Let’s assume you’ve got a beautifully designed and optimized landing page with proper call to actions in place - yet you’re unhappy with the conversion rates. What else could be wrong?
First off, comparing your landing page conversions to industry benchmarks or just a generalized number is a waste of time. Your product and its market is unique based on your insights and customer segment and it will have its own metrics to track.
So, what’s a good conversion rate? A rant by Peep Laja highlighted a very important point – a good conversion rate is that which is better than your last month’s. If you keep working harder and improvising, you’re on the right path.
If you’re working really hard harnessing channels that drive traffic to your landing and yet you don’t see conversions despite all things factored, you’ve got to look beyond the basics.
Here are a few areas that most would miss. A deeper focus on each of these will ensure your conversions increase from whatever they were over the last month or so.
Problem 1: Mismatch in Messaging
When conversions drop or just don’t improve, you might want to check your messaging across your marketing channels versus what you have on your landing page.
Typically, your messaging across your marketing channels should answer the most pressing concerns people have about the problem you’re solving. The answer should naturally lead the audience onto your landing page where you address their issues in greater depth and add more value.
If you’re conveying one thing in your marketing and another on your landing page, you’re making your audience think and wonder if it really addresses their problem. Don’t. Your landing page should be a natural extension to your creative campaigns across marketing channels.
Problem 2: Low Value Being Delivered
If your landing page addresses the above point, are you offering the user enough value for them to convert?
Pack in as much as value as you can offer to your customer, which is again an extension of your overall messaging. For instance, if your product’s landing page offers marketing guides, ensure the guides are actionable and address specific topics that are useful to the audience, rather than being generalized to as many "potential customers" as possible.
HubSpot does this extremely well by offering their audience free tools and templates to make marketing collaterals such as templates for Infographics, eBooks, and more.
Problem 3: Ineffectual Copy
When was the last time you checked the effectiveness of the copywriting? Do YOU think it resonates with your audience and have you validated through any means?
Most often, the copy itself isn’t convincing enough for users to complete a call-to-action on your landing page. Just as powerful headlines in articles trigger more clicks, an effective landing page copy will ensure the audience converts more.
The copy includes banner headline, the sub-text and thereafter, connecting the dots through copy that either spurs curiosity or leaves them wanting more.
Problem 4: An Unnatural Flow
Have you given enough thought to how your copy and images guide your user through the landing page? A natural flow would mean that the first bit of messaging and visuals should naturally lead to the second, the second to the third and so on.
The more disconnected your user flow from one part of the landing page to the other, the more the audience would be confused and less chances of them getting hooked.
Problem 5: An Irrelevant Audience
While the on-page factors play a big role, did you stop for a moment and peer through the analytics to dig deeper on the discrepancies in the traffic flow versus the conversion rate?
Look for sources that send you a great amount of traffic but also have the highest bounce rates. This could mean that the referral source of traffic isn’t sending you relevant audience. Or that this source isn’t the right one to target for this particular landing page.
Refocus your marketing campaigns on channels that host your target audience - sometimes it’s just that simple. When you feel conversions are lacking, they’re a factor of non-relevant audience coming through your page thereby skewing your traffic versus conversion ratios.
When optimizing landing pages, there isn’t just one way of doing it right. Relevancy, persuasiveness, core offering, and user flow all plays big roles in optimization - and are all the more fundamental to your success than the latest growth hacks.