10 Reasons Your Landing Page Isn’t Converting

Making a great landing page is both an art and a science.

It’s a well-known fact that an excellent average landing page conversion rate across industries hovers around 10%. If yours doesn’t quite match with your competitors’, you could be losing valuable opportunities every single day. 

Conversion rate optimization is an important part of any digital growth strategy. As your business grows, the profitability of your landing pages grows as well. Optimizing those pages can dramatically increase the profitability of your website.

Here’s a simple example: 

Imagine you have 100,000 page visits per month and make an average of $50 in profit from every conversion event. Every 1% increase in your conversion rate correlates to a $50,000 increase in profits.

Research shows businesses that invest in landing page optimization can boost their conversions by up to 30%. Landing pages that address buyer fears directly can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. 

Despite these facts, many web creators struggle to profitably optimize their landing pages. From simple mistakes to major structural issues, there are tons of examples of landing page mistakes out there.

I’ve identified some of the most common landing page problems that web creators face and listed them here. If any of these situations apply to you, it may be time to revisit your landing page strategy and develop a new approach.

10 Common Landing Page Mistakes and How to Fix Them

1. You’re not using the right website builder for your use case

There are many different web platforms and site builders out there. Each one has a set of strengths and weaknesses that position it for a particular use case. Not all vendors are explicit about this, so it’s easy to get stuck using web software that isn’t appropriate for your scenario.

A one-person e-commerce startup doesn’t have the same needs a large-scale digital enterprise might. It will be difficult to profitably optimize your landing pages without the right tech stack for your business.

When looking for a website builder, try to identify the specific advantages each one offers. If those benefits complement your use case, you may be on the right track. 

Consider some of these popular options:

• Squarespace serves small businesses and entrepreneurs without development skills. It supports e-commerce and marketing through its own hosted editor, but offers limited functionality for growing businesses.
• Wix is an intuitive website builder that also targets small businesses and solo users. Like Squarespace, it compromises long-term scalability for immediate ease of use. Wix users don’t get hands-on control over every aspect of their website, which can get in the way of landing page optimization.
• WeWeb provides you with the ultimate freedom to visually design your frontend with its no-code editor or by coding your own React or Vue.js components. WeWeb developers have the ability to create and customize various elements of a web application, such as buttons, forms, and navigation bars. Once designed, they can be saved and reused as part of a UI kit.
• Landingi specializes in landing pages, which gives users a bit more customizability than generic website builders. It’s good at what it does, but can’t produce results unless it’s paired with other services. For example, its built-in analytics are not nearly as comprehensive as they should be.
• Unbounce is another landing page-specific website builder that does a good job achieving its goals. Its templates are of high quality, although there is a limited supply of them. It’s ideal for agencies and mid-market businesses that need specific solutions to their landing page problems.
• WordPress is actually a content management system (CMS) that hosts a variety of systems and plugins. These plugins include website builders like Elementor alongside thousands of complementary apps and solutions. It boasts a versatile landing page builder and is an ideal solution for growth-oriented small businesses that demand scalability.
• Whatever platform you choose, you can use Common Ninja’s free widgets to further enhance your website.

2. Your landing page isn’t fast enough 

Page load speed is one of the biggest obstacles to landing page success. Not only is it a major search engine ranking factor, but it also has a significant impact on conversion rates. Slowing down page load time by one second drops conversions by an average of 4.42%.

Multiple factors influence your page load speed. These include basic things like the size of uploaded images to behind-the-scenes elements like the way code is structured. Google has listed some of the most important page load speed metrics as Core Web Vitals.

All else considered equal, your hosting provider is the one most important factor contributing to your website’s page load speed. The more powerful your hosting service is, the faster your page will load. Better hosting improves your ability to respond to peak traffic without slowing down website performance.

Generic hosted website builders don’t usually allow users to optimize web page loading speed. This is one of the reasons why they are so difficult to scale upwards with growth. If your website doubles its traffic in one month, the host may not dedicate enough resources to ensure a good experience for every visitor.

