commitment but also fosters a stronger relationship between buyer and seller. Although this may result in lower overall landing page conversion rates, the long-term sales that follow could be significantly higher.

Tailor Your Landing Pages for Ideal Leads

Before structuring your landing page, take the time to carefully analyze your ideal leads. Who are your target customers? How can you reach them specifically, rather than trying to appeal to the masses? Ensure that your landing pages are tailored to their needs and preferences, rather than trying to cater to a broad audience.

Take Action to Improve Your Landing Pages Today

Your conversion rates rely on delivering a stellar user experience, conveying a clear message, and providing a compelling call-to-action. Unfortunately, many brands neglect to make even the simplest changes that could substantially boost their sales and leads due to the various factors influencing conversion rates.

If you lack confidence in making these changes on your own, consider creating a creative brief that captures all the relevant information you need. Alternatively, explore user-friendly programs like Landingi, LeadPages, or Unbounce. These tools enable you to quickly build and test landing pages using proven templates, even if you have no knowledge of HTML.

Armed with these tools and the tips shared above, there's no excuse for letting your landing pages underperform. Take action today to stop them from being lackluster and start driving meaningful results!

Are you guilty of any of these landing page mistakes? Share your experiences – as well as how you improved your results – in the comments below!