10 Reasons your Landing Page isn’t Converting

July 8, 2015

You worked so hard on your landing page, but for some reason, it just isn’t converting? Why? What could you be doing wrong?

Here are 10 simple reasons why your landing page isn’t converting and hope you can improve conversion rates with a few easy tweaks.

Your Ads and Landing Pages Don’t Go Together

Have you ever clicked on an ad and then been directed to a page that had absolutely nothing to do with what that ad was promoting? It might be as simple as you mixed up with landing pages between two ads, or maybe you didn’t even notice that the ad and landing page aren’t related at all, but whatever the reason, your audience certainly noticed.

Put yourself for a minute in the shoes of the consumer. If you saw this ad, where would you expect the landing page to take you? What additional information are you looking to receive? Make sure your landing page had that additional information and you won’t have this problem.

Your Sign-Up Form is Too Long

To add a consumer to your database, you really need the name and email address and maybe one demographic-defining answer (which can be answered with a down-down menu option). So why is your form asking for phone numbers, dates of birth and addresses? Long sign-up forms on browsers are bad enough, but on a mobile phone, forget it. More or less, people will probably click back before filling out the form.

Remember you can nurture your leads for more information later on. At first contact, make it as easy as possible.

Landing Pages Take Too Long to Load

You’ve finally finished your landing page and it looks gorgeous. You publish it, and and it fails to convert many people. You check the page again and notice something important: it takes 10 seconds to load the whole page. That might not seem like much time, but to an internet user, it might as well be an hour.

According to Kissmetrics, about 25 percent of users will leave a page if it takes four seconds to load, and that percent keeps going up with every second. To decrease loading times, cut back on images you’re using as well as scripts. Once your load time decreases, your conversions can start increasing.

Images Aren’t Helping

It’s not enough to have a great image of your product. The placement of that image affects your audience’s understanding and reading of the landing page. Don’t make these errors:

• If including testimonials on a landing page, don’t use stock images of “too perfect” looking people. They don’t look real and people may assume they aren’t.
• If using people in images, make sure the people are facing the text, not looking away from it. Readers will follow their line of sight right off the page.
• Don’t use images with white backgrounds on landing pages with white backgrounds. You’ll wash out the image.

The Call-to-Action Can’t be Alone

You know you need a call-to-action (CTA). That’s a no-brainer, but what you might not know is that you really need a CTA that can stand alone, meaning the one CTA alone needs to be enticing enough to get readers to scroll or click through. You need to be able to succinctly convey the message.

Depending on how long your landing page is and whether or not readers are accessing the landing page on mobile phones, readers might not see the headline, subheadline and reasons why they should sign up all at the same time, which means that by the time they get to the CTA button, they might not remember why they should click. To help them remember, put your CTA at the top right in a place of honor.

Your CTA should be able to stand alone and still convince people to convert. Make it a good one.

Other Pages Steal the Spotlight

Some landing pages mirror the home page of the actual website, including the navigation bar and all. While this is great for continuity, those additional links in the navigation bar can sometimes steal the spotlight from the CTA.

In an A/B testing experiment from Hubspot, removing the navigation bar increased conversions by as much as 28 percent in some tests. Don’t give your readers the chance to get distracted. Keep them focused on the prize.

Your Offers are not Comparable to the Competition’s

If you’re offering the same deal as your competitor, what’s the advantage of going with your company. If users already have accounts with your competitor, then they won’t bother to create a new one with you. Or if you’re all offering the same ebook, where’s the urgency to sign up? They can get the ebook any time from any of you.

Make your offers more enticing by doing a little spying on the competition. If they’re offering an ebook, offer a free consultation to go along with it. If their free trial lasts 15 days, make yours last for 30 days. Offer a better deal, and you won’t have to compete.

You Don’t Test All Landing Pages

After a few months of creating new email campaigns and Adword campaigns, you’re probably tired of creating and testing new landing pages. Don’t give up! A/B testing is an essential part of fine tuning your marketing campaign. According to a study from Marian University, testing radically different landing pages against each other can lead to a conversion increase of 264 percent.

Your reach can only grow. Keep testing those landing pages against each other and see what new results await you.

Avoid Negativity

Your landing pages should always be focusing on the positive side of your business and industry in general. Landing pages get one chance to make a good first impression, so don’t create ads that are soaked in negativity.

Let’s say you’re a property development company, and your landing page features a sleezy-looking person in a cheap suit. The photo is obviously a stock image and the headline says “Don’t get scammed by other property developers.” Are there less-than-honest property developers in the world? More than likely, but is it a good idea to remind your audience of them? No.

Avoid negative text, images and colour patterns (red background with white text looks like a stop sign design), and your readers will remain upbeat.

Too Many Calls-to-Action

A great landing page promotes one CTA and one CTA only. If your landing page has more than one action and directs people in opposite directions, they might just give up altogether.

Rather than stretching your efforts on one landing page, create several different landing pages for each call to action. Put your best effort into promoting that one CTA on each landing page and make sure that your message promotes just one course of action.

 

Why do you think your landing pages aren’t converting? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!