Design your way

A landing page needs to tell a story that seamlessly leads visitors towards a strong call to action. A landing page which successfully converts visitors into paying customers can be a sales page, it may show a video or it could be an email opt-in.

Whatever the design and content, you must be sure to avoid landing page mistakes which will turn visitors away and lose conversions.

A landing page has to grab a visitor’s attention within the first five seconds, so it has to be kept as simple as possible. Most Internet users are impatient, so it they don’t instantly grasp what a page is about they will not bother to see what is on it.

Nobody wants to have to think too much when reaching a landing page, so to avoid confusing your visitors you do need to be sure that your ads and your landing page are closely matched.

Don't Make These Landing Page Mistakes If You Want Conversions

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If you don’t want to kill off your conversions, there are even more landing page mistakes to avoid.

Using navigation

It’ a big mistake to feature a menu bar on a landing page. A menu bar provides too many options for visitors and may lead them away before they even reach the fold, so they never see a call to action lower down the page.

You might think it’s only going to lead them to another part of your website, but even so a menu bar can be distracting enough to prevent visitors understanding the purpose of your landing page.

Using images that are not optimized

Landing page mistakes that prevent conversion include small design issues like having an uncompressed image that loads too slowly. This means that many of your prospects will lose patience and exit the page before they can see what is on it.

Using image files that are two or three times larger than necessary slows down the load time. Compressing these files speeds the whole thing up and leads to more conversions.

Having too much text

One of the biggest landing page mistakes, which marketers often make, is to include too much text. They do this in an effort to highlight all the best details and biggest advantages of the service or product on offer.

As you only have five seconds to keep a prospect interested in your landing page, you should understand how important it is that visitors are not faced with big blocks of text.

Landing page visitors want to be able to skim rapidly through the content. They will notice all the major points when you break up the text by using headings, short paragraphs, images, bullet points, bold or bigger fonts.

Not using call to action enough

One of the worst mistakes to make on a landing page is a badly designed CTA (call to action). Simply having a ‘submit’ button on a landing page does not give visitors enough of a mental image about how they are going to benefit by clicking that button.

It has been proved that a click through rate can be improved by using more adverbs and verbs in a call to action. A CTA should include an action statement and inform the visitor how it will be of benefit to click.

You can reduce the risk of anyone hesitating over clicking the CTA button with a reassuring statement, such as a money back guarantee or a free no-obligation trial.

Using call to action buttons improperly

If the CTA button is not made to stand out, by its size, color and brightness, that is another very bad landing page mistake. Did you think a call to action button was easy to design?

A CTA button is not just part of a landing page design. It’s actually part of the sales process. By “selling” the CTA to your landing page visitors, you are selling the action of clicking the button which leads them to convert into paying customers.

This is why you need to lead visitors seamless through the story, starting with the main headline and ending with the call to action button.

Not showing a preview of the product or services

This is one of the simplest landing page mistakes a marketers can make. The offer you are making should be available as a preview. You might think that by doing this you will miss out on leads, because people see in advance what is on your landing page, but this is not actually what happens.

If someone is going to take a glance at your offer and then leave, it makes no difference if they do this when they see a preview or after reaching your landing page. They are going to leave anyway. When your content is good enough, your target audience will decide to click the link to your landing page.

Using too many goals

Confusing people is one of the biggest landing page mistakes you can make. It’s not true that you can make people happy by giving them more of a choice. What actually happens when people are faced with a number of alternative actions is that they end up not choosing any of them.

Giving them too many calls to action with different options just paralyzes a person’s choice. Give your landing page visitors one of two choices. Either they convert or they don’t.

To win a conversion you only have to do one thing, and that is to get a click-through. The best way to do this is to ask. If you don’t make it clear enough that this is the whole purpose of being on that page, then you will not get people to do what you want from them, which is to click that button.

Not having the design and copy of the headline as they should be

The headline is the most vital element in any landing page design. Failing to make an impact within two seconds will lose conversions.

The headline is a filter that allows prospects to stay on the page, and anyone else can leave. Even if there are some landing page mistakes lower down, an effective headline is the one factor that will keep your audience interested in getting to the end of the page.

The best way to increase conversions is to test different versions of your main headline, and keep the one that bring you better results.

A headline has to be compelling to keep visitors interested. It must convince them that it’s worth their time to view the content. Time is always in short supply these days and Internet users do not want to spend a second more than necessary on reading text or viewing a video.

Not using an image

If you want to avoid landing page mistakes and you are not using any images, then you need to reconsider your design.

A single image, or multiple images on a landing page, can be appealing or evocative and will instantly communicate the right message of what the page is about.

Images should form part of the seamless flow of content and should not contrast too much with the design of a landing page.

Choose the right sort of images, ones that encourages a response. This will reduce the amount of text you need on your landing page. Images help to keep content simple and make it easier to follow.

Not testing

Any marketer who does no testing is guilty of the last of our marketing page mistakes. If you fail to test it, you miss out on the opportunity to gain more conversions from your landing page.

Testing can be kept simple or it can be complex. That is entirely up to you. If you want to test a number of versions then you may need the help of an expert, but it is easy to do yourself with just two different versions of your landing page.

Version A is your best design. Version B is a variation. It could have a different headline or call to action, another color scheme, or a video in place of an image.

By trying out both versions you will be able to determine which one wins the most conversions. By picking the best one and changing another of its elements, you can do some further A/B testing to discover exactly what works best for your target audience.