Landing Page Doesn’t Convert? Here’s What You Should Do
By: Jason Mcmahon
Tags: SEO, Landing Pages, Marketing, Landing Page Optimization, Digital Marketing

According to data by Tony Haile of Chartbeat, customers view your website for 15 seconds or less. It’s enough time for them to do a big scroll, read bits and pieces of content, and decide whether to stay and soak in what you have on offer or leave and continue their search.

What customers can do in 15 seconds on your website

Read a compelling headline

Enter their email address to subscribe to your mailing list

Add a product to their shopping cart

Contact you through click to call

What customers can’t do in 15 seconds on your website

Read 500 words of content on your homepage to know who you are and what you can do for them

Sift through pages and pages of content to find how to contact you

Search every nook and cranny to know if you have what they need (aka that product or statement that answers to ‘Can you help me?’)

If it takes longer than a quarter of a minute for your landing page to communicate your unique selling proposition, customers will move on to the next. You know what’s worse? If you actually spent ad money to take them to your site, only for them to leave disinterested.

Why your landing page isn’t converting and ways to fix it

1. Your message isn’t clear

Write with customers in mind. If you have what they are looking for, make sure they know from the get go. Also, the unique selling proposition that made them click from a search page should be communicated throughout your landing page. Having conflicting information confuses customers. The last thing you want to do when you want to convert is to make customers feel deceived. Keep messaging consistent across these four main pieces of content:

Headline

Supporting headline

Reinforcement statement

Closing argument

2. There are no images to break up the text and keep things interesting

Don’t forget about images. Without them, pages look bare and incomplete. Choosing a hero image is very important. Make it too loud and it distracts customers; too muted and it would seem like a random addition. Every element on your landing page should have a purpose. Use an image to help customer envision the product or service they’re going to get or a video that shows benefits and context of use.

3. Customers don’t know how helpful your product/service can be

You have a compelling headline and image/video that captured your customer’s full attention — great. But, after scrolling down for more information, your customers find nothing else. Customers need convincing. They need you to tell them why they should sign up or buy your product. You can do this by having a bullet point list that summarises the benefits and/or features of your product or showing how your product works and explaining how it makes lives better.

4. There is nothing/no one to back your claims

You’ve listed a hundred and one reasons why your product is a life-saver. Your customers are thrilled, but they’re worried it might be too good to be true. You need social proof, which comes in many forms. It could be a positive review left by one of your happy customers, approval from credible experts in the relevant field, paid or unpaid endorsements from celebrities/influencers, etc.

5. Your landing page doesn’t have a call-to-action

Your customers are convinced and they’re ready to convert. They reach the end of your landing page, feeling very excited. Now what? You tell them to act on it, and fast. Your landing page has one goal: to make customers respond to your call-to-action. This could be signing up for an account, downloading an eBook, subscribing to your newsletter, or directing them to a product page. Goals vary, but one thing’s sure, once they’ve clicked to convert, your landing page has done its job.

Once again, the five elements of a high converting landing page:

Unique selling proposition

Hero shot (images or videos)

Benefits

Social proof

Call to action

Here is an example of a landing page structure from Unbounce that contains all the above elements. Notice how it was laid out:

Get more leads and conversions by having a high converting landing page. Bambrick Media has designed and created websites with effective landing pages for a number of Australian businesses in its 15 years of trade. Contact us today and we’ll help turn your landing page into a winner.