6 Ways You’re Doing Landing Pages Wrong

Landing pages allow you to capture a visitor’s information in exchange for the desired offer. In other words, the sole purpose of having a landing page is to convert site visitors into leads.

 

Why are landing pages important?

 

Landing pages lead visitors to a specific product, service or offer and encourage them to take action. Your landing page, after it’s optimised for search, will allow you to not only create conversions but also grow your customer base.

 

For digital marketers today, landing pages are significant because they have the highest conversion rate (23%), yet are the least popular type of signup form. On the other hand, popups, the most popular signup form, have the second-lowest conversion rate (3%). For that reason, to organically convert site visitors into leads and later into customers, using a landing page is your best bet.

 

Below, we’ll take a look at 6 common landing page mistakes that you should avoid:

 

1. There’s too few of them

 

When companies limit themselves to having one or two landing pages, for instance, a demo page and contact page, they miss out on converting more traffic, leads, and customers. Every time you create a landing page, you’re giving yourself a new opportunity to show up on search engines and get your link shared. With more landing pages, you can increase traffic and conversions by boosting your search engine rankings and social posts. Landing pages are also necessary to convert site visitors and track leads and content downloads.

 

2. They’re all one length

 

Your landing pages should vary in length depending on what they’re trying to achieve. If your form is trying to capture leads then it should be short, as opposed to a form that is gauging how qualified a lead is, which should be longer. Run A/B tests to determine which form length results in the highest amount of conversions, and adjust the form according to your results.

 

3. All your conversion elements are above the fold

 

Where the fold lies on your landing page won’t necessarily affect conversion, so you don’t need to cram all of the important content on your landing page above the fold. The fear is that people won’t keep scrolling to fill out the form or to find out crucial information, when in fact, when people are motivated to convert on a page they will regardless of where the submit button is placed on the form.

 

4. The form needs to be a certain colour

Your form needs to be created with your buyer persona and audience in mind. When running colour-related A/B tests, like testing which colour you should use for your CTA, keep in mind that what works for that test, with that page’s design, with that page’s audience, won’t necessarily work for all of them. That’s why copying a form that works for a different company, won’t work for yours. Instead, look to your buyer personas to tell you what’s working for them and what isn’t. Track conversion rates and click-through rates to give you free intel on what your audience responds to, and fashion your landing page based on those results.

 

5. The page copy should be minimal

Your landing page copy shouldn’t always be short and to the point. Like the colour and design elements, your copy length should vary, depending on what your form is trying to achieve, as long as the subject is covered. A good way to gauge the length of your copy is to base it on the offer being presented. For more complex offers that require sensitive information, longer copy is more appropriate to answer any questions or terms. For simper offers like downloading an ebook, shorter landing page copy is all that’s required or expected. Again, a simple A/B test will decipher what your audience’s sweet spot is.

 

6. You include everything you can

Your landing page is a stepping stone in your marketing funnel. It’s not a last-ditch effort to capture someone’s attention, but rather it’s there to get people to convert on your form and to move people down your marketing funnel. To decrease visitor distraction, make sure you remove any extraneous elements from your landing pages that don’t serve to convert your leads. You don’t want to give people too many options on your landing page, because that will take attention away from your CTA and the probability of them acting on it.

 

The A/B Takeaway

 

As mentioned throughout this post, in addition to understanding landing pages best practices, the importance of performing A/B tests to improve landing page performance is crucial to successfully convert your audience. A/B tests provide relevant data on what appeals to your buyer persona and what elements need improvement. However, only 17% of marketers use landing page A/B tests to improve conversion rates. This means that the quicker you understand your audience’s likes and dislikes through A/B testing, the bigger the advantage you’ll have over competitors, and the higher the conversion rate.