Why do customers hate my landing pages?

Landing pages are a fantastic way to appeal to specific customers and get leads. However, like all pages on your website, they’re easy to get wrong.

We’ve all been on landing pages that are too slow, too clunky, or just ask for too much information!

If your landing page’s conversion rate is lower than a submarine with an intense fear of heights, it might be time for a rethink. I’ve put together five common reasons why your landing page might be failing and what you can do to turn things around.

(Not sure what a landing page is? This ten-minute primer will get you started!)

1. Your landing page is too slow

Landing pages need to grab people’s attention as soon as possible, with enthralling imagery, enticing videos, and engaging interactive elements.

However, all this cool stuff can significantly impact a page’s loading time.

According to Portent, 18% of B2B landing pages take over 5 seconds to load – virtually a lifetime by digital marketing standards. Not only this, but a site that loads in one second has a conversion rate three times higher than one that loads in five seconds.

You can test your landing page’s loading time on desktop and mobile with Google PageSpeed Insights. If your page takes more time to load than you’d like, compressing images, minifying your code, and removing unnecessary page extensions and apps can help.

Find out more about optimising your landing page for speed.

2. Your landing page is too long

Many digital marketers think that long landing pages are better by default. You’ve got more space to talk about your unique selling point and features and can include more keywords that can help you rank in the search engine results.

However, this isn’t always the case. An overly long landing page can often bore customers and force them to leave your page.

The ideal length of your landing page depends on what you’re selling, who you’re trying to target, and where customers are in the funnel. In my experience, longer landing pages are best when trying to appeal to customers at the top of the funnel. Conversely, short and snappy pages are best for customers at the bottom of the funnel who are ready to buy.

Heat maps are a great way to see what potential customers think of your content. They can help you see how far visitors scroll down your page, as well as what particular elements interest them the most.

If you do have a long landing page, you need to make it interesting. Use colour, images, headings, videos, and white space to break things up and make your content easier to read.

3. Your landing page is too bland

Landing pages can often be built by committee. A stock image here, a pointless testimonial there… too much interference can often lead to too many irrelevant, dull elements on a page.

With landing pages, it’s critical to remember that they’re there to appeal to your target audience, not to keep the suits in the boardroom happy. Focus on what prospective customers want to see, and you’ll be one step closer to building an engaging, lively page.

If your landing page is too boring, you might be trying to target too many people. Landing pages work best when they focus on a specific target audience.

In this situation, it’s better to have multiple landing pages that focus on a specific type of customer. The great thing about landing pages is that you can have as many as you need on your website. According to HubSpot, the more landing pages you have, the more leads you get!

4. Your landing page is asking for too much information

I once got an invite to sign up for a webinar. The form on the landing page asked for your email, phone number, name, and website address – fairly standard things for lead capture.

Then, it started asking for your budget, the challenges you were experiencing, and how soon you might be interested in hiring help. At this point, I checked out – the information they were asking wasn’t worth attending the webinar over.

There isn’t an optimal length for a data capture form on a landing page. It’s a trade-off between how much data you need to nurture prospective customers and how much data customers are willing to give you for what you offer.

However, if visitors are reading your page and stopping at your form, it’s a sign that you might be asking too much of them.

With forms, testing can help you find that sweet spot. Start requesting the bare minimum of data and gradually add more fields until your conversion rate stabilises.

5. Your landing page is not set up correctly

Finally, it might be that your landing page is bringing in the conversions; you’re just not tracking them correctly. Or potentially not tracking them at all.

With the move from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), many people had to migrate their old conversions across, meaning some goals got lost in translation. If you’ve experienced a drop in conversions since moving from UA to GA4, it’s worth doing some investigating.

I also recommend using UTM codes if you’re directing people to your landing page from one of your marketing channels, like a social media post or email newsletter. This helps you see how much traffic your landing pages are getting from specific sources.

In conclusion

The average landing page conversion rate is about 6%. So, if your landing pages are doing better than that, you’re in a good place!

Experimentation is the key to understanding what prospective customers want from your landing pages. Try tweaking the copy, the images, even the colour of the call-to-action buttons, to see what drives the most leads, sign-ups, and sales.

Creating the perfect landing page got you scratching your head? Me and the team at Xigen can help. We’ll work to understand your business goals, marketing channels, and brand to build a stunning landing page your customers love.

Drop me a DM if you want to know more.