6 Landing Page Mistakes to Avoid
It’s safe to say that all businesses today leverage a website as part of their overall marketing strategy and a destination for lead gen campaigns and communications. Yet despite your best efforts, like many B2Bs, you might be finding that your campaigns are not generating the conversion levels you were hoping for—and it might be due to your landing pages (or lack thereof). Over 44% of B2Bs still direct prospects to their general homepage instead of tailored landing pages, despite research showing that targeted landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 300%.1 In a competitive economy so driven by digital engagement, having an optimal landing page experience is essential. To help, we’ve compiled some of the most common landing page mistakes, along with the best practices to help you improve them:
Mistake #1: Driving to a general homepage
Best practice: Create dedicated landing pages for different offers, campaigns, industries, and audiences
Landing pages should clearly match the topic and call-to-action (CTA) of the origin a prospect is coming from, making it easy for them to take the next actions. For example, if you’re running a series of ads promoting a new eBook, make sure you’re driving to a landing page specifically tailored to the eBook with a “download” form or button. The last thing you want is for someone to click on your ad and be brought to your general homepage where they then have to dig around to find the eBook they came for. They likely won’t bother and you’ll end up losing a potential lead. The more relevant your page is to the prospect, the more likely they will convert. Additionally, creating landing pages tailored to specific industries or audiences can also help demonstrate that you understand their unique needs while cutting down the number of steps they need to take to get to the information they need—essentially, shortening the path to conversion and increasing your odds of capturing the lead.
Mistake #2: Lacking demonstrable credibility
Best practice: Include testimonials, stats, case studies, or other proof-points
You can shout from the rooftop about how great your company or product is, but nothing speaks louder than the voice of your satisfied customers. In fact, 97% of B2B customers cited testimonials and peer recommendations as the most reliable type of content they consider in making purchasing decisions.2 Consider crafting a series of case studies around particular customers that experienced success or measurable change from an engagement with you. Not only can you create landing pages around these case studies themselves that can be leveraged for lead gen campaigns, but you can also pull out and highlight quotes, success stats, and other useful information you gathered to add credibility to your brand and throughout your site. Think about any other industry recognitions, awards, certifications or other accolades that you have, which can also help add credibility.
Mistake #3: Having too many competing offers and CTAs
Best practice: Keep offers succinct with a single offer per landing page
Avoid confusion and indecision by providing one clear call to action (CTA) per landing page. Make sure the CTA or offer is clearly visible and reflects the same CTA in your campaign that’s driving to the page. Having multiple different offers on a landing page can reduce your conversion rate by up to 266%,3 so it’s vital to keep things focused and straightforward. And like we covered earlier, it’s important to maintain consistency between the campaign and the action you’re requesting on your landing page. In other words, if you’re running an ad for a free trial, make sure your landing page reflects that one call to action—not multiple CTA buttons for a free trial, a resource download, contact us, etc., which can negate the prospect from taking the desired action you intended.
Mistake #4: Boring, text-heavy pages that lack visual appeal
Best practice: Add interest with images, graphics, and video
While you want your landing pages to be straightforward and easy to consume, that doesn’t mean it should be text-dominant and unengaging. At the very least try to add visual elements like images or graphics, but if possible, try to incorporate moving or interactive media like a GIF or video. Research shows that adding a video to landing page can increase conversions by 86 percent.4 The goal is to compel customers to download your content or sign up for your offer, and a professional, visually compelling landing page can help sway them to do so.
Mistake #5: Requesting too much personal information
Best practice: Ask for only what you really need
Once you get prospects to your landing page you are likely asking them to complete a form in order to download a piece of collateral, sign up for a free trial or demo, register for a webinar, or some similar action. People are becoming more and more selective with regard to the amount of personal information they’re willing to share with companies these days, so if you’re seeing a good amount of traffic coming from your campaigns, but then a big drop-off in those submitting their details, try reducing the amount of PII (Personally Identifying Information) you’re asking for. Do you really need to know their industry or job title at this stage or could you qualify details like that later to increase the likelihood that the prospect will complete the form? Another option is to make only 2 or 3 essential fields mandatory (like full name and email address), while leaving other “nice-to-haves” as optional inputs. But just keep in mind that the longer your form in general, whether it is all mandatory or optional, the more daunting it will appear—best to keep them looking as brief and quick as possible to increase the odds of submission.
Mistake #6: Not taking the time to A/B test
Best practice: Test, refine, and maximize impact
While A/B testing takes some extra time and effort, it can be crucial in helping you refine your approach. Try testing out different versions of your landing pages with different messaging, offers, or visuals to see what performs best for your audience and to enable further refinement. The more you can learn about what works (and what doesn’t) with your customers, the better you can tailor your future content and offers for maximum impact.
Want help taking your landing pages to the next level to increase your leads? Connect with our marketing experts at Cadence Preferred today!
