You may have the best website in the industry but is it generating enough sales for your online store? Maybe you have implemented an amazing PPC campaign through Google or Facebook ads. Unfortunately, you are only getting clicks but you are not getting conversions. If you have been running an online store for a long time already, you may already be aware of how terribly frustrating it can be if your landing pages are not converting as they should be.
Landing pages are supposed to drive traffic and revenue to your online store. However, if it isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, you might be left to rue what went wrong. It is important to troubleshoot and fix your landing page issues as it could hurt your website’s conversion rate. This article looks at the possible reasons your landing page is not converting and why it is not converting.
Importance of Landing Pages
- It Directs Visitors To Targeted Pages
- It Limits Distractions
- It Helps You Track Data
- It Simplifies Conversion
Reasons Your Landing Page Is Not Converting
- You Have Too Many Distractions
- Your Headline Isn’t Compelling
- Your Call To Action Is Not Convincing
- Visitors Don’t Trust You
- You Gave Too Much Information
- It Isn’t Loading Properly
- It Sends Mixed Signals
- It isn’t Mobile Friendly
- You Don’t Have A Target Audience
- Your Design Is Too Crowded
Let’s get started.
Importance of Landing Pages
The landing page is one of the most important elements of your website. It is the page where your leads will be directed and where they will convert. The landing page directs the customers to the next stage of the conversion process. Landing pages are important for the following reasons:
1. It directs site visitors to better targeted pages
These pages can effectively capture important customer details like email addresses for lead generation. No matter what marketing and advertising you are pursuing, there has to be a destination for your customers.
2. It limits distractions for your customers
Landing pages help customers focus their attention on one particular offer at a time. It gives you the opportunity to convert your customers and maximize your potential revenue and customer value.
3. It Helps You Track Data
Landing pages will help you gain insight into how to engage a certain prospect and their readiness to make a purchase. By tracking data, you will be able to know if your landing pages are effectively doing their jobs.
4. It Simplifies The Conversion Process
When leads come to your website, they may still be undecided whether to purchase or not. A landing page provides leads with a platform for converting should they be ready to finally make a purchase.
Reasons Your Landing Page Is Not Converting
Having the best website design does not automatically mean it will convert leads into potential customers. There are other factors that could contribute to your landing page not converting. Let’s find them out:
1. There are too many distractions
When creating a landing page, you should keep in mind Hick’s Law: the more choices you offer people, the longer it will take for them to decide. In the end, they may end up leaving your page without clicking anything at all. So if your landing page contains a navigation bar, in-line links, or multiple CTAs, remove them. They will only serve as distractions and will keep your visitors from completing the purchase.
Research shows that removing your navigation menu can increase your conversion rate by 100%. Other studies show that having just one CTA on your landing page can lead to higher conversions. Unfortunately, more than 68% of businesses have 5 or more. So if your call-to-action is to sign up for a webinar, everything on your landing page should support your CTA.
Too many distractions can ruin even the best landing page. It can be tempting to put as much information as possible about your brand or even links on your blog posts. However, this defeats the purpose of your intended goal which is to get people to convert. Anything that will keep visitors from converting are considered distractions. So remove them from your landing page and see improvements in your conversion rate.
2. Your Headline Isn’t Compelling
The headline is the most important element of your landing page. It is the first thing your visitors will see when they hit your landing page. If your headline is not compelling enough, it will be difficult for your landing page to convert. Fortunately, the headline is also one of the fastest elements to fix.
Your headline needs to strongly describe what you are offering and should give the visitor a compelling reason to stick around and learn more. You first need to figure out why your current headline is not performing well. Then you can make the necessary adjustments.
Get your users excited and tell them what they can expect from you. Your headline should offer your customer a real tangible benefit not found anywhere else. If you can’t offer such value, maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and revise your offer. Subject your revised headline to an A/B test against your current headline.
3. Your Call To Action Is Not Convincing
If your CTA is not motivating users to take the desired action they are likely to bounce without converting. There are three possible reasons why your CTA is not convincing enough:
- It’s not clear what you want users to do
- It’s not visually appealing
- The text is too small or difficult to read
Your CTA should be clear on what action you want visitors to take. Do you want them to sign up for a mailing list, download a white paper, or make a purchase? Whatever it is, it should be prominent and easy to read. You can’t always expect your customers to figure it out on their own. If they can’t, it is most likely that they will just leave hurting your conversion rate in the process.
Like all other elements of your landing page, you can do a split-testing of your button copy to see which call to action resonates best with your audience. According to the Coyle Report, just a small change in the button copy can result in a 198% increase in conversion rate. You can test one copy button at a time and see how changing them can help or hurt your conversion rate.
4. Visitors Don’t Trust You
When you ask your visitors to fill out a lead capture form, you ask for something personal from them, even if it’s just their email. How will you be able to trust them to give you their personal details if they don’t know you in the first place? You need to connect with them first and earn their trust before you ask for something from them.
To earn the trust of your visitors, use social proof on your landing page. Statistics show that 79% of customers watch video testimonials to find out more about a company, product, or service. Show your visitors how customers have benefitted from your product or service. Testimonials can increase conversion rates on sales pages by 34%. In addition, 66% of customers said that the presence of social proof and they are more likely to buy.
