Landing page mistakes often go unnoticed, and even if they aren’t, you probably overlooked them.
Let’s face it, you create a landing page, run an ad, drive traffic to the landing page, but you fail to see good results.
You’re left wondering; ‘what is preventing me from getting conversions?’
Little would you know it’s the little landing page mistakes you make that are costing you conversions.
Mistakes made on a landing page need to be avoided at all costs, otherwise, your advertising dollars may be on the line.
In an article of this guide series, I explained how to craft a perfect landing page.
In this article, I’ll highlight some of the most common landing page mistakes that are costing you conversions and why you should avoid them.
1. Cluttered words
Making your landing page cluttered with words can be a big turn-off for your landing page visitors.
I know you must be thinking; ‘but my product/service has so many benefits and features, I need to highlight everything’
Well, that’s a big no!
When creating your landing pages, you must summarize your wordings and make them as brief as possible.
Highlight the key points and key takeaways ― in essence, only talk about the most important benefits and features that you have to offer.
This way, it would make it easier for your landing page’s visitors to easily skim through your content and understand what you’re offering.
This will, in turn, get you more conversions.
Making your landing page cluttered with words will not only render it unreadable but will also drive away your landing page visitors.
2. Using more than one Call-to-action (CTA)
I encounter this more often than not ― landing pages that utilize more than one CTA ― and it’s so wrong.
This landing page mistake is so common that 40% of landing pages include more than one offer.
Remember, your landing pages need to focus on one particular goal.
Well, it turns out that the rule still applies and it’s not changing anytime soon.
All landing pages focus on one goal, and that is to make a conversion for your marketing campaign.
It turns out the only way to achieve this conversion is by including a call-to-action ― which is the action you want your prospects to take ― on your landing page.
And that is the sole reason why you can’t include more than one CTA per landing page.
Including more than one CTA on your landing pages will make your prospects confused, not to mention the fact that they won’t think you’re offering what they need.
And just like that, they’ll bounce off to your competitor and the rest will be history
3. Addressing too many audiences
Saying a landing page needs to be niched down to a super-specific audience with a specific need is quite an understatement
It’s been discovered that businesses that run multiple landing pages to capture different audiences get more leads than those that do not.
What does this mean for you?
Stop using one landing page to address all your audience.
Let’s assume you run a web design agency, what you would typically do would be to have a single web design landing page to attract customers.
But that is so wrong.
Ideally, you should have a general landing page to make organic inbound visitors get a general idea of what you’re offering.
But, when you want to run an ad to get more people to patronize you, it’ll be a very bad idea to use that landing page for your ad.
What you should do instead is to use different landing pages identifying individual needs and audiences for your ad campaigns
Still assuming you want to run an ad to get more people to patronize your web design agency, you should do something like so:
- Think of a specific niche with a specific need, let’s say real estate agents needing a real estate listing website
- Create a separate landing page for a real estate web design service that you’ll offer, detailing how real estate agents would benefit from it
- Set up an ad and target only real estate agents with that ad
- The ad will redirect the real estate agents to your landing page and they’ll be more likely to convert than if they had arrived at a general web design landing page
You can go on and replicate this process for as many audiences, niches, and needs as you like, be it restaurants, hotels, travel or tourism, etc.
This way you’d be guaranteed better results than if you just used one landing page to target several audiences.
And of course, I create stunning landing pages that are proven to convert, if you ever need one created for you, do reach out to me, I’d be happy to help.
4. Having a navigation menu
Distraction is one of the major sources of all landing page abandonment.
Humans are inquisitive and curious, and they will always want to navigate your website to admire or get a general feeling of it, kind of like when they’re checking you out.
And you honestly don’t want for your landing pages, at least not when there’s money on the line
Albeit, this is the sole reason why your landing pages need to be devoid of all forms of distractions and this includes navigation menus or any form of clickable link beside your CTA.
Ideally, the only clickable item that ought to be on your landing page is your CTA.
Of all the landing page mistakes out there, this appears to be one of the most frequently seen.
I once had a prospect tell me that he felt ‘trapped’ when he visited our content writing landing page.
And I have to admit, that statement really made me feel happy, as it reminded me that I’ve done an extremely good job in crafting that landing page.
If your prospects don’t feel trapped on your landing page, then you might as well lose a lot of conversions.
Because that is how landing pages are meant to make prospects feel, so they’ll have no choice but to scroll to the bottom of the page since there are no navigation links to allow them to jet off to another page.
This doesn’t mean your landing pages should lack a header.
The header of your landing page should consist of your site’s logo, alongside your call-to-action.
This way, you’d be guaranteed to make more conversions.
5. Lack of A/B testing
A/B testing means making one or more tweaks to your landing pages and then deciding which one works best based on conversions.
You can create different variations of a single landing page by making little tweaks such as changes to the headline or changes to the CTA.
The main purpose of A/B testing is to let you understand what works best. Hence, it’s best to make the changes as few as possible, preferably one or two changes per landing page.
Based on results and conversion rates, you can then decide what element(s) works best for your landing page and then you’ll keep using such element(s) when crafting future landing pages.
Not utilizing A/B testing is a landing page mistake you want to avoid, by all means, hence, you need to start utilizing it now.
6. Using fabricated social proof
The truth is; your audience will always see through your BS, that’s if there’s one in the first place.
It’s been proven that customers are more likely to buy a product or service after a recommendation or after reading reviews and testimonials from fellow customers.
Utilizing legit social proof not only solidifies trust in your product or services but also helps drive up your conversion rates.
Utilizing fake social proof will do just the opposite, it not only drops your conversion rates, but it will also build distrust between you and your audience, which would, in turn, ruin your brand reputation.
Social proof can encompass anything from testimonials to user reviews or a total number of sales, etc.
If you’re a new business and don’t have any form of social proof yet, you should exclude it from your landing pages until you begin to get some sales and customers, rather than incorporating fake social proof.
7. Not being mobile-responsive
Of all the landing page mistakes out there, this could as well be the worst.
Landing pages that are mobile unresponsive (pardon my lingo) are bound to get a lot of bounces more often than not.
The truth is, nobody wants to visit a landing page and have to start pinch-zooming to adjust the size of the page.
Over 50% of internet users access the internet from their mobile devices, thus, it’s extremely important to optimize your landing for mobile devices.
You don’t have to worry much though, most landing page builders, templates, and themes are mobile-responsive out of the bat… so, you won’t have to worry about your landing page not being mobile responsive.
Landing pages built by me are mobile-responsive and optimized to give you the most conversions. Contact me if you need one created for you
8. Utilizing stock images
Landing pages with images of real people perform far better than those with stock images
Stock images are too generic and overly popular, hence, using them might convey a sense of unprofessionalism for your brand.
This, in turn, would make your audience not take your offer seriously.
Using real images helps convey emotions to your audience.
There are a variety of ways to procure real images for your landing pages; it could be photos of your team members or photographs of people using your products.
If you don’t have the time or resources to invest in photography, you should try out graphic designs or animations instead.
9. Using long forms
Using long forms to collect information is one of the most common landing page mistakes that you can easily avoid.
The less information you request, the better it is for your conversion rates.
This is mostly because users are wary of giving out sensitive information.
If you must collect a lot of useful information on your landing pages, then you must use multi-step forms.
Conclusion
Landing pages are serious marketing implementations, not blog posts!
Hence, you need to take them seriously.
Making one landing page mistake can make you lose a lot of conversions, making a second can make you lose not only conversions but your money and time!
And you seriously don’t want that for your business.