Dedicated hosting services give web creators the ability to overcome these challenges, but are not friendly to non-technical users. A scalable cloud hosting solution offers an elegant, powerful solution for website owners that prize consistent performance.

3. Your website isn’t optimized for mobile 

Mobile devices have long surpassed desktops to become the number-one way people access the Internet. Regardless of what industry your website operates in, there’s a good chance the majority of your users are logging on on smartphones, tablets, and other touchscreen devices.

When that happens, does your website respond by giving them a mobile-optimized user experience? Or does it show them an exact copy of your desktop site, reducing visibility and ruining site navigation in the process?

A mobile user accessing a non-optimized website will rarely demonstrate the patience necessary to convert. In most cases, they’ll simply click away and find another way to get what they’re looking for – most likely from one of your competitors.

Everyone knows that mobile optimization is incredibly important for landing page success. Despite that fact, there are landing page builders out there that do not adequately optimize pages for mobile users.

If you’re using a website builder that isn’t fully responsive by default, you may be losing valuable time and money. Opt for a solution that automatically optimizes your web pages for mobile and can show you exactly how your landing pages look on various Android and iOS devices.

4. Your calls-to-action are not convincing enough

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are one of the most important elements of landing page design. These are the links, buttons, and images that tell users exactly what you want them to do. CTAs tell users to buy your product, to sign up for your newsletter, or to register for your next event.

Marketing experts have spent a lot of time and energy identifying exactly what makes a CTA work. Modifying the way your CTAs look and how they’re placed can make a significant difference in your overall conversion rate.

For example, placing CTAs in uncluttered areas so they attract attention can increase conversions by 232%. Making CTAs look like buttons can boost the number of clicks by up to 45%.

Sometimes, adding graphical elements like arrow icons or check marks can improve CTA performance as well. In general, the bigger and more obvious the CTA is, the more likely visitors will respond favorably to it.

5. You haven’t perfected the art of non-intrusive, converting popups

When it comes to popups, you’ll find two main modes of thought among digital marketers:

• Some are unapologetic popup evangelists. They put popups everywhere, often set to trigger the second a visitor opens the web page. They might tell you that if conversion rates improve, disrupting the user experience for other web page visitors doesn’t matter.
• Others are firmly against popups. They’ll tell you that nothing is worth disrupting the user experience. If visitors want to convert, they’ll do it on their own – you don’t have to push them to it.

There is room for a middle ground between these two extremes. Popups don’t have to disrupt the user experience. You can configure them to trigger only when users perform specific actions – most popup apps have this feature. This can make your landing page much more successful without distancing users who are not yet ready to convert.

For example, you might want to program CTA popups to trigger after a visitor interacts with three different landing pages on your website. You could set a highly targeted popup to trigger after visitors interact with a video on your landing page.

By narrowly defining which web page visitors see popups, you gain the ability to use popup content to qualify leads. Since you have a well-defined audience in mind, you can actually use popups to enhance the user experience instead of disrupting it. That’s when you’ll start seeing significant improvements to your conversion rate.

6. Your design is too elaborate or too cluttered to immediately make sense

It can be tempting to make your landing page as impressive as possible. After all, website visitors may be entirely unfamiliar with your brand – why not introduce them to it in the biggest possible way?

Well, it might confuse them, for one. Remember that many of your landing page visitors are on mobile devices. Even the most immersive design scheme will fall short of your expectations when displayed on a handheld device. If it gets in the way of navigation or accessibility, you can expect a large number of users to simply quit and look elsewhere.

Additionally, elaborate design schemes often require extensive custom JavaScript to function. All that extra code weighs down your website and forces your hosting service to work harder – and you pay the price for it. If website performance suffers as a result of your design scheme, so will your conversion rate.

When designing a landing page, simplicity is almost always the right way to go. A lean, informative landing page will outperform even the most spectacular automated design in most cases. Introduce your products and services plainly, and make their value obvious to visitors. If you do this right, the most impressive part of your website will be its profitability. On your way, some personalization software can help you create personalized experiences to your unique visitors’ needs and interests by using Smart Banners, Dynamic Category Optimizer, Survey Templates, and more.