When creating social proof, make sure that it is credible. Imagine this: Would customers trust your reviews and testimonials if they saw your page on a competitor’s landing page? Another way to build trust is through “pathological empathy.” Use your landing page to prove to readers that you understand how they feel. Use the language your customers speak and do not give a sales pitch.
5. You Gave Too Much Information
Providing too much information can be a tough habit to break but can also be one of the most annoying mistakes on your landing pages. Bombarding your visitors with too much information can be overwhelming for them. Your landing page should contain only the information that you need to entice potential customers to take action on your CTA.
Depending on the purpose of your landing page, it should only contain the “bare minimum.” For lead generation, it could just be the headline and a call-to-action button. For a sales page, it might be as simple as a video and a button for purchasing a product. You can do a test for long copy vs short copy to determine what is “too much information.”
Too much copy can make your page long, boring, and hard to read especially if you are using jargon. 79% of customers scan a web page rather than read every word. Get to the point right away because your customers don’t have the luxury of time. Don’t assume that your users will read the landing page from top to bottom. So the landing page should immediately say what you want and what users will get immediately.
6. It Isn’t Loading Properly
A slow-loading landing page can be a huge turn off for customers. Unfortunately, only 15% of websites operate at an acceptable page speed, taking more than five seconds to load, the acceptable landing page speed based on Google’s standards. 70% of customers admit that page speed influences their likeliness to buy and 57% of visitors will leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
Now more than ever, it’s important for you to troubleshoot any issues as soon as possible since slow loading landing pages can hurt your conversion rate. Today’s breed of customers have high expectations from ecommerce websites when it comes to loading speed. Even just a 1-second delay in page speed translates to a 7% decrease in conversion rate. Keep in mind that the faster your page loads, the higher the conversion rate will be.
What could be slowing down your loading speed? It could be attributed to one of the following reasons:
- High-resolution images
- Too much Flash content
- Unclean code
- Too many advertisements
- Bad hosting
- Javascript issues
Every second of your loading speed can make a difference between converting customers or losing their business. Work on improving your loading speed and you can look forward to increasing your potential revenue.
7. It Sends Mixed Signals
Another reason why your landing page is not converting is because it does not match with the message you want to convey. It should be true on your landing page and through every channel like your advertisements, emails, social media, and others. Sending mixed signals will create a sense of untrustworthiness with your customers. This may result in them leaving the landing page without converting.
Let’s say that you are promoting a sales event on your ecommerce website but when visitors clicked on your ad they landed on a product page that is promoting a new product. This is an example of a mixed signal. It is a total mismatch to the message you really want to convey. This is another good reason why you should never redirect away from your landing page.
Sending mixed signals will cause confusion for your customers and lead them to lose their trust in your brand. Eliminate any confusion and ensure consistency in your message in both your ad and the headline and call-to-action of your landing page. You want to give your customers assurance that they landed on the right page.
8. It Isn’t Mobile Friendly
In today’s digital age, your potential customers will more likely search for your store using their smartphones. As of 2021, there are 6.4 billion smartphone users worldwide. This number is expected to reach 7 billion in 2024 and 7.5 billion by 2026. That’s a lot of potential traffic for your online store. If your online store is not mobile-friendly, you could be losing business from these potential customers.
Making your online store responsive to mobile will make it easier for customers to view your website on their mobile devices. The text and layout of your ecommerce store may look too small on mobile devices so you need to change them to ensure a better user experience. 62% of customers are less likely to make a purchase if they have a negative mobile experience.
When creating your landing page, ensure that all integrations are working. In addition, you want to make sure that your page will behave as nicely on your smartphone as on your desktop computer. You can test the mobile responsiveness of your landing page even before you publish it. Customers are more likely to convert if they can see what they are clicking on.
9. You Don’t Have A Target Audience
Which segment of the market are you specifically targeting? If you don’t have one, then you are doing something wrong. When creating a landing page, keep in mind that you cannot target every visitor coming to your website. Look for the ones who will most likely buy what you are selling. You cannot make your products available to everyone. No matter how far-reaching the benefits of your products are, it might not be the right solution for everyone.
Your target audience should be customers who will likely need the product you are selling. Once you have identified your target audience, match your offer to their needs. Make your landing page to your target audience by providing them with offerings matching their needs.
Having a target audience will allow you to look at your products and services more deeply. By putting yourself in their shoes, you will be able to deliver better results. You will be able to save money on worthless campaigns and work on ones that will truly cater to your target audience.
10. Your Design Is Too Crowded
While it isn’t necessary, implementing a minimalistic design for your landing page often delivers more results compared to an overcrowded one. Minimalism on your landing page will give more space for your users so that their eyes can wander naturally. In addition, this will allow their eyes to settle on the most important part of your content.
A crowded design can both be distracting and overwhelming to your customers which can greatly impact customer satisfaction. This does not mean that you should lessen the amount of your offer but space it out for users for them to be able to digest them more effectively. An effective landing page should not be cluttered.
Embrace white space and remove the global navigation bar. Keep your body text simple, succinct, and straightforward. More importantly, ensure that the essential elements of your landing page like the CTA button, headline, and others are above the fold. Replace text blocks with bullet points.
Landing pages are vital to driving traffic and generating sales for your online store. If it isn’t achieving that goal, then you should do something to ensure that your landing page does what it was designed to do. These tips will help you make the necessary fix to your landing pages.
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