They’re Here, Now What: Ways To Avoid Top Landing Page Blunders
By
Robert Atkins

The aim of any landing page is to convert visitors. You may be trying to get leads into the top of your sales funnel. You may be attempting to sign people up to your free trial, or even to warm visitors up to purchase your products directly.

But whatever the purpose of your page, it needs to get conversions.

The problem is that many businesses make simple errors with their landing pages that prevent them from getting the conversions they need. Here are some of the top landing page mistakes to avoid if you want to ensure you convert the most visitors you can:

Not Mobile Optimized

The first thing you will need to do is ensure that all the visitors to your page are presented with a design that they find appealing and easy to view, and that means your landing page must be mobile optimized. If you’re investing in search marketing to ensure people find your page in the first place, you don’t want to waste the traffic by creating a page where the text is too small and the buttons are too awkward to click. Many of your visitors will be using mobile devices, so make sure you take this into account when designing your page. You might even want to design a separate mobile only landing page to optimize the experience.

Too Many Form Fields

Most landing pages will include a form for visitors to fill in. The mistake that some marketers make is adding too many fields which can put people off. Be very careful about how many fields you add. If you only really need an email address, then keep it to that. If you don’t need a telephone and address, then don’t ask for them.

Too Slow

One of the most basic mistakes is having a landing page that is too slow to load. No one wants to land on a page and then wait around while the images and text load, and this is almost definitely going to cost you conversions.If you’re sending people to your landing page from AdWords ads, a slow load time can also affect your Quality Score, meaning you might be paying too much for your ads. Check the speed of your website by using a tool like Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool, and make any changes you need to speed it up. You may want to hire a developer to do this for you.

Not Using Message Match

Another classic mistake is failing to use the concept of message match. When you create ads that lead to your landing page, you want to ensure that the landing page copy reflects the ad copy. If you don’t do this, people may arrive on your landing page and hesitate. They might even think they’re in the wrong place. If you use Facebook ads to generate traffic, you’ll also want the design of your landing page to match that of your ads. All of this helps to create better message match to prevent visitors from leaving the page because they have not found what they were promised in the ad.

No Call To Action

All landing pages should have a call to action (CTA). Without this your visitors may not know what action they are supposed to take. Good sales copy always has a CTA to give a gentle nudge to readers and encourage them to take the required action. So make sure you don’t forget to add one.

Too Many Links

Finally, a landing page should ideally have just one link—the CTA. Any other links are essentially providing visitors with a way to leave your page without converting, and that could be costing you. So make sure you have just one link (at the most just include one more pointing to your privacy policy), and don’t lose conversions.

Avoid These Mistakes, Make More Conversions

These are all classic mistakes that people make with their landing pages, so make sure you avoid them. However, there is one crucial factor that you still need to consider: Testing. You will only get the most out of your landing page if you continue to test it. So set up a control page, then make minor changes to the headline, images, bullet points, copy, etc. And continue to test it to see if you can increase conversions. That way you can ensure that you’re always getting the most from your landing pages rather than wasting leads.

Robert Atkins is an experienced website consultant who works with small and medium size businesses as well as the occasional startup. His articles talk about the must do / must have items for your website, covering the oft overlooked basics, as well as more advanced methods.