7. Your headers, sub-headers and overall copy sucks

Take a close look at your copy. Examine the words you’re using to describe your product or service. Does your brand come off as a confident, successful business led by people who know what they’re doing? Or does it come off as disoriented, insecure, or simply irrelevant?

Writing great copy looks easy, but it isn’t. Your landing page has to identify a problem, introduce its solution, and make a convincing argument without losing visitors’ attention along the way. It can be hard to tell where your copy is going wrong without a second opinion from an expert.

However, there are a few quick things you can do to improve your landing page copy right now:

• Keep it simple. Avoid complex words and sentences. Explain the value of your product or service, but don’t let the details bog you down. 
• Focus on specific benefits. Landing page visitors already know you’re here to solve their problems. There’s no need to spend time introducing your product or service as a solution. Simply dive straight into the value that makes your solution stand out for their particular use case.
• Write authoritative headlines. Most visitors will skim through your titles and headers before reading anything else. Strong, confident headers can go a long way towards establishing your brand as a trustworthy source of information – even if your paragraph sections aren’t as well-written.
• Read your copy aloud. Go ahead and read your landing page as if you were delivering a sales pitch to a potential customer right in front of you. If it doesn’t sound convincing, revise it until it does.

8. You aren’t harnessing the power of video correctly

Videos are an excellent addition to any landing page because they can do things that text and imagery doesn’t. Video content is uniquely engaging and incredibly effective, partially because video transmits emotion far better than any other medium.

But that’s not all video is good for. Video is the ideal content format for explaining complex subjects in an entertaining way. This makes video a great way to introduce complicated problems or solutions. 

Instead of forcing visitors to read multiple paragraphs of text, try embedding a short, easy-to-understand video that covers everything they need to know. That gives you room to use your text content more effectively.

However, the best digital marketers take video one step further than that. Specialized video hosting platforms let you actually gather analytics data on video engagement. This enables you to continuously improve video content and optimize it along with the rest of your landing page content.

9. You aren’t A/B testing

With so many different elements working together, it might be hard to imagine exactly what your fully optimized landing page should look like. In fact, it’s virtually guaranteed.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make changes, though. It simply means you have to qualify the changes you make by testing them. One of the best ways you can do that is through A/B testing.

A/B testing is the process of creating, publishing, and analyzing two different versions of the same web page. Typically, the only difference between those two pages is a single element. It could be a certain CTA phrase, the color of a particular button, or anything else. If one page outperforms the other, that means it is the better-optimized variant.

A/B testing gives you a scientific way to test your intuitions about landing page design. You might be surprised by what you learn about your audience’s preferences and behaviors. Changing one word in a landing page header can reveal things about your audience you may never have guessed otherwise – and provide you with new opportunities to increase conversions.

10. You haven’t created high-quality links for it to rank

For your website to turn a profit, its landing pages must successfully attract visitors. The more visitors you get on your optimized landing page, the more conversions you’ll earn as a result.

Many marketing experts rely on search engine optimization to deliver a steady stream of qualified website visitors to their landing pages. By getting those pages to rank for specific search terms, they ensure a significant number of visitors will be people actively searching for the solution that landing page offers.

Search engines like Google use incredibly complex algorithms to determine which web pages rank and which ones do not. High-quality backlinks are among the most valuable factors in these calculations, since they offer a clear recommendation from a highly trusted, authoritative source.

Getting high-quality backlinks is easier said than done. High domain authority website owners know how valuable those links are. Instead of trying to jump straight to the top, consider developing relationships with industry partners and using guest posts for mutual ranking benefits.

Start fixing your landing page issues today

If your landing page conveys a clear message, delivers a stellar user experience, and has a strong call-to-action, you’ve already won half the battle. However, winning the next half can be a much more delicate process because of the many variables involved.

You absolutely can improve landing page performance on your own, even if you don’t know how to code. High quality code-free website builders and other tools for non-technical web creators can help you transform your landing pages into highly optimized profit generators. Use this opportunity to delight new customers and grow your business starting today.