Article updated on December 12th, 2018.
Are you confused as to why your landing page has a low conversion rate?
Are you getting traffic from your paid ads but no return on your spend?
These are clear signs that your landing page may have some issues and needs to be reviewed.
If you have low conversion rates and aren’t getting a return from your ad spend, then you need to work on your landing page and not invest more to get more traffic.
Putting more money into your paid campaigns may get you more sales, but it will not increase conversion rates or ROI so you will be no better off.
Why are Landing Pages So Important?
Your landing page is the first thing somebody sees after clicking on one of your ads. It’s your chance to make a first impression.
Have you ever met someone who made a terrible first impression? It almost didn’t matter what they did after that. That first impression sticks with you long after the initial moment.
The same holds true for your landing page. Start off on the right foot, and your audience will respond more positively. Give them a bad first impression, and the chances of them going further down your sales funnel only decrease.
An optimized landing page sets a customer on the right path. It gives them clear choices on how to proceed and increases conversions.
The benefits of landing pages are many, but some pages still don’t accomplish the goal of converting more customers.
Perhaps yours falls under this category.
To help you diagnose what is wrong with your landing page, I have listed 7 of the most common causes of landing page failures.
Remember though that it is always best to make one change to your landing page at a time to split test whether that change does, in fact, lead to increased conversion rates.
Here are 7 reasons why people leave your landing page before taking action:
1. Poor Or Outdated Landing Page Design
The reason people may be bouncing from your landing page is because of its design.
If the layout of the landing page is poor or the design is outdated, then people are more than likely going to click to go back to the search results to find a better alternative. Poor design may come from a lack of design expertise or simply using bad landing page design software.
We all love to look at things that are attractive such as the sunset, a piece of art or a well-presented dinner.
This counts for landing pages too. People want to land on a page that is visually striking in all the right way and is also easily digestible.
2. Content That Is Unclear
You have just a few short seconds to attract the person who has landed on your page and entice them to stay.
Because you have just a few short seconds, it is important that the content on the page is clear and compelling.
Make sure that you have one main heading as well as a few clear subheadings.
These headings should outline what you are offering and its main benefits.
Make this easily skimmable so that it can all be digested in a few short seconds.
Another thing is to make sure that these headings and content is clearly visible.
For example, having a white heading over an off-white background isn’t going to draw the eye easily.
3. Too Many Popups
Pop-ups have become very popular over the years, and almost every online business now has a popup asking for people to sign up for their newsletter or to get an exclusive offer.
While these popups have become a familiar sight on landing pages, it is important not to have too many popups so as to frustrate people or to distract them from your main goal.
I have been on a website before that has had a pop up in the center of the page asking me to subscribe to a newsletter, a pop at the bottom of the page asking if they can help me with anything and a pop up on the side of the page asking for my email address again for something I didn’t bother reading about.
This all happened in a couple of seconds which overwhelmed me and led me to click back to the search results page.
Your landing page should have one main goal and no distractions which having popups can cause.
4. Having An Auto Play Video
For me and many others, there is something about landing on a site and being bombarded by a video auto-playing that puts me off and makes me click back.
When I am working at the coffee house or o the train in between meetings, I find it embarrassing if some booming voice comes from my laptop.
I click on the website in a split second!
People like to have control over what content the wish to see or read which is why you should give them the choice of whether they want to watch your video rather than forcing it on them.
Having said that, this isn’t ALWAYS the case.
Split test it and see if it lifts conversions because ultimately, that’s the right answer.
If you visit some of ClickBank’s highest converting offers, most of them have VSLs which autoplay.
So this one could go either way.
5. Too Many Forms To Fill
One of the most distracting things about a landing page is when there are too many forms to fill.
As I said before, your landing page should have one goal and one goal only.
If you try and offer too many things at the same time, it is going to confuse people who will lead them to click back and go to a competitor.
To stop this from happening, have one solid form to capture leads on your landing page.
You can perhaps have two forms if you have a long scrolling landing page but you can split test which works best for your particular niche.
6. Your Offer Isn’t Relevant Or Enticing Enough
One of the main reasons why people aren’t converting on your landing page is because the offer either isn’t good enough or isn’t relevant to them.
You should map out your different customer personas and create landing pages that will be 100% relevant to each persona.
For example, for someone that has bought from you before you wouldn’t send them to a landing page with a first-time buyer offer.
As well as making sure the right people see the right offers, it is also important to make sure that your offers are enticing enough for them to give willingly of their information or buy.
For example, which do you think would be more enticing to people;
- To find out more information, fill out the quick form below.
- For a free 14 day trial, fill out the quick form below.
The 14-day free trial would be a lot more beneficial than the alternative offer.
