In today’s business environment, a company doesn’t have a presence unless it has a website. With the majority of people using the online world to shop, interact with others, communicate, and research, a website is a key way for your business to be seen and noticed by potential customers. That’s why landing page strategies as part of your online presence are essential. A landing page is a page your visitor arrives at after doing a Google search, clicking on an advertisement on a social media channel, responding to an email Call to Action, or looking up your business on the Internet.
Here are some of the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to creating an effective landing page.
1. Sending Site Visitors to Your Homepage
You will know from visiting many yourself that a site’s homepage usually contains a lot of information; different details about who you are, the services or products you provide, your experience, or information about what you do in a broad sense. A homepage is often a catch-all page that is the front face, or storefront, of your website.
The #1 biggest mistake you can make with a landing page is to simply send site visitors to your homepage. As Venturi Web Design states:
When your web page is not about any one thing, it’s diluted. It has no real focus because it’s about everything.
Why is this a problem?
Because one way Google decides where your page ranks in search engine results is by relevance (and other advanced metrics.)
If your homepage is in an overview of your ten services, and your competitor’s page is about one specific service that matches what prospects are searching for, your competitor’s page will outrank yours.
A landing page is different than a homepage; it’s a page created specifically as a response to a link or Call to Action you’ve offered to a potential customer.
That isn’t to say you don’t need a homepage with high-level information; you do. However, when you provide a link for customers to engage with, the key is for that link to route to a specific page tied to the link. That way, your customers won’t have to search your site for what they want, you’ll increase your Google ranking, and you’ll likely have visitors stay on your site longer.
2. Creating Color and Graphic Overwhelm
How many graphic elements are on your landing page? Is it packed with images and video links that might overwhelm your page visitors?
While using media to break up or add value to a landing page is important, you must ask, How much is too much? A landing page should be clean and easy to read. If the page is long, use one or two clean, coordinated graphic elements to break up the text. Any more than that, and your visitors could feel overwhelmed.
The same goes for font, color, and text size and consistency. If you choose to use a rainbow of color on your page, especially bright colors, your page quickly becomes unattractive to your readers.
Think of it this way. What happens when you walk into a store that’s jam-packed full of products? Maybe you’re confronted with tightly packed, row-upon-row of shelves stacked high with a mishmash of items to buy. Is it easy to find what you’re looking for and purchase it? Or do you give up and abandon your quest? Customers feel overwhelmed when we confront them with sensory overload and they’re less likely to press on.
That’s not the experience you want your landing page visitors to have. Instead, you want them to know exactly what your page message is and what they need to do to take the next step. Don’t be afraid to leave white space on your page, use colors that appeal to visitors, and make your content easy to read.
3. Not Having a Call to Action
Your landing page should have a clear purpose. It should take your visitor on a journey with a destination at the end. That destination might be to download a free item, sign up for a webinar, purchase a product, or schedule a discovery call. Whatever the destination is for your landing page, make sure it’s clear, accessible, and inviting to visitors.
If you’re unclear about what your landing page’s purpose is, you won’t be able to deliver a strong Call to Action (CTA). If your CTA isn’t well-planned or obvious, you’ve wasted your landing page. If you’re confused about what your CTA should be, remember that your landing page is where you take your visitor on a journey. You want your visitor to discover one specific thing — a product, a service, a topic.
The critical thing here is to build your page authority and increase your site ranking. Mapping your landing page content and creating a clear Call to Action will help with that.
4. Broken Landing Page Links…and Broken Connections
There is nothing worse than arriving at a landing page, reading the journey and deciding to click for more information, only to discover that the link doesn’t go anywhere. This is likely because the linked page is no longer available on the original site or it’s been moved.
Even worse are CTA links that are broken. For example, you might lead your page visitors to a form to fill in their information so you can contact them, but the link is broken. So your visitors are excited to have found you, they want your help…but they have no way of actually getting it because they can’t get to your intake form.
Any broken links on your landing page creates a break in your customer connection. For visitors, it will feel as though you don’t care enough to provide the correct information. Or, they’ll view it as a sign that your service or product may be of the same quality as your broken landing page. All it takes is one simple broken link.
Today, customers have a lot of choices for items or service providers available. You don’t want your hard-earned site visitors to go somewhere else. So treat your landing pages as a connector to your ideal clients. Check the links on your pages often. If your site links always work, your potential customers will view that as a positive thing that encourages them to stay in the relationship with you. Working links on all landing pages help keep your customer connection strong.
A landing page is an opportunity to engage more fully with a potential client or customer. When you deliver an appealing and accessible journey that presents visitors with a clear and effective call to action, you won’t make rookie landing page mistakes.
