11 Mistakes That Kill the Conversions of Your Landing Page

We all know the importance of landing pages in affiliate marketing. But there are many marketers who become so reluctant in designing their landing pages that they end up creating poor converting landing pages. The sole purpose of a landing page is to help in increasing the conversion rate. Every landing page has one single mission and that is to convert the visitors to lead/sale. If not done properly then it can lead to a disaster, ending up in wasting advertising money and getting a poor conversion rate.

To help you with landing page optimization and conversion rate optimization, you must first know the reasons which kill your conversion rate. Here is a list of top “11 Mistakes That Kill the Conversions of Your Landing Page” which you should avoid in order to increase your conversion rate and maximize your profit.

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Landing Page Mistakes You Should Avoid

 

#1 Landing Page Design:- This is the first thing a visitor will notice when they arrive at your landing page. If your landing page has a poor design which isn’t visually appealing to them then they are more likely to bounce back to the place where they came from.

Another factor directly proportional to the landing design is its structure. You always need to make sure that everything you put up in your landing page is properly synchronized and in proper alignment with everything else so that it doesn’t provide any kind of distraction to the visitor.There is a very simple rule followed in advertising: “First impression is the last impression.” So if you can’t grab your visitor’s attention in the first place then you will be losing conversions.

Other factors are fonts of your landing page content (should be readable but nothing fancy) and should always use favicon to give it a professional touch.

If you are poor at landing page design, then you might consider using landing page builder:

#2 Headline:- Headline is the second most important factor that could kill your conversions instantly. When a visitor lands on your landing page, they first look out for the headline, which gives them an idea about what you are offering them. If you fail to grab the attention of your visitors with your headline or if the headline doesn’t match with the content of your landing page, then your landing page bounce rate will be higher and conversion rate will be pretty low.

The best way to deal with this is to use catchy headlines instead of generic or boring headlines and to make sure they reflect the context of your landing page. Every successful marketer tests different headlines, as its one of the biggest elements for landing page optimization. According to Moz: “80% of readers never make it past the headline.”

NativeAdBuzz has crafted a very nice article on headlines: 76 Headlines That Convert Scientifically

#3 Too Much Text:- Too much text on the landing page makes it cluttered and complex for the visitor. Don’t make your landing page look like an endless wall of text. If you do, then you will lose all your possible conversions. Don’t overload your visitors with information; rather, focus on conveying the message in short which you are trying to deliver.

The best way to achieve this is by using bullet points instead of paragraphs. Highlight certain text by using a bold font to draw visitor’s attention. Lastly, it highlights benefits and features of the offer you are offering them.

#4 Landing Page Images:- Lack of appealing images on landing pages makes the landing page looks dull. It is also a contributing factor for low conversions. Integration of relevant and appealing images makes the landing page look more personalized, more interesting and helps in grabbing visitor attention.

#5 Page Load Time:- As an advertiser, you just get a few seconds to grab a visitor’s attention and if your landing page takes too long to load then the visitor will abandon it even before the loading is completed. Your competitors will take the advantage and will convert those visitors into leads/sales. Page load time is one of the most important factors for better landing page optimization and improved conversion rate.

The best way to make sure your landing page loads faster is by using fewer JavaScripts, reducing unnecessary external calls from your landing page, using optimized images and html scripts. Host them on a VPS with CDN or on a cloud servers for good speed. Always check your landing page speed on tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or pingdom. Try to keep the load time under 1 second for landing pages (the less, the better it is) and under 3 seconds for standard websites. Landing pages with faster load time always have better conversion rates, so take it seriously.

#6 Call-To-Action (CTA):- There are many mistakes made by marketers and it is another most important contributing factor, like headlines, for low conversion rates. One small mistake in CTA could lose you a potential conversion. Some of the common mistakes are:

#7 Emotional Factor:- Our decision and action is mostly determined by our emotions, as we are all emotional beings. You can’t deny the impact emotions play in your decision-making process. Emotions trigger action in a visitor’s mind and help them in their decisions. As a result, it is widely used by marketers on their advertising campaigns for better engagement.

