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How To Tell If Your Landing Page Is Broken

Tue, Oct 1, 2019

Inbound Marketing

reasons why landing page isn't workingYou’ve done it: You’ve planned, you’ve designed, you’ve written great copy, and finally, you’ve launched your landing page. Now, all you have to do is wait for the leads to roll in.

Only they aren’t rolling in. Or at least, not the way you hoped they would.

Your landing page should be a great pipeline to bring in new business. With offers of informational downloads or educational summits, you can earn your visitors’ trust and convert new visitors to lifelong clients. But if the fish aren’t biting, how can you get them to nibble?

How do you course-correct? What can you do to your landing page to get noticed? And actually get visitors to sign up?

It’s Not About the Client

Sure, your landing page may be informative: It introduces you and your services well, and gives your future customers a clear vision of who you are. But what you should really focus on in your landing page copy is how your company’s work will impact your customer.  

There’s no doubt you are more than qualified to help your clients grow, or that you’re an expert in your field, but your landing page should be client-centric. How will the tools you are presenting via your landing page revolutionize your clients’ work?

You can convert visitors to clients if you help them visualize how your company will help them. The language on your landing page should inspire them to sign up because of what you can do for them!

You Ask For Too Much Information, Too Soon

Asking for too much information when a visitor first arrives at your landing page is like proposing after the first date. This can scare away potential leads who aren’t necessarily ready to commit yet. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to ask for a few pieces of information. In fact, in order to follow up with new leads and learn more about who is checking out your website, you totally should. But it’s also important to remember that visitors to your landing page are just meeting your company for the first time. 

You have to earn their trust (and knock them out with some killer content) before you can ask for more than a few personal details. Of course, you want this information to obtain quality user data, but you have to find a healthy balance between obtaining useful data and expecting your landing page visitors to not want to share too much.

Are you willing to give away all of your personal information to a total stranger? Your new clients won’t want to either.  Make sure you find a healthy balance, and you’ll get more leads volunteering their information and signing up to learn more about what your company does best.

Learn all about inbound marketing best practices, plus how to start building  your own inbound strategy.

Your SEO Could Be Better

Another reason your landing page isn’t bringing in the traffic you want it to? Your search engine optimization (SEO) could use some work. Google assigns a score to each webpage to help match search queries with the right results. And if you don’t know how to play the SEO game, you may not show up on the first page of results. 

How can anyone discover the amazing things your company does without being able to find you in a quick web search? Here are a few ways you can boost your SEO and bring new traffic to your landing page:

  • Include strategic keywords
  • Keep your seasonal landing page (new pages start fresh with a new SEO score)
  • Check to see that your landing page loads quickly as this affects your SEO score
  • Make sure your landing page is mobile-friendly

All of these factors play into your score, so the more you can do to boost your score, the more you’ll get noticed in a search query!

It’s Not Mobile-Friendly

I cannot overstate the importance of this issue: Having a mobile-friendly site is crucial to the success of your website as a whole. And your landing page? It’s the first thing many people will see: it’s their first impression of you. 57% of web browsing is done on mobile phones, so it’s important to stick with the times and get your landing page mobile-ready.

If visitors to your landing page struggle through dealing with your landing page because it doesn’t play well with their phone or tablet, it doesn’t bode well for their interaction with your business - or at least that’s how it will seem.

Not only is a mobile-ready web page easier to navigate, but Google actually boosts the SEO scores of sites that will display well on a mobile site. If you aren’t mobile-ready, you won’t get noticed.

Unsure of whether or not your website is truly mobile-friendly? Google has you covered: You can check here to see how your landing page fares.

It’s Too Wordy

One of the reasons your landing page may not be converting? It’s just too long. In fact, 79% of readers merely scan a webpage, and only 16% read every word. And it’s even less so for newsletters, which receive barely a passing glance from most subscribers.

So what can you do to still get your point across? Focus on creating what is referred to as “scannable content.” Scannable content makes it easier for your readers to take away vital information in today’s skimming culture. 

You can help make your work scannable in the following ways:

  • Short sentences and paragraphs of only about 3 sentences: The more you break up the writing, the better. Huge chunks of text will usually get skipped.
  • Highlighted keywords to draw the eye
  • Informative subheadings that are easy to locate
  • Single point paragraphs instead of complex paragraphs with many ideas
  • Objective, fact-filled language instead of boastful or exaggerated claims
  • A lower word count
  • Bulleted lists (like this one!)

The bottom line? The easier it is to view the content at a glance, the more likely it is to be read. Leave plenty of “whitespace” on the page to make sure that’s what is happening.

You Don’t Have a Clear Call-to-Action

One of the last things your landing page should do is to convince your visitors to sign up and subscribe! Do you have a clear call-to-action (CTA)? You’ve done the hard part by getting visitors to your page. Now your only job is getting them to sign up - easy, right?

Not always. A CTA is there to help guide potential leads through their visit to your landing page. Is it visible? Is it motivating? 

If it’s a challenge to locate your CTA, or if it isn’t inspiring, it’s not as effective as it should be. And it’s not as effective as your company deserves.

Your CTA button verbiage should be concise. Effective CTAs are positive, eye-grabbing, and motivate your audience to take the next step. They say things like:

  • Sign up
  • Subscribe
  • Try For Free
  • Get Started
  • Learn More
  • Act Now
  • Join Us

Want some great examples of CTAs that are clickable, inspirational, bold, and highly effective? HubSpot has compiled an awesome list of real-life CTA examples that will help you create a CTA that is noticeable and captivating and will convert your visitors to customers.

Chances are, your landing page is already full of stellar information that your future leads will find invaluable. Maybe it just needs a little tweaking. After all, there’s always room for improvement. A strong landing page will earn your clients’ trust and encourage new visitors to keep exploring all that your company has to offer. 

Ready to make some major strides forward with your landing page? Together, we can get your landing page noticed, convert leads to clients, and help grow your business.

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