A landing page is the most critical ingredient of any successful inbound online marketing campaign. In fact, your lander has the power to make or break your campaign.
Unfortunately, so many businesses make avoidable mistakes that cost them dearly in terms of money and conversions.
As a digital marketer, you need to know that extensive market research, creating a no-brainer offer, and spending money on ads to bring in traffic isn’t enough to generate conversions.
If you don’t take time to work on your landing pages, you may end up making costly blunders. After all, your offer is only as good as your landing page.
So, if you’re not sure what you’re doing wrong with your landers, this post is for you. We discuss some common landing page mistakes that could cost you money. Read on to learn more.
1. Using Your Homepage as Your Landing Page
One of the most common mistakes marketers commit is using their homepage as the landing page for their online marketing campaigns. A home page that doubles up as a landing page can hurt your conversions massively. Shockingly, approximately 77% of businesses are still doing this.
But why can’t you use your home page as your landing page? The answer is pretty simple. Homepages are not built for conversion.
Your homepage is designed to give visitors an overview of your business and what you have to offer. On the other hand, landing pages are designed with one purpose only: to convert visitors into leads or customers.
A good landing page must be simple and uncluttered. The messaging should be clear and concise, and the offer must be irresistible. Most homepages don’t meet these criteria.
You’re missing out on many conversion opportunities if you’re using your homepage as your landing page. The solution is to create a dedicated landing page for each online marketing campaign.
2. Not Creating a Unique Landing Page for Each Campaign
If you’re running multiple online marketing campaigns, you need to create a unique landing page for each.
Not having separate landing pages for your campaigns can impact your conversions and cost you money. Here’s why:
When you have different offers, you need to create unique selling propositions (USPs) for each offer. This is because each offer has a different target audience with different needs.
You cannot create unique USPs for each offer if you’re using the same landing page for all your campaigns. As a result, your conversion rate will suffer.
To ensure that each campaign has a unique landing page, you need to start by creating separate ad groups for each offer. Once you have done that, create a unique landing page for each ad group.
This will allow you to create targeted messaging and an irresistible offer for each campaign. As a result, your conversion rate will improve, and you’ll make more money from your online marketing campaigns.
3. Cluttered Landing Pages
Human beings are natural skimmers with quite low attention spans. The last thing you want to subject your target audience to is a cluttered landing page with mismatched colors and random blocks of texts.
That is why it is essential to have a landing page with a minimalist and user-friendly design. Ensure your landing page is well structured with professional fonts and colors.
Your CTA button should be visible and stand out from the rest of the page. Don’t make your visitors search for it.
Your landing page must also be free of any distractions that can take away from your offer or CTA. This means removing all navigation links, social media icons, and anything else that can divert your visitors’ attention away from your offer.
If your landing page is cluttered, it will cost you conversions and money. So, keep it clean, simple, and free of distractions.
4. Failure to Optimize Your Landing Page for Mobile Devices
Optimizing your website for mobile devices is essential in today’s digital world. This is because a large percentage of internet traffic now comes from mobile devices.
According to Statista, over 54.8% of all website traffic in 2021 came from mobile phones. This number is only going to increase in the years to come.
If your website and landing pages are not optimized for mobile devices, you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic and conversions. To ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, you need to consider the following:
- Use a responsive design: This is a must if you want your website and landing pages to be mobile-friendly. A responsive design ensures that your website adjusts its layout and content to fit any screen size.
- Use large font sizes: Mobile devices have small screens, so you need to use large font sizes to ensure that your content is easy to read on these devices.
- Use short forms: Long forms can be complicated to fill out on mobile devices. So, it is important to use short forms that are easy to fill out on these devices.
- Use large CTA buttons: The CTA button must be visible and easy to click on mobile devices. To achieve this, you need to use large CTA buttons.
5. Failing to Match Your Ad Copy and Landing Page Copy
When someone clicks on your ad, they expect to see relevant information on the landing page. However, if your ad copy and landing page copy don’t match, then you’re in for a disappointment.
People will feel misled and tricked when they see something different on your landing page than what was promised in the ad. As a result, they will quickly leave your page, increasing your bounce rate and cost you conversions.
To avoid this, you must ensure that your ad copy and landing page copy match. This means using the same headlines, images, and offer in your ad and landing page.
Doing this will give your visitors a seamless and consistent experience, improving your chances of getting a conversion.
6. Ignoring Your Landing Page Load Speed
A slow-loading landing page can be a deal breaker for many of your prospects. Statistics show that approximately 40% of consumers are going to click away from a landing page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
You may change your ad spends, offer, traffic sources, or even the entire sales funnel when the real issue is the loading speed of your landing pages.
There are two main ways to improve your landing page load time:
- Optimize your images: Large images can take a long time to load, so you need to optimize them for the web. You can do this by reducing their file size without compromising on quality.
- Use a caching plugin: A caching plugin stores a static version of your landing page in the visitor’s browser, which helps to load the page faster the next time they visit it.
Make sure you use Google’s Page Speed Insights tool to test your landing page’s load speed and try to lower it as much as possible.
7. Missing Social Proof
Did you know that approximately 88% of consumers value online reviews just as much as personal recommendations? Therefore, you must do everything possible to build credibility and trust with your visitors.
One of the best ways to do this is by using social proof on your landing pages. Social proof is basically when you use testimonials, reviews, customer logos, and other elements to show prospects that others have used your product or service and been happy with it.
Having social proof on your landing pages will help build credibility and trust with your prospects, increasing your conversion rate.
So, make sure you use social proof on your landing pages to improve your chances of getting a conversion.
8. Not Testing Your Landing Pages
You’re missing out on many potential conversions if you’re not testing your landing pages.
You need to test different landing page elements to see what works best for your target audience. This could include testing different headlines, images, offers, and CTA buttons.
Testing these elements allows you to see which ones are most effective in getting conversions.
So, ensure you’re constantly testing your landing pages to see what works best for your target audience.
Summary
Landing pages are a critical part of any digital marketing strategy, yet so many businesses make common mistakes that cost them money.
By avoiding these mistakes and following best practices, you can ensure that your landing pages are effective in converting visitors into customers.
Our industry experts are here to help you create high-converting landing pages, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more tips and tricks straight from the source.
Have you had success with any specific techniques when it comes to creating landing pages? Let us know in the comments below!
