A bar chart showing the average sign-up rate across four different types of sign-ups. Data taken from Omnisend.
According to Hubspot, ‘The average landing page conversion rate across all industries is 9.7%, with landing pages having the highest conversion rate (23%) between all types of sign-up forms.’ This means that your landing pages should be easy to navigate, with clear call-to-action (CTA) and fulfil exactly what your customers are looking for. However, it can be difficult to get a landing page to convert as well as you would like. If you would like a high converting landing page, you should consider the following reasons:
1. Your landing page is too overwhelming
Your landing page is designed to give relevant information while giving clear call-to-actions to allow the customer to convert. If you have too much content or what you write is irrelevant, the customer may not buy from you as they will be too overwhelmed. Having irrelevant content can also confuse the customer; they may not receive all of the answers they need to their concerns, or they may not understand the service.
Having too much choice can impact the time it takes for a customer to make a decision. According to Hick’s Law, the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. This essentially means that having too much CTA on your landing page will increase the time for the customer to make a decision, which can harm your conversion rate.
2. The Tone of Your Landing Page is Wrong
Choosing the correct tone of voice to suit your target audience is essential in making sure they convert as well as possible. Think about who you are creating your landing page for, how is the best way to speak to them? For example, a landing page advertising kid’s birthday parties should differ drastically in tone to a landing page on a lawyer’s website.
Choosing the right tone for your page can be the difference between a user feeling a connection with your business and it’s message or not, which can therefore lead to them converting or not.
3. Your landing page is confusing
Conflicting copy, unrelated images and too many call-to-actions can result in a customer being confused, and refusing to convert. All call-to-actions should have a clear and precise purpose, and should make the user experience a lot better. The customer should be able to easily understand the service being offered and should know how to navigate your website with ease. If this is not the case, you should review your content and look for ways to reduce any confusion.
4. Your landing page is too slow
According to SEMrush, ‘a good goal to aim for is 1 -2 second load speed for a website.’ This means that your website should aim to take no longer than two seconds to load the page. Anything above this threshold will significantly impact drop-offs.
Portent reported that ‘Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5)’, meaning your pages have to be optimised to prevent drop-offs. Click here to read our article on ten ways to improve your site speed.
5. Your website is not mobile-friendly
According to Broadband Search, in 2021 56% of all web search traffic is from mobile devices, with desktop taking up 42%, and the remainder going to tablet devices. If your landing pages are not mobile-friendly, you could be losing half of your potential customers just by not having a functioning and accessible website on mobile. Make sure you test your website on mobile and tablet devices to ensure that you are maximising conversions.
6. There is not enough urgency
Creating a sense of urgency on your landing page can help convert those who are unsure about purchasing from you. For example, if you have a great deal on one of your products or services, create urgency by showing how many people have purchased it/placed it in their cart, or a countdown of when the promotion will expire.
7. You’re asking for too much personal information
If this is the customer’s first experience with your brand and website, they will be less willing to give you lots of information straight away. Asking for loads of personal information when filling out the form can turn customers away when they do not have enough trust in your brand. To counter this, you should add a testimonials section to your landing page, or ask for as little details as possible, such as only asking for an email address, or nothing at all.
If you do not ask for any information, you can link to a Contact Us or Book An Appointment page where the customer may feel safer giving personal information. This should help increase conversions.
Fixing your content
To fix your content, you first must understand the problem with it. Take into consideration feedback from your clients and peers to make sure that the page is fully optimised and engaging enough to convince the customers to convert.
It is useful to think like one of your customers: what specifically are your customers looking for? What content and facts do they want to see and how? Once you establish what content you need, you can amend your landing page to reflect this. If you change any content, you should also check your load speed to make sure it has not been impacted by the changes.
Another way you could fix your content is by breaking your offers down further. You should only have one main offer or service per page to allow the decision process to be faster. If you currently have multiple offers on your landing page, you should look to separate them by creating more landing pages. If you create more landing pages, you should create a landing page template that you can add to, depending on the service or product being advertised.
In addition to this, you can also use actionable tools to help fix your website. Two honourable tools are Google Tag Manager, which measures interactions on the page, and HotJar, which measures how people use the site and interact with it.
Any call-to-actions should stand out. You can do this by contrasting the colours, and by giving a bit more information. You should avoid using buttons that say “download”, and instead make them have a bit more information and a reason why to click on the button, such as “download our pdf to optimise your landing page”.
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