Why Your Website Isn’t Converting
By: Jason Mcmahon
Tags: Conversion Optimization, Landing Page Optimization, Website, Website Design, Marketing

Before we get too involved in the details, we need to clarify what a landing page is, and how they should be used.

What exactly is a landing page?

Believe it or not, a landing page is not necessarily your home page. Sure, most of your traffic might land there, but this just happens by default, and is not necessarily the best idea for maximising revenue. It is a common mistake to just send all traffic to your home page, in the belief that visitors will eventually find what they want, and buy from you. But, this is not how customers work online!

A business that is serious about turning customers into leads creates a real landing page. This is where you create a single page that contains an offer, and a way for them to get in touch with you, that really grabs their attention.

Let’s look at a quick example…

A large law firm in Brisbane may have a website divided into different areas:

Criminal

Civil

Family

Conveyancing

Intellectual property

Corporate

All of these areas are targeting people with highly different needs, so we need to send them to different landing pages.

When they run different campaigns to get traffic to each website, they will want the visitor to have absolutely no trouble at all knowing what they are offering, and what to do next. A campaign might look like this:

Conveyancing ads on Google — lead to — landing page that has a headline saying:

“Conveyancing Anywhere In Brisbane, Any Real Estate, Any Size Call Us Now To Discuss Your Property Needs”.

Next — A short overview of what the company offers, and why the customer should choose them.

Then add some credibility with awards your firm has won, testimonials or professional associations you are involved with to build trust with the customer.

Under this, they would have their street address, phone, and email details with a contact form, and possibly an email capture form. They may or may not choose to list their prices depending on the strategy of the business and/or campaign.

Can you see how much more effective this would be than to just send them to the home page where they might be confused, lost, and just leave? Businesses that operate purely online know exactly how powerful these pages are — think about the last time you saw an eBay or Amazon ad.

Chances are that if you searched eBay for an authentic 1800s French decanter, and then left without buying anything, the next eBay ads displayed to you will be about antique decanters, and if you click on it, eBay takes you to a page showing exactly what you searched for.

These billion dollar businesses know what works — now let’s use the same tactics on your website with these top five landing page tips:

1. Beware of information overload

Walls of text terrify customers. Even avid readers would prefer a mystery or a crime read than a tidal wave of text on your site. Keep it quick, informative, show the main benefits, break up text with images, bullets and subheads, and cut out everything that is immaterial to your customer.

2. Give a call to action

The primary objective of your website is to get business — so ask for it! After your headline and a quick overview of your main benefits, get them to fill in their name, email and phone number, and provide your details if they want to contact you.

3. Grab their attention

Visit your own site, give yourself 5 seconds to see what you can take in, and try to think objectively if your website is attention grabbing — compare yourself to other websites. Five measly seconds is the amount of time the average customer will give a website before they either decide they’ll stick around to find out more, or exit.

4. Loading times and flexibility

The penetration of tablets and smartphones is so deep that you absolutely have to cater for these markets, as a huge proportion of Australia now considers this their main way of staying connected. Ensure your site caters to all devices, and watch that it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to load.

5. Test, test, test

A website is great, but what’s even better, is a website that is constantly getting better and making you more money. Testing and tracking your bounce rates, conversion rates, traffic sources and landing pages, are just a few of the main metrics you should know. Once you test your site through analytics — you can try another landing page, and if it works better, replace the original with it. Then you can stack up another competitor for your current champion page.

A series of landing pages targeting your different customers is a powerful ally to have which can drastically increase your conversions and profits. Testing is the best way to achieve your campaign goals, and one of the things that most businesses forget to do, so use it to your advantage.

Photo Credit (Flickr)