If you are running a digital advertising campaign but you are not generating the results you are hoping for; it may not be your marketing campaign, it might just be your landing page. Today, I will share the 5 sins of landing pages and how you can avoid these mistakes.
What do we mean by landing page?
A landing page is anywhere you send people coming from advertising or any marketing campaign. It is the first page they land on. If you’re in the lead generation business, you’re going to send them to a landing page where they can fill out the information, or get a free consultation, for example. If you’re selling dresses, you’re going to send them to a page where you talk about dresses or shop for dresses. Keep in mind, there are different kinds of landing pages. Some people believe the website itself is a landing page. What distinguishes between a website and a landing page is the action. Landing pages tend to have a direct call to action, unlike a website that you have options to browse, read and get distracted.
One of my favorite landing pages is called a squeeze page, this page has no other option other than one action that you want people to take. Fill in the form, give us a call, or whatever action you decide you want them to do. You are able to more easily keep actions focused on a squeeze page.
Sin 1: No call to action.
A call to action is one of the most important parts of a successful landing page. You need to have a clear, precise call to action. We like to use a button with bright colors so that it gets people’s attention. It needs to be above the fold and be very clear.
You also need to understand what kind of action you want people to take. If you want people to call you, the CTA should be ‘CALL US NOW’ with a clear phone number. If you want people to fill out a form online, it could be ‘START NOW’, ‘GET STARTED’. If you want people to learn more about your business, just say ‘LEARN MORE’ to take them to another page. If you are an e-commerce site, the call to action should be ‘SHOP NOW’, ‘ORDER NOW’ or ‘ADD TO CART. Clear calls to action within a button will hugely impact your landing page’s success.
Sin 2: Low page speed.
This is also one of the most important parts of a successful landing page. What do I mean by page speed? It’s also called page load time. It’s referring to how many seconds it takes for the page to open and download all elements for the user. How many times have you gone to a landing page and it takes more than 5 seconds, 10 seconds, or even 15 seconds to load? This is where you’re going to lose a lot of people. A good page load time for a landing page is 3 seconds, even 5 seconds is okay, but if it’s 7 seconds, 10 or 15, you absolutely need to make changes.
A great tool to test landing page load times is https://gtmetrix.com/, it’s a free online tool. Many of the fixes you’d have to do on a landing to make it faster could be done by even the most inexperienced person. However, some of the changes are more technical and would require you to have a developer or a team to fix it. Some of the more basic tasks that can significantly increase load time is optimizing the image size or the server capacity. Page speed is important for user experience because search engines are looking at this metric when ranking you on advertising or organic search. They want to ensure that your user has a great experience on your page before sending more people back to it.
Sin 3: Not above the fold
What do we mean by that? When you reach a landing page and have to scroll further down the page to see the most important information, that is a problem. The perfect landing page is when everything important is in view before you scroll down the page. These important items may include a call to action, any certifications, testimonials or content that will provide trust. Now, if people are using mobile devices, keep in mind that you should also check your landing pages to make sure it displays properly on mobile devices. The same rules apply, even more so on mobile, so be sure you have everything at the top.
One thing that I will recommend for your mobile landing page is that make sure your phone number at the top. People usually want to use their mobile device to call for more information, so be sure your phone number is very clear or clickable. When you develop your landing page, ensure your very important marketing message is above the fold too.
Sin 4: Untrustworthy
What do we mean by this? How many times have you gone to a landing page and it looks like it was developed in the 90s? The style is old, the text is not very clear (or it uses an outdated font style). There is no certification, no SSL certificate, no testimonials that build trust and it just feels very sketchy. The same thing applies if you go to a store and you know they have the product you need, but the store has a broken window and the inside is dark, dirty and unorganized. You would never go inside that store even if you know the product you want is inside. You need to be sure your landing page is trustworthy.
The following few bullet points are items you can include to build trust with visitors. Building trust will allow them more likely to fill in a form and provide you with their contact information.
- Certifications
- Testimonials
- Secured Website with an SSL certificate
- Awards you have received
Now speaking of forms, I want to mention something very important. I’ve seen a lot of forms that ask people for a large amount of information. You need to figure out what the sweet spot is for you and how much information you really need. Any extra information you don’t need, make sure not to include it because a lot of people are not going to sit down and fill out so many fields. The more simple the form is, the higher the conversion rate. In mobile devices, the form definitely needs to be even easier because no-one will fill out more than a couple of fields on their mobile devices. My advice to you is to keep it very simple.
Sin 5: Unclear messages.
The way you present your message, whether by paragraph or bullet points, must be clear. Do you highlight data? Do you highlight results? Are you selling to people? How many times have you gone to a landing page and you see it’s as if they have prepared a book for you to read, but with no end in sight? Don’t give me the book, give me how this is going to help my business – quick and easy. Is this going to increase my results by 50%? What result or what data point do I want to see? Make sure you have a clear marketing message that is precise and to the point. Include data points or information that provides value.
Another thing is to ensure your message is connected to your marketing or advertising campaign. We see time and time again that the language used on an advertisement is different than what you find on a landing page. That can create confusion. For example, you can’t mention a free consultation in an ad and when they land, you offer them a free demo. Use the same language and wording on both. You should not focus your marketing on a specific service and send people a general page that lists all your services. Again, confusion. Make sure that whatever you highlight in your advertisement, you send people to your landing page talking about that information. Clear messages are very important as well for the success of the landing page.
If you need help growing your business and averaging 400% or more ROI from your digital efforts, give us a call today or schedule a free strategy session with one of our experts in digital marketing. You will have an opportunity to discuss your business and your marketing goals, and we will provide recommendations on what you should be doing based on our BOOST Method. This is a sales-pitch-free no-obligation meeting, just real advice.