Whether you’re selling a product, booking clients, or generating leads, there’s a piece of online real estate that’s going to play a particularly important role in your success: your landing page. Your landing page is where people who see your ads, social media posts, or marketing emails will go to get more information about your offer. And if all goes well, they’ll take the plunge.
But what if all isn’t going well? What if hardly anyone who sees your landing page buys your product, books your service, or signs up for your lead magnet? You may think people just aren’t interested in what you’ve got on the table. But there’s something else that could be going on. You may be making one these 9 landing page design mistakes.
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1. It loads slowly
You can have all the right elements on your landing page. But if it loads at a snail’s pace, you can count on losing potential customers, clients, and subscribers. In fact, data shows that 74% of people peace out if a webpage takes more than 5 seconds to load. So you can bet that they won’t be waiting around for your landing page if it takes forever to show up on their screen.
Here’s how you can avoid one of the costliest landing page design mistakes:
- Test your page speed and make recommended adjustments
- Clean up your code
- Eliminate unnecessary redirects
- Resize and compress images
2. It’s cluttered
The purpose of a landing page is to get potential leads or customers to focus on one and only one offer. That’s why your landing page shouldn’t look like a messy preteen’s closet. If your landing page is cluttered with text, contains links to unrelated content, has a navigation bar, and includes footer links, it may be working against you. After all, if your visitors have too many things to focus on, they may lose sight of your offer or be confused about what to click on.
Avoid this landing page design mistake by eliminating clutter (and, therefore, distractions). This means getting rid of anything on your landing page that’s unrelated to your offer. Not convinced? HubSpot found that their conversion rates increased by up to 28% when they removed the navigation bar and footer links from a landing page. Make your landing page so easy to process that your visitors don’t even have to think about it.
Example (of what not to do): On QC Makeup Academy’s landing page, there are more than a dozen links that visitors can click on.
3. It’s hard to read
A landing page doesn’t have to be cluttered to be hard to read. Dense copy will reduce your conversions too. People are busy, so the last thing they want is to spend time sifting through wordy paragraphs that are difficult to understand. Avoiding this landing page design mistake by improving the readability of your landing page. Make your copy scannable, choose a legible font, and optimize the colour contrast between text and the background of your landing page.
Related: How to write scannable blog posts people actually read + free checklist
Example: Amy Porterfield uses bullet points to make the text on her landing page easy to read.
4. It makes your call to action hard to spot
You can have a stunning landing page with slick copy. But you’ll struggle to get conversions if your call to action (CTA) isn’t obvious. Here’s how to avoid this landing page design mistake by making sure your CTA doesn’t get lost on your landing page:
- Select a contrasting colour for your CTA button (a colour that contrasts with the other colours on your landing page)
- Make sure the text on your CTA button stands out. Check your button font colour and size.
- Eliminate unrelated links or buttons that may compete for your visitors’ attention
Related: 7 call-to-action design tips that boost sign ups and sales + 80 CTA templates
Example: Blue Apron’s orange CTA button stands out on the blue background.
5. It asks for too much
You may be offering a hot resource or paid product on your landing page. But if your opt-in form is the length of a novel, you may be making your visitors think twice. Remember that most people who see your landing page don’t know much about your brand. They probably found you while searching for information or a solution to a problem they have. As a result, they won’t be prepared to share their phone number, address, or blood type with you.
Avoid this landing page design mistake by including only those fields that you absolutely need in your opt-in forms. For a free resource, a name and email address is usually sufficient. Even if you just get an email address, this info is all you need to start building a relationship with people and eventually pitch more offers.
Get more sales, clients, or email subscribers by learning the formula that makes landing pages convert.
Download my free landing page copy template + full example.
6. It contains irrelevant visuals
Having visuals on your landing page is the best way to jazz it up and make it engaging. But don’t assume that you can add just any visuals to your landing page. If your visuals aren’t relevant to your offer, they may only confuse your visitors.
Avoid this landing page design mistake by using high-quality, on-brand images. In some cases, stock photos may be your only option. But if it’s feasible, use real photos on your landing page. Data shows that real photos can increase conversions by 35%.
Related: The 10 best stock photo sites for your blog or website + 15 bonus sites
Example: See how Melyssa Griffin uses relevant visuals on this landing page for her Pinterest course.
7. Its thank you page is a missed opportunity
What’s one of the most common landing page design mistakes? Not making good use of a thank you page. Even though it’s called a “thank you” page, you should use it to do more than just thank people for signing up for your offer. Otherwise, your thank you page is a missed opportunity.
Avoid this landing page design mistake by using your thank you page strategically. Direct people to a relevant blog post, encourage them to share your landing page with friends, or present them with another offer. After all, you have their attention, so why not leverage it to engage them further?
8. It isn’t optimized for mobile
These days, most online searches happen on mobile devices. So if your landing page isn’t optimized for mobile, you may have lots of visitors who fall through the cracks. Most people don’t have time for pages that load slowly, don’t render properly on a smartphone, and can’t be navigated with thumb taps.
Avoid this landing page design mistake by using lightweight code and a mobile-friendly design for your landing page. This means having single-column layouts, lots of white space, and large CTA buttons.
Example: Udemy makes navigating on mobile a breeze.
9. It’s flying solo
You may think you need only one landing page for each offer you have. Although this 1:1 ratio may work in some cases, it may also limit your conversions. After all, the goal of a landing page is to get your website visitors to take some sort of action. And how do you get them to do this? By tailoring the copy and visuals on your landing page to them.
But what if the people in your audience aren’t all the same. For example, what if some of your visitors are beginner bloggers whereas others are experienced bloggers? The type of landing page that would work for one of these groups may not work for the other.
You can increase the effectiveness of a landing page by creating multiple versions of it to target different subgroups of your audience. This way, you can present your offer in the best way possible to each subgroup.
Avoid these 9 landing page design mistakes
If you want your website visitors to sign up for your content upgrade, buy your product, or book your service, it isn’t enough to just create a landing page. Instead, your page needs to be designed in a way that allows it to maximize conversions and keep your website visitors from falling through the cracks. The next time you design a landing page (or revisit an existing one), think about whether you’ve made any of these 9 landing page design mistakes. Sometimes small, seemingly subtle changes are all you need to see a big difference in results.
Get more sales, clients, or email subscribers by learning the formula that makes landing pages convert.
Download my free landing page copy template + full example.
