Landing Page Design: Common Mistakes & Counter-Measures to Sell Effectively

As a Bollywood lover, I have often experienced entry of the lead actor or actress as opulently grand, for which the audiences are being overwhelmingly hooked to because they love what's getting screened. Likewise, the landing page of your website, where one enters the first after being redirected from your ad campaign, must be highly relevant, meaningful and interesting for your targeted audience, so that you're not only able to crush the competition, but also boost your core commercial intent i.e. 'Sales'.

But a majority of website owners often undervalue the importance of landing page design and fail to pay attention to certain aspects. This leads to common mistakes which results in high bounce rate, thus sale plunges over the period. And the dream of celebrating the promotion fete goes murkier.

For the higher conversion of business leads, the advertisement and its landing page need to be well orchestrated for which dedicating some extra time & efforts will certainly pay off. I have conflated the common mistakes as well as some counter-measures to deal with the landing page design and tweak it up for higher sales. So, let's have a look.

Hidden And Ineffective CTAs

CTAs aka Call To Actions should stand out on your landing page so that the user is redirected to perform the task that you want him/her to. Most of the designers add too many elements on the landing page to attract the user which may overshadow or hide the CTA. Some may even add CTAs that do not go with the ad that led the user to the landing page which may nullify all your ad efforts. Not having clear call to actions on your landing page that pops up right after the landing page loads may be hampering your conversion. In fact, many designers add multiple actions on the landing page which may bury the real action under the fold.

Counter Measures : In order to increase your conversion, it is indispensable that you add effective CTAs on your landing page. Color matters in your CTA and should be chosen after studying the target audience. Make the CTA pop out on the landing page and compel the user to click on it.

Different Ad And Page Headline

Another big mistake made by designers is top mess up the headline. Having a different headline for the ad and not using it on the landing page may leave the user in a state of confusion. The clarity and brevity of headline play a crucial role in conversion. The headline on the ad that redirects to the landing page should be same as that used on the page or otherwise the user may feel cheated with poorly matched promises.

Counter Measures: In order to increase conversion and ultimately boost sales, it is crucial that you put an effective headline that goes perfectly with the ad. This way you not only keep the user's attention but also ensure that the offer that attracted them in the first place is real and not fake. Make consistency and ad-matching headline your landing page anthem to see higher conversions and ultimately boosted sales.

Too Slow To Load

Designers add a number of elements and high-quality images on the landing page that affect its speed and make it slow to load. A landing page that doesn't load up within 5 seconds of clicking on the ad would be bailed by almost 74% of the users. If the users don't stick around long to see what your page has to offer, there's no use putting effective CTAs and matching headline in the first place.

Counter Measure: Various measures can be taken to boost the landing page speed. You can compress and resize the images, de-clutter the mess, upgrade the hosting and then test for speed from time to time to ensure that it loads in less than 3 seconds. Various tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights tool and Pingdom can be used to measure and analyze the page load speed as well.

Many Visual Distractions

The biggest mistake you can do to your landing page is to forget what its main purpose is. Remember, all your efforts should be directed towards getting the people to act and not indulge in other tasks on the page. I've seen a number of designers who put in many elements on the landing page like images, videos, GIFs, and large content that may be distracting the audience. It makes the user divert from the actual path of clicking the CTA and get distracted by other stuff on the page.

Counter Measure: You need to adopt the KISS mantra for your landing page, i.e., Keep It Simple, Stupid. Have one goal and be specific about it. Include all the must haves for your landing page to upsurge your conversion rates and in turn your sales. Have a to the point CTA and avoid any other type of visual distractions from the page that could grab the user's attention. If necessary, use the minimalist approach and use a single image with bold text on it and an effective CTA placed strategically where it grabs all the attention.

Complicated Forms

I've come across a number of landing pages that direct the user to fill numerous complicated forms and trust me all they do is trigger the user to click the 'Back button instantly. Adding a 3-5 field form would not do much harm and help in gathering data/subscriptions. However, a complicated form in the landing page is a big NO.

Counter Measure: If you do not want to lose those extra leads you've generated using the extra efforts of ad campaign, replace the forms in the landing page with effective call to actions. If the form is an integral part of the ad campaign, keep it simple with no unnecessary fields. Do not ask too much information from the user. Offer something useful every time like news subscription, upgrades, tools etc., for free to grasp the fancy of the user while also getting their useful information. Once you have the information, use that data effectively to retarget those users for increased chances of sales.

These may not be all but are definitely five of the biggest mistakes that you could make on a landing page. Avoid making any of these mistakes and follow the counter-measures in your landing page design to see your sales shooting up. Have a look at your landing page and check if you recognize any of these mistakes. Hurry up and use the counter-measures to see your sales increase effectively in no time.