One of the common mistakes I have seen in many landing pages is that they don’t use any emotional triggers, therefore losing lots of conversion opportunities. Emotional factors like curiosity, urgency, pleasure, gain, etc. play a huge role in the performance of any advertising campaigns, as you can be highly persuasive and get desired actions from your visitors.

Generally, two emotional states, curiosity and urgency, are mostly used in affiliate marketing among the rest. These two emotional states are used in headlines and CTA buttons, as these are the two most important factors for better conversion rates and landing page engagement. Curiosity triggers the urge factor, making the visitor want to know more about what you are promoting to them and leads to better engagement, whereas urgency triggers the actionable and decision factor, forcing the visitor to act fast. If you can play along with the emotion factor and psychology of your visitor then you can achieve better engagement and conversion ratio.

ThePersuasionRevolution wrote a very nice blog post on emotional factors: 380 HIGH EMOTION WORDS GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU MORE PERSUASIVE

#8 Lack of Authority and Trust:- Another common mistake made by marketers is not using trust badges, testimonials or endorsements and social proofs. Trust badges and endorsements by others adds reputation and trustworthiness to your landing page, making it easy for you to convert your visitors.

On the other hand, adding social proofs in the form of comments (comments made through social media platforms) from real people adds reliability and popularity to your landing page. All these factors have a great influence in conversion rate and also help in making your landing page go viral through social shares.

#9 Contrasting Color:- Poor choice of color can lead to poor engagement, higher bounce rate and lower conversion rate. Colors play an important role in designing, make a site or landing page more visually appealing and help in increasing overall user experience. Choosing a wrong color can have great impact on your landing page performance. So, in order to achieve the best results, you need to understand the color psychology and implement it according to your audience type and niches.

Here are some great posts on color psychology and its effects on landing pages:

Beautiful article by Ubouce: How Color Theory Affects Landing Page Conversion
Instapage guide on perfect landing page colors: How to Pick the Perfect Landing Page Colors That Convert

Here is a short list of color meaning and their usage based on different factors:

Keeping all these in mind, you should choose appropriate colors for designing your landing page and contrasting colors for your CTA buttons. It is one of the best elements to test for landing page optimization, along with other elements. The right combination of colors can get you higher engagement and conversion ratio.

#10 Long Forms:- If you choose to capture leads on your landing page then you should keep it minimal. Long form is a big turn-off for visitors, as they might not feel comfortable providing all the information they are required to fill in. Visitors would prefer to leave your site rather than filling out personal details when they are not feeling safe and secure.

Long forms are often the main source of low conversion rate. So, only ask for the information which is absolutely necessary. You do not wish to scare off your visitors. If you still need more information from your visitors then simply add the basic information, like name and email ID/phone number on the first page and the rest of the fields on the next page.

#11 Lack of Testing:- One of the biggest failure reasons for marketers. If you are not doing A/B testing, then you can never know what is working and what isn’t. I always mention it all the time that A/B testing is absolutely necessary. Check my post Why Maximum New Affiliates Fail.

There are so many elements you can test on your landing page for conversion rate optimization. A/B testing is the only way to do landing page optimization properly. Successful marketers keep on testing all the elements on their landing page from headlines to CTA button, color contrast and everything mentioned in this post so that they can take advantage of every opportunity and maximize the profit.

Conclusion

The best way to achieve better conversion rates is by avoiding mistakes mentioned in this post. Conversion ratio is completely dependent on landing page optimization. The better optimized the landing is, the better the conversion rate will be.

Always keep on testing prominent elements like headlines, CTA, subtitles, emotion factors, color combinations, etc. even though you are on the profitable side. You would be amazed how one small change can increase your conversion rate dramatically.

A lazy marketer is happy with what they have, whereas a smart marketer always looks out for new opportunities by testing, to enhance their profit even more. So, the choice is yours, what do you want to be?

Always keep in mind the basic rule of affiliate marketing – KISS (keep it simple stupid). Keep it short, simple and exactly what your visitors need to know. Don’t overload them with unnecessary information.

If you are new to optimization process, then you should check my posts: