What do ghost towns and bad landing pages have in common? Everybody leaves them. You put a great deal of time and effort into landing page funnels and that’s the last thing you want. So how do you build one that doesn’t suffer this fate?
Ensure you don’t make these 8 common landing page mistakes.
Mistake 1: Sending Visitors Away
You work tirelessly to drive visitors to your page, so why distract them with other offers? While unintentional, this is exactly what marketers are doing when they have links to other offers/pages on the landing page.
“Unfortunately, rather than providing a better understanding of your product or service, navigation bars tend to create a distraction from your visitor’s journey toward conversions,” Tyler Jacobson, Webolutions Marketing Coordinator says. “Based on first hand results, we’ve seen that having on page navigation reduces a page’s conversions by up to 80%.
Our best recommendation is to create a coherent and distraction free path that starts with the visitor seeing your ad to executing the desired conversion.
Mistake 2: Irrelevant Offer
Another reason your landing page may not be converting? You don’t have a compelling offer. What problem are you helping your audience solve? For any kind of lead generation, remember the “What’s in it for me?” rule.
“Like it or not, customers don’t care about how awesome your product or company is,” Jennifer Neal from Formuladone.com says. “They only care about how it benefits them.”
Mistake 3: Wrong Crowd
If you sell to everyone, you are selling to no one. Once you have a compelling offer, make sure you are reaching the folks who care about it. In fact, from the very beginning, you should ensure you are crafting the entire experience around your target persona.
Mistake 4: Not on The Map
A landing page is not an “if you build it scenario.” Even if you create the most compelling landing page in the world, if you don’t share it with the appropriate audience, it will never get any traffic. Before you create the page, determine how you’ll directing the right traffic to the page.
Need ideas for spreading the word? Facebook advertising and other social networks offer a great way to target your audience. Also consider traditional Pay Per Click on search engines and retargeting ads. And never underestimate funnel paths from your own website. Consider linking to your landing page from your main navigation, home page, blogs and other content.
Mistake 5: You Come Off As a Shady Character
You wouldn’t offer your information to any stranger, so why do you expect your landing page visitors to do the same? You know your a good guy, but to new visitors, you are a stranger. It’s important to build in trust factors on the page. Testimonials, logos, privacy policies and clearly defined expectations signal that you are trustworthy and legitimate.
“Earn their conversion by providing confidence in your brand. This is largely done by re-communicating your product or service and providing familiar trust signals, including awards, ratings, certifications, or notable past clients,” Jacobson says.
Mistake 6: No Sneak Preview
Life may be like a box of chocolates, but people prefer using the chart to see exactly what they are going to get. Make the offer compelling, but ensure you specify precisely what they’ll receive. Surprises are great for parties, but on landing pages, not so much.
If you are providing a download, share how this download will benefit them. What will they find inside? If they request a demo, how long will it last? What will the demo showcase? Provide accurate tidbits that keeps them intrigued, but requires a conversion to get the full offerring.
Mistake 7: Asking for Too Much
You’d (hopefully) never ask someone to marry you before the first date. Similarly, asking for too much information on a landing page can come off as just plain creepy. Do you really need to know their address, birth date and name of their firstborn child? Ask for as little as possible and then gather more information after you get the first conversion.
Mistake 8: Stalker Level Follow-Up
Okay, so perhaps this mistake is not directly related to the landing page. But, how you handle information after it has been provided can impact future conversions.
If you start calling all times of day and night and sending your tracking dogs after them, there’s going to be an issue. Not only do you risk losing this prospect – you risk them telling the horror experience to their network. And, that would result in serious ghost-town level avoidance for your pages.
Key Takeaways:
While we dove into what not to do, we hope you were able to gain takeaways on some key to do’s. It’s important when building a landing page that you keep it about your prospects. Provide them an offer they care about, be transparent and treat their information how you’d want yours treated. If you remember this and target appropriately, you’ll turn your landing page ghost town into a conversion boom-town in no time.
Need help building compelling landing pages? We can help. Webolutions has been helping clients solve their marketing challenges for over 22 years. Call 303.300.2640 or contact us online today to get started!
