If you’re looking to increase conversions on your website, landing pages are a must. Redirecting people to your homepage isn’t appropriate in many instances, especially if they’re being redirected from a bespoke ad or content piece specifically created for a portion of your audience.

Using multiple landing pages can help you target these segments of your user base with personalized copy and visuals, and provide a smoother overall experience for your visitors.

While there are numerous benefits of creating landing pages, there are some common mistakes that can cause serious damage to your conversion rates. Let’s explore these pitfalls, as well as the changes you can make today to improve the quality of your landing pages.

What You’ll Learn in This Article

• The importance of fast-loading landing pages and how to troubleshoot for slow load speed
• How to create clean and concise landing pages to improve your conversion rates
• Key elements for establishing trust with landing pages
• Perfecting the messaging and tone of your landing page to incite conversions
• Creating CTAs that convert
• How to pull visitors into completing desirable actions on your landing page

Mistake #1: Slow Landing Pages

Expectations from websites have never been higher, with many visitors quickly abandoning those that load too slowly. In fact, research has found that a simple 1-second delay can cause conversion rates to drop by 70%.

Nothing else on the page matters if no one stays long enough to look at it. Start by testing the speed of your page using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.

Speeding Up Your Landing Page

To speed up your landing page, you need to clean up any clutter. Try to avoid using JavaScript, or at least keep its use to a minimum. Cleaning up your page’s code will help to keep it as fast as possible.

If your images are large, you can reduce their size and compress them so they’re not so burdensome on the page loading time. It’s easy to do this – just use an online image compressor like TinyPNG or Compressor.io.

It might also be worth considering upgrading your site’s hosting. This can speed up not just your landing pages but your entire site. Using managed hosting will make your site faster, while also ensuring limited upkeep on your end.

Mistake #2: Too Much Going On

A cluttered landing page won’t just make your page slow. Even if it loads quickly, you could still have too much going on for the average visitor to understand what action to take next.

Tidying it up so it’s simple and sleek will help you convey your message and encourage conversions.

Keep It Clean and Organized

Your landing page should be well-organized and as clean as possible. Keep it lean and avoid having any content that’s not strictly necessary. Consider whether all of the elements on the page need to be there or whether you can remove them and still have the impact that you desire.

Stick to One Offer/Action

One of the worst mistakes you can make is directly people toward several offers or actions on one landing page. Choose just one action that you want them to perform, and focus your whole landing page on getting them to do it. It will be too confusing if you try to do more than that.

Mistake #3: You’re Not Trustworthy

Asking people to hand over their details is asking them to trust you with their personal information. If your landing page doesn’t look trustworthy, people might not want to fill in your lead form. So what can you do to convince visitors to trust you enough to do it?

Use the Right Testimonials

Testimonials come from real people, so they’re great for showcasing your authority. However, not all testimonials are useful. To make the most of them, leverage the legitimacy of other sites, such as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook & Trustpilot, where people have left reviews and ratings for your business.

If you don’t have reviews or testimonials, email former or existing customers with a request to leave honest reviews on the platform of your choice.

Use Trust Badges

It can also be helpful to use trust badges that show that you are using various security measures. You might use a badge to show that you have an SSL certificate or that you’re using a certain secure system to protect people’s payments.

Embedded Social Feed

Using a tool like Flockler or Walls.io, you can embed a live feed of any social media posts that mention your business on your landing page. This can help visitors see the results and reactions of people who’ve bought items or services from you previously, and add a more human touch to your pages.

However, first ensure that a large majority of your mentions are currently positive. While it’s difficult to alter the nature of your mentions on social media, you should probably avoid this tactic if your business is attracting a certain level of negativity online.

Mistake #4: Too Much Action Required

Another issue can be that you’re asking too much of your visitors once they land on your page. You shouldn’t expect them to carry out too many actions for them to take advantage of your offer.

Don’t ask them to watch a video, read several paragraphs of text and go to another page to fill out a form. You need to keep things simple.

Keep Forms Short

When you get users to fill out a form with their details, don’t ask for too much. Keep it to the point and collect the most important information, whether it’s their email address, phone number or business name.

If you want to create landing pages that successfully convert, avoid these mistakes by making the right choices.

Create Visually Captivating Forms

Your lead form is arguably the most important element on your entire page. While keeping it short is important, it’s equally important to make it visually striking. Considering it’s the element that you want visitors to gravitate towards (and complete), make sure the design of your form stands out and is as interactive as possible.

A quick and easy way to create interactive and beautiful forms is by using a form builder. Versatile form builders should help you create branded forms in minutes that can easily be embedded into your site. You could even use form templates to further expedite this process.

Mistake #5: Unclear Messaging

Is the messaging on your landing page easy to understand? If it’s inconsistent or doesn’t make sense, it’s not going to help you achieve your goals.

It needs to be obvious right away what you’re trying to say, and what you’re promoting. Why should people who land on your landing page be interested? And what does your landing page ultimately want from them?

Match Ads and Landing Page Messaging

First of all, be sure that your advertisements match your landing page in terms of messaging. If an ad says one thing and your landing page says another, visitors could immediately exit out of the page. Try to match up certain phrases and key pieces of information so people know that they are in the right place.

Keep Your Offer Up Front

You should also make it easy for your visitors to find what they’re looking for. If you want to turn them into conversions, you should keep your offer in a prominent position. They should be able to spot it right away when landing on the page.

Mistake #6: Weak Call to Action

The call to action that you use is one of the most important parts of your landing page. It tells your audience exactly what they need to do when they land on your page to receive your offer. You need your CTA to stand out and to get your audience to take action.

Make Your CTA Button Prominent

Your CTA button should be prominent and easy to see. Even small things can make a difference when you’re designing it, from its positioning to the colors that you use.

Your button might be at the bottom of a short form, or it might open a pop-up. Regardless of where it’s placed, you need to ensure it’s easy to see right away.

Get Your CTA Text Right

Choosing what your CTA says is also important. Your choice of words should drive action and inspire your visitors.

Keep things short and to the point to encourage people to click on your CTA button. Try to show what the benefit of submitting a form will be, such as “learn more” or “get my free paper”.

Wrapping It Up

When it comes to landing pages, being mindful about user experience will go a long way. Once you reflect on how you respond to landing pages and websites yourself, you’ll be able to relate to the struggle of interacting with a slow-loading website or cluttered, incomprehensible page design.

While these may seem like small changes to make, they’re bound to improve the experience of visitors who land on your pages and in turn, increase the number of leads and conversions you attract.