How would you like to welcome your web visitors? With tall stone walls, huge moats with crocodiles in it, and long passageways that lead nowhere? That’s what a badly designed landing page does. There are some landing page mistakes that literally drive away visitors– find out more here.

1. Not Differentiating Between Visitors

Your landing page must speak to visitors at the top, middle and bottom of your conversion funnel. The categorization is as follows:

• First-time visitors (top of the funnel): They want to know about your company, brand, product, offer and what’s in it for them. Put up messaging or a numbered list at the top on what the product can do for them.
• Second-time visitors (middle of the funnel): More interested in testimonials, social proofs, and what other customers are doing, saying or buying.
• Repeat visitors (bottom of the funnel): These visitors are coming back because they’ve decided to buy. Put a very smart CTA, along with a Live Chat module so they can talk to someone in Lead Generation, or a Toll Free Phone number.

2. Not Allowing Social Sharing

Embed a social networking toolbar so that your visitors can share your page’s information with others. You’ll actually benefit greatly by this – when your visitors are allowed to share, more people get to know about you. Put up Share buttons from as many social networking portals as possible.

3. Scent Not Maintained

Your visitor should be able to connect the messaging, imaging, offer and promise seen on the Ad to what’s on the landing page. This requires custom-landing pages for each Ad, but it’s necessary to maintain the scent. Use the same CTA buttons, the same keywords and the same feel too.

4. Too Many Options

Even if your landing page is very interesting, too many options and links on your landing page will distract and then drive your visitor away. Don’t spread too many options, product images and on your page. Instead, use category level images that provide an information scent so visitors can follow.

5. Too Much Text Density

Ensure greater reader retention and higher conversion by reducing text density. Web readers only scan information, so bullet the most important information in the first paragraph after the headline. Use your keywords at the bottom of the text, for search engine purposes. Use sub-headers and bullet points liberally.

6. Call-to-action Mistakes

Visitors take a few seconds to scan your information and then look for what you want them to do. If there’s no CTA, or if the CTA is not visible or does not clearly specify what to do, you’ve lost that visitor. Your CTA must therefore be large, impactful, and clearly tell the user what he or she gets by clicking.

7. Too Much Visual Clutter

Empty your landing pages of all visual clutter, such as banner Ads, horizontal lines, unnecessary images that don’t connect to your offer, links, and pop-ups and so on. If your visitor is not sure where to look, they’ll lose interest and move on. Keep the page simple, and goal-oriented.

8. Too Many Form Fields

Your visitor will lose trust in you or feel overwhelmed when asked for too much information during initial sign up. Build trust and relationship through progressive disclosure, not through instant information gathering. Keep forms simple and non-intimidating; don’t ask for credit card details.

9. Trust Not Established

Put up client testimonials on the sidebar, and place trust symbols such as VeriSign, security logos, media mentions and other trust marks on the top of the page. All of your trust marks should be visible and gathered in one place so as to create a positive impact. Don’t place any of them below the fold.

10. Instant Pop-ups

Does a large pop-up window come up as soon as your site opens? That’s a losing proposition, straight away. Pop-ups are very useful if you know how to use them. Avoid the ones that scroll down along with the visitor, and very large ones. Use discreet pop-ups only where needed.

11. Non-effective Headline

Your visitor wants to know what’s in your product or service for them. Your headline must answer that question clearly. Use a large font for your headline, and encapsulate what your product does for the user. A great, short headline will show up in search queries and bring you good organic SEO results.

12. Lack Of Strong Offer

Use strong offers to attract and retain visitors on your page. Use impactful words to describe your offer. Make sure your value proposition is clear and strongly worded as well. The basic idea is to impress your visitors with your confidence and prevent them from going to your competition.

 13. Lack Of Visual Appeal

Just because landing pages should be simple, it doesn’t mean they should be bare and plain. Use attractive product images, and good, strong colors in your page design. The idea is to attract, impress and retain visitors, not entertain them.

Author Bio:

Masroor Ahmed is conversion optimization analyst at Invesp, a leader in the field of e-commerce website optimization. Founded in 2005, Invesp has completed over 350 successful conversion optimization projects with average uplift of 65% in conversion rates.