A landing page is a standalone web page (separate from website) that designed to get visitors to take one specific action such as subscribe to newsletter, blog, email list, make a purchase, register for a webinar, submit data and download something, click through to another page etc. Landing pages are understood to be a key player in modern digital marketing. They provide specific and to the point information about a particular offer, program or service. Conceptually, landing pages are meant to avoid higher bounce rate by engaging people in a transaction without any distraction.
Let’s look at some stats below:
- 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign.
- 48% of landing pages contain multiple offers.
- Marketers will focus more on conversion optimization than attracting more traffic their landing pages, this year.
- 75% of businesses have problem finding suitable expertise for optimizing their landing page copy.
- Of B2B companies that use landing pages, 62% have six or fewer total landing pages.
When you read that 84% landing pages fail to achieve their core goal, it sounds alarming. In this guide we will cover the key reasons that lead landing pages to failure and how to avoid those.
Why Landing Pages Fail
They are Overstuffed
48% of landing pages have multiple offers, which means; almost half of them aren’t meant to give specific and non-distracting information. As a result, visitors don’t find any particular, specific and actionable information and leave the page without any action.
They Require Too Much Data
People feel insecure while providing their private information to companies. Therefore, if a particular offer is asking too much or too sensitive information (credit cards, email, address, phone numbers), they may leave the offer.
They Don’t Have Hot Cakes
Yes, if your landing pages don’t contain what’s selling like hot cakes; don’t expect to see better conversion rate. By hot cakes we mean, those practices that are working well or trending in the tech world or more specifically, in your industry. Some punch line, buzzword, catchy line, or may be some decent call to action.
They are Not Responsive
Have you seen the impact of Google’s mobile friendly update on your website? If not, then better do. The landing page that is not mobile friendly, might fail to receive good response from smartphone users. Plus with Google’s latest algorithmic update, unfriendly pages will not get better search ranking and visibility.
They Lack Visuals
We all know that images tell a thousand words. This is especially true for online platforms. If your landing pages don’t have a product or related image, endorsing/explaining/testifying the story; it becomes a bit weak case. In addition, lacking visuals also makes the page boring and weak, aesthetically speaking.
They Lack Hot Spots
Studies have endorsed that online customers and visitors just skim through web pages. Your landing page fails if you’ve written multiple paragraphs, added graphics but ignored hot spots or punch line. They are jargons, standard lines, and call to actions that a particular niche regularly uses.
They Miss Important CTA
Words matter a lot. I’m not saying that people ignore call to actions; instead, they either place it on the wrong area, use the wrong words, or don’t make it prominent enough. Not having a visible, clearer, and prominent call to action also leads your landing page to failure.
You Don’t Understand Your Platform
There are many marketing automation platforms that have a dedicated landing page tool. However, many of the popular marketing automation platforms do not offer free training or their users just don’t work hard enough to understand them. The obvious result is ill-planned and non-professional landing page.
You Ignore Industry’s Best Practices
Every industry, sector, and field has certain rules of success. Generally known as ‘best practices’, these guidelines help us be more successful in our domain. One of the reasons why landing pages fail is that you are ignoring your industry’s best practices that successful people in your niche have crafted.
In the following, we can go to some key suggestions to improve your landing pages design and achieve your marketing and sales goals faster.
Landing Page Best Practices
Get Straight to the Point
Landing pages are designed for a particular objective; your content should convey that objective clearly. Here, the best strategy is to plan your content in details, and make sure; it is in complete alignment with your goals. Get straight to the point and explain it clearly.
People came to the page for a reason, so make sure you address that reason clearly and concisely by highlighting the value of what you’re offering and how it addresses their needs, demands, interests, or problems.
Here, we recommended to use clear headers and sub-headers, bullet points, and to explain what they’ll get from the offer, emphasize key points using bold text or italics, and keep things simple. Finally, ensure that primary headline of your landing page seems in alignment with the ad/email visitors clicked to get there.
Require Only Essential Info
People care about their privacy and feel insecure if demanded details about their private data. Try to minimize the information collection as much as possible to decrease rejection. If you feel it is essential to offer extra information, move those additional fields to a form on a second page.
