In the United States, there are almost 28 million small businesses. That’s a lot of competition!
So as a business owner, you want to find every way possible to stand out from the crowd. One great way to do this through effective landing pages.
But far too many companies make mistakes when designing their landing pages. So we’ve created this guide to help you avoid them.
Check out these 9 mistakes you should avoid when creating your landing pages.
1. Weak Calls to Action
If your calls to action are weak, your page is weak. It’s that simple.
Remember that the whole point of your landing pages is to either make sales or generate leads. Either way, you need to be able to convince your users to take action.
Make your CTAs stand out by using action-based language that invites them to take advantage of a specific benefit. A good example is “Start my free trial.” This invites them to take action and promises a great benefit.
Also, make your CTAs stand out by making them different colors than the rest of your text. Often, this happens in the form of buttons.
2. Bad Typography
The typography on your landing pages is key. If your visitors can’t easily read your copy, then your page is useless.
To avoid this, keep your fonts simple. Avoid cursive or script fonts in your body copy.
Also, keep your page limited to two or three fonts at the most. Having more than this will make your page feel messy and cluttered.
3. Vague Testimonials
Far too often, landing pages feature testimonials that are simply uninspiring. While it’s important to have testimonials, it’s also crucial to make sure the testimonials you use are super high quality.
They should be specific and include results. When possible, try to include numbers in them. For example, instead of a testimonial that says, “This product changed my life!” it’s much better to have one that says, “This product helped me improve my landing page conversion rates by 150%.”
Specific data is much more engaging.
4. Your Forms aren’t Optimized for Conversions
Forms are one of the biggest points of friction when it comes to your landing page. They make or break your entire process.
To make your forms more effective, start by thinking of your end goal. What information is absolutely necessary for you to collect in the form? What can you leave out?
For example, if you’re collecting someone’s credit card information you have to have their name, card info, and their billing address. There’s no way around it.
But if your goal is to collect email addresses to add to your email list, you really only need a first name and an email. Don’t add a phone number or other fields. However, if having their phone number would be super helpful down the road, you can consider adding it but not making it a mandatory field.
For more help with your landing pages, check out MailChimp’s free landing page creator.
5. You’re Missing the Benefits
One of the core parts of your landing page is the copy. And one of the key parts of your copy is the benefits that your audience will receive when they use your product or service.
But too many times, landing pages don’t even mention benefits. Don’t make this mistake!
In other cases, too many benefits are listed, providing too much information and making it over-complicated.
Stick to three or four benefits and keep them short. This will greatly benefit your business‘ bottom line.
6. Too Many Links
Remember that your landing page should lead your visitors in a clear direction. And there should only be one direction.
Get rid of any links that distract from this purpose. This also includes getting rid of your header and footer! You don’t want people to click away from your landing page because chances are that they won’t come back.
7. Bad Mobile Experience
It’s 2018. So if your page doesn’t work well on mobile devices, you’re in trouble!
In fact, a large portion of your visitors will come on a mobile device, so don’t forget to optimize both your mobile and desktop landing page experiences.
If you are using a builder, check to see that the code used is lightweight and will work well on mobile devices. When designing for mobile, use single column layouts that won’t stack weirdly on a smaller screen.
8. Slow Loading Landing Pages
Imagine this. You spend hours and hours designing a perfect, well-designed landing page. But when people come to it, it takes forever to load and so people leave.
Don’t let a slow loading speed ruin your landing page experience! The good news here though is that there are lots of things you can do to speed up your pages.
These include:
- Using web caching
- Optimizing and compressing your images
- Using a fast hosting service
- Performing regular speed tests and checks
- Reducing page redirects
- Keeping your code clean
Always remember that this is a situation that you have control over. But it does take consistent effort to make it happen.
This will also help your Google rankings increase. Google rewards pages that load quickly over pages that are slow.
9. Image Issues
The last key part of landing page design is imagery. Great photography and illustrations can totally transform your page and inspire action in your visitors.
High-quality images make your brand seem high quality and trustworthy. Use imagery that relates directly to your messaging.
Stock photos are a great option, but avoid using stock photography that’s overused throughout the internet. That will make your site feel generic.
Instead, take some time looking through the stock photo options to find ones that seem natural and that fit your brand.
Last but not least, make sure your image file sizes aren’t massive. This will slow down your page a lot and take a long time to load. Instead, use an image compressor to make them a reasonable size.
Final Thoughts
There you have it! 9 mistakes you should avoid while making your landing pages.
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