7. Landing Page Not Relevant From The Paid Ad They Clicked On
I see this happening quite a lot with businesses who aren’t wholly experienced with paid advertising.
While I understand getting traffic to your landing pages is important, it is even more important that the traffic converts so you get a return on your spend.
Having a paid search ad that states something that cannot be found on your landing is a sure fire way to make bounce from your landing page and waste spend.
To stop this from happening, make sure that what you offer on the paid ad is exactly what you offer on the landing page.
For example, if I clicked on a paid search ad that said “loan calculator” I would expect to see a loan calculator on the landing page.
If I see a form on the landing page rather than a calculator, I would be inclined to click back to the search results to find the loan calculator I was looking for.
Nothing good comes from offering something on the paid ad that you don’t offer on the landing page.
All it will do is waste your ad spend and discourage people from clicking through to your website again.
Bonus Reason Why People Are Leaving Your Landing Page
8. Slow Loading Times
I’ll give you a bonus reason people may be leaving your landing page before taking action which is if it loads slowly.
There is nothing worse than clicking on something that piqued your interest on Facebook only to see a blank screen and a rotating loading icon.
People live fast lives and do not have the time to wait for your landing page to load even if they wanted to see what you had to offer.
If they wanted to see your offer they will just search for it and possibly ending up clicking on a competitor instead.
Make sure your landing pages load under 2 seconds to avoid wasted ad spend.
Landing Page Review Checklist
Now that you know some of the main reasons why people are clicking away from your landing page before taking action, it is also important to know what else to look for when reviewing your landing pages.
I have listed below a quick checklist which you can print and refer to when split testing and optimizing your landing pages.
- Does your landing page load in under 2 seconds?
- Does your landing page have too many popups that may distract from the goal?
- Are your headlines clear and compelling?
- Is the content on your landing page easily skimmable?
- Are you sending the right people to the right landing pages?
- Have you proofread for spelling and grammar errors?
- Is your landing page designed for mobile?
- Is your landing page well designed?
- Do images on the landing page distract from the call to action?
- Does your landing page have trust signals such as testimonials and brand logos?
- Is the form on your landing page easy to fill?
- Have you turned off auto play on any videos on the landing page?
- Does your landing page have one goal and one goal only?
- Is your landing page completely relevant to the paid ads it is linked to?
Why Optimize Your Landing Page?
This checklist is certainly useful, but it may mean some extra work on your part. So why go to that effort to optimize your landing page in the first place?
Optimizing a landing page is all about helping your audience make a decision. An optimized landing page is one that simplifies the decision making process for the customer. No more confusion and clutter. Just a clear call to action.
An optimized landing page can also help you generate leads. It allows you to get to know your customer further and discover how you may attract other visitors.
A well optimized landing page basically does most of the hard work for you. You don’t have to work tirelessly to get one customer to buy your product. You design one landing page for a segment of your target audience, then sit back as you watch it go to work.
If you optimize your landing page, you’ll also discover that it will rank higher on Google and other search engines. What better way to catch a customer’s eye than to have your page pop up when someone searches for what you sell?
Have you come across something on a website that has made you click away without taking action?
It would be interesting to hear so leave your comments below.
Is it really that bad if the Video is on Autoplay? I mean, I think for professional, bigger businesses it would be not the most professional-behavior to set the video on Autoplay. But for squeeze pages, I see everyone having an Autoplay Video and I am sure there’s a reason for that. You only have seconds to capture the visitors attention and if they still need to click on a video where there’s not much else than a video on the page (VSL page for example), then I would find it kind of annoying.
The Landing Pages for the DotComSecrets Book from Russel for example has AutoPlay too.
Would you make a difference here?
Autoplay is best to split test. It works better in some niches than it does in others. I’d always recommend split testing what’s been mentioned here and see how it affects your conversions 🙂 Just keep in mind some advertising networks (e.g. Facebook) don’t like autoplay and may penalize you for it, so always check that out before you start running paid traffic to avoid you ad account being shutdown.
Is there a way to compress a background image file to speed up load times?
You hit it with not auto loading videos but let us not forget the sites that start auto playing music as well. This is just as bad for most sites!
Yep agreed Joshua. Obviously split test things, but as a general rule of thumb I totally agree!
Thank you for sharing these points i will definitely keep in mind and hope that people will land on my page and take action.
Thanks & regards
https://www.millereditingcenter.com/
Very great article STEPHEN ESKETZIS 😉 And a lot of Golden Nuggets here.
The part about landing pages not being relevant to their ads is so common its becoming comical, relevancy isn’t at all that hard to understand, great ready overall 🙂
I have website related music field and because of it on my landing their lot's of video and audio file streaming. so because of that my website page speed always been low. is their any solutions for optimize my landing page ?