Companies often pump in thousands of dollars into their marketing efforts only to see them go down the drain. Why is it so? It seems that issues related to landing pages are the most to blame. In fact, 75% suffer from issues in finding suitable expertise to optimize their landing pages.
Can you believe that the average landing page conversion rate across industries is 2.35%? This reminds me of a dialogue from Thanos in Avengers Infinity War, “All that for a drop of blood!”
According to the State of Inbound report from Hubspot, generating leads and proving the ROI of marketing activities remain the top marketing challenges faced by companies.
With these stats in sight, chances are you are suffering from a similar plight. So let’s get started and take a look at the mistakes that are killing your potential conversions (and your revenues along with them).
1. Slow Loading Pages
This is as good as digital suicide today. 74% of mobile website browsers would abandon their sessions if the site does not load within 5 seconds. To put things in perspective, tech giants such as Amazon would lose $1.6 billion annually for every one-second delay in page load time! Let that sink in.
Thus, it is a no-brainer that however fast your landing page is, you need to make it faster. Here are a few things you can check:
- Check the size of the images. You can use TinyPNG to reduce their size.
- Make your code cleaner to remove the unnecessary bits.
- Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to unearth advance issues
Also, check out this list of tools that can make your website load much faster.
2. Misleading Headlines
Is your marketing campaign in sync with your landing page? Having a powerful headline in your ad that does not deliver on the landing page is a classic case of overpromising and under delivering.
While headlines across the board should make similar promises, it is equally important to make the one on the landing page powerful enough to leave an impact. It is the first thing that the user would read and use to form an impression of you. It only makes sense to A/B test a handful of headlines for the following variables:
- Trigger and benefit: the reason for the reader to continue reading.
- Power words: such as fast, brilliant, killer, boost.
- Keywords: they set the tone of marketing.
- Length: shorter headlines tend to be punchier.
- Unique tactics: such as questions, fonts, colours.
This will help you pinpoint the best performing headlines, maximizing the impact of your landing page!
3. Generic Images
This is one of the most under-appreciated and overlooked variables in the history of website design! Are you aware that custom images can boost your landing page conversions by 35%?
Having seen and done it all, website visitors are smarter than ever today. They can sniff insincerity from miles away. Some common mistakes include using images that are:
- Generic
- Small
- Distracting
- Too many
Visuals are the most attention-grabbing detail on any website. It only makes sense to put in effort into choosing the right image.
4. Not Leveraging Live Chat
Conversations can lead to more conversations. Period.
Think about two real-world scenarios. In the first, you walk into a brick-and-mortar store and interact with the shopkeeper/salesman to understand more about the product. In the second, you simply check out the products and associated info, without interacting with anyone. In which scenario will you be more inclined to buy something? Obviously, the first one.
This is what live chat integration can do for your website visitors. Through this feature, customer service agents can engage with them and warm them towards better conversion rates. This is exactly what companies such as Acquire are leveraging to scale the support efforts of their users with an AI-powered conversational live chat support!
5. Not Optimizing for Mobile
The crazy truth is that only about 50% of the landing pages are optimized for mobile. This is an insane amount of conversions meeting the dust, given the fact that more than half of the traffic any website receives today is through mobile devices!
The most straightforward way to do this is to make your landing page responsive. This will make them automatically adapt to the screen size. But, while responsiveness is necessary, you also need to jot down instances where it is interfering with user experience and simplicity.
This is especially true for elements such as:
- banner images,
- product images,
- font size,
- page borders,
- and the like.
6. Confusing Call to Action
Call to Actions (CTAs) are the very purpose why your landing pages exist. They are actions that website visitors take right before being deemed as ‘converted’. Thus, it goes without saying how important it is to optimize them.
Yet surprisingly, marketers often make numerous mistakes when it comes to CTAs. The most common of them are overusing or abusing them in a bid to land more conversions. This rarely ever comes to fruition. In fact, they distract visitors and confuses them about the goal of your landing page.
The best practice is to have one good written, prominently designed CTA for one landing page. Some elements that you can play around with to perfect this are:
- Using action words such as to get, try, and start.
- Writing the copy in the second person instead of the first person.
- Being specific about the benefit that visitors would get.
7. Heavy Opt-in Forms
Heavy not in terms of design, but in terms of the commitment that you are asking from your visitors. Nothing can turn away visitors faster than asking for too much info without aiming to form a trusting relationship first.
Think about it. Forms are the epitome of CTAs, the endgame of most online sessions. Even if you are trading their information for an ebook or industry report, making the form field heavy will only deplete your conversion rates. According to Hubspot (that analyzed over 40,000 landing pages), overusing three types of information on forms tend to lower conversion rates – age, telephone, and address.
Conclusion
Your landing page should be appealing enough for your website visitors in every way possible. While it should be visually attracting, it should also cater to the psychological aspect of the trade. Continuously testing the elements of your page will only drive it towards better conversions. By avoiding these usual mistakes, your campaigns will have the potential to break boundaries that you could only imagine before.