5 Fatal Landing Page Errors You Might be Making

This is a guest post by James Scherer. James is a Content marketer at Wishpond, and Landing Page Conversion expert. You can contact James @JDScherer.
This article will dive into five fatal landing page errors you might be making and how you can amend these errors for landing page success online.
The whole point of your landing page is to encourage a single conversion. In fact, a landing page (by definition) is a page with a singular objective.
Confusion over this matter is the cause of the most common mistake in landing pages around the web: multiple CTA’s.
It’s a tempting mistake to make, as many newcomers to the landing page scene can’t help but think “More calls to action equal a higher chance of engagement!” The issue is this: more calls to action actually equal more distractions, not more conversions.
Here’s what a struggling landing page might look like:
Multiple buttons for the same conversion aren’t necessarily a bad thing (test it for yourself). The problem arises when you include multiple links with different conversion goals.
Believing that a CTA button to another landing page will double the chance of engagement is a mistake. All it will do is dilute (and decrease) your overall conversion rates.
This is especially true if you’re running campaign-specific landing pages (like a landing page specific to an online advertisement). Trying to drive ad traffic to the rest of your website or other landing pages will dilute that traffic and increase bounce rate.
Without a graphic designer, professional photographer or backlog of awesome images, it can be tempting to go the stock route with your landing page images- particularly with the many stock image sites available.
Images do improve Landing page performance, however stock images can actually hurt conversions on your site.
Stock Photos increase a page’s bounce rate by 30%.
Personal details are still a valuable commodity, be cognizant of what information you are asking for on landing pages, and how you are asking for it.
It’s essential you balance your landing page’s “ask” with your landing page’s “give”. Basically, the amount of form fields you require leads to fill out should be directly proportional to what you’re offering.
For instance, most ebooks, case studies, and reports ask leads to share a name and email address. Webinars require registrants to provide an email address and perhaps “job title” or “sector you’re in”. Whereas conferences can solicit much more information, in addition to a fee.
Here’s an example of a sign-up form which may be asking a bit too much for what they’re offering:
Another essential ratio for LPO is “offer vs segmentation”.
Your marketing team often works closely with your sales team to optimize your sales funnel. Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out you should never be closer than when optimizing your landing page’s entry forms.
Your sales guys (and gals) will find more success with a lead when they know a lot about them. They can call them by name, talk about that lead’s specific frustrations in business, prioritize leads based on job title (or size of business) and a hundred other variables that increase close rates.
It may be worth sacrificing your conversion rate in order to generate more information from the leads you do get. Getting 100 leads from a landing page and closing them at a rate of 50% is far better than getting 300 leads but only closing them at a rate of 10%.
Sometimes including more entry form fields in your landing pages will (while decreasing conversion rates) actually result in more sales down the line.
Remember however, that the offer vs segmentation ratio that works best for your business is something you need to test, as each sales team works differently.
To be entirely honest with you, customer testimonials, trust symbols and brand logos are my favorite elements of landing page optimization. I’ve seen them have huge effect on a business’ online success, and missing out on them can be huge mistake.
Customer testimonials (and trust symbols/brand logos) are the new word-of-mouth marketing, something we all know has always been the most effective form of brand marketing possible. There’s nothing better than a previous customer or previous brand willing to stand up and tell your possible clients “Trust me, this business is worth engaging with. I tried them myself and couldn’t’ be happier with the results.”
Colors impact your landing page visitors unconsciously and can have a huge effect on the success you find online.
Which color (s) you use will depend on your site and category, continually test your landing pages and colors to optimize performance.
Here are a few things to keep in mind about Landing Page colors:
Color contrast can actually encourage a conversion when used intelligently (and encourage a bounce if used badly).
CTA Button Best Practices
Remember that all Landing Page elements needs to be tested in order to find what works best for your business and your specific target market. Continually test your pages to optimize performance and conversions.