The effect is that by the time a visitor clicks through to this second page, they’ve effectively built some energy in the conversion process and are more averse to bail out. Or if you’re seeking some sensitive information, give a separate note of keeping it secure and not selling to any third party to build trust.
This separate note will give them a sense of responsibility on your part and do away with unease in the prospects’ minds.
Make Sure It’s Responsive
Google is working hard to provide mobile search users (80%) the most convenient search experience. The reason is simple; an unfriendly page will not show up properly on a mobile device and force people to leave. Therefore, if your landing page is not mobile friendly, it might fail to receive good response from smartphone users. Make sure that the template you’re using is mobile-friendly or responsive; as it’ll help people with small screens to learn about the offer subscribe.
Always check out if your landing page is mobile-friendly or not? If it’s not, work on mobile friendliness to give a better navigation experience to your prospects.
Add Visuals
Visuals, as noted in the introduction, play vital role in the success of a landing page. We’ve seen in the statistic section that “videos on landing pages can increase conversions by 86%.
Similarly, we find that images are most liked and shared thing on social media and have also proved out to be extremely effective in your lead generating campaigns. This applies to all visuals and graphics as they tell similar stories and present information in a better way.
So when you’re designing a landing page, make sure to add relevant visuals, videos and graphics to ensure better quality of results. Product images, tutorial video, or an interesting graphic illustration can create emotional attachment; a vital element for sales.
Never Ignore A/B Testing
A/B testing has proved out to be an interesting and very useful element in the success of email campaigns, and other online campaigns involving conversion on a landing page. Here, more than one version of the page/email are created and they’re tested against a particular demographics and criteria.
On the basis of performance, rules are defined, and return on the investment is calculated. This helps in the future campaigns as marketer can put more focus on the areas yielding better results. So the word of advice is: do what other 44% companies (successful one) are doing.
Use some software program or other testing mechanism to test your pages, templates, and emails. If you are running some email marketing drips, divide your target audience against both versions and see results.
Optimize for Better Search Results
Yes, design a dedicated SEO campaign for your landing pages. It might not impact in the shortterm but in the long-term, it has a great say. Particularly if your website has many landing pages, then it should be an essential component of your campaign.
In this regards, we recommend to take care of the following:
- Ensure the content is optimized for maximum value with keywords etc.
- Properly use H1, tags and headers
- Optimize HTML
- Align the titles of the ad/email and the title of the landing page
- Ensure responsive design
- Make sure it’s a single objective page with focused content.
Make a Clearer CTA
Remember, people are not interested in your advertised product/service; they’re more concerned about “what’s in it for them” or more precisely benefits of that particular thing. Use bullet points or blocks to highlight the most prominent feature and benefit for the customers and you’ll rock.
Make a visible, creative, and attractive call to action. Stuff like Why Not Make Free Account, Click Here, Sign Up for Free or Download Now should be visible and clearer.
Do a little market research and see what’s working best in your industry. Design a checklist of features, content, design etc. that you find more trendy or effective. Adjust things as per your goals and brand; and see the result.
Understand Your Platform Well
Make sure that you understand your landing page tool very well. There are chances that a platform might have golden tools but you can’t operate them well enough. Therefore, sign up for the platform that is easy to use and also provides you free training. If you don’t understand anything in landing page builder, ask their support teams.
There’s another option; if you can’t operate it well, design your own HTML page and upload into your email marketing system. This will ensure that your landing page looks professional and truly presents your brand. In this regards, we provide free training, video tutorials, webinars, and vibrant customer support.
Some General Considerations
- Provide a free trial to help people try-before-they-buy.
- Simplify your copy using bullet points.
- Show your contact info to let people know you are real and they can interact back.
- Make your call to action (CTA) is visible.
- Add social buttons to enable sharing
- Your landing page design should be in alignment with the brand image
- Every element of the page should be conceptually aligned with the topic and your goals.
- Add testimonials; they glorify your brand.
The primary purpose of this e-guide was to help marketers like you to avoid falling into that 84% category that fails to achieve their landing page goals. Given the vitality and importance of Landing Pages in modern marketing, it has become very important that modern marketers understand their value and how to capitalize on those. We hope this guide had provided you with a list of best practices, must-do; don’t do things to enhance your prospects of success.
(Photo: PIXABAY)
