There are many reasons why visitors landing on your site may not be hanging around for long. I am going to highlight some of the common pitfalls many websites are guilty of doing.
By fixing or changing some or all of the reasons below, you could see your websites conversion rate improve considerably.
Page Load Time
There is nothing more annoying than waiting for a webpage to load! If your webpage takes more than 5 seconds to load, then the chances are that they will hit the back button in their browser and go elsewhere. Checkout our 10 Tips for Reducing Page Load Time post for ways to improve your site.
Pop Ups
Avoid using Pop Ups on your landing page as they distract visitors away from your main goal, which is keeping them engaged on what you are selling!
Not Keeping Promises
If you are advertising a Free Report within your ad copy, make sure that the promise is clearly reiterated on the landing page.
Unclear Call to Action
Keep the number of goals on a page to a minimum and place the primary Call to Action above the fold on your landing page.
Broken Forms
I am sure most of us have visited a site, taken the time to complete a registration form only to find that you are then sent to a broken page. Very frustrating! Check your forms manually frequently to ensure that they are working correctly.
Too Much Text
Website visitors have a short attention span and sending them to a landing page full of text will not keep them engaged. Try breaking content down into manageable sections and use relevant images to capture their attention.
Irrelevant Landing Page
If your visitor searches for a hairdryer, comes across your enticing and relevant Pay per Click advert and visits your site, they expect to land on a page relevant to hair dryers. Sending them to your top level Hair Electrical page and expecting them to find what they are looking for will lower your chances of getting them to convert.
Dull Design
Try to avoid using white text on a black background, it makes it a lot harder for visitors to read.
Similarly, use relevant images and brighter colour schemes rather than dull colours and lots of content.
Asking For Too Much
Keep the number of questions within online forms to a minimum. More tips on Increasing Online Form Conversions, can be found here.
Credibility and Trust
Placing known trust symbols and logos can help you gain trust from your visitors.
So there you have it, just a few of the reasons why your visitors may be leaving your website without completing your desired goal.
If you are interested in our Landing Page Analysis Service, please contact us for more information.
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Along with “Not Keeping Promises” and “Irrelevant Landing Page”, I would add “message match” to the list. The ad copy and the landing page copy must match. If your ad says “voted best in 2010”, your landing page should reference this, or you’ll lose trust.
-Kristina, @ion_interactive
Thanks for tips. I understand that page loading is very important, and thats most of the time because your websites are on bad hosting.
I like the tip, too much text.
Personally i leave websites that have huge articles and no pictures.
Thank you both for your comments – all valid points.
Brian – best of luck with the launch of your course, I hope it goes well for you.
Samantha this is good post answer with some valuable tips.
I think though that reason people have problems with their websites is because those who actually are in business and want a website are not spending sufficient time educating themselves or their staff in how to create great landing pages and more. Many business owners lean on the web developer thinking that they will sprinkle all the magic dust that will bring traffic and sales to their website.
Rand Fishkin of SEOMOZ.org and I are holding a special one day in event in Scotland on Friday 12th February to launch my ONLINE EXCELLENCE program, which is going to take business owners and their ‘staff champions’ who have day to day responsibilty for managing their website. Of course a key task for this ‘web manager’ within the company is to house keep on so many tasks, from inbound link creation, to creating landing pages and effective PPC ads if doing adwords campaigns.
Lots of businesses just don’t realise how much work has to be dedicated in the working day if they are to be truly successful with their website. http://www.onlinexcellence.com will launch shortly, meanwhile this domain takes you to a landing page on my other site at http://www.ictadvisor.com to tell a little more about how we intend to educate businesses and not have the wool pulled over their eyes by people who are not genuinely helping them get the best out of their website.
Keep up the good work Samantha, I have read a number of your posts and you are in my trusted zone of someone promoting ‘best practice’ many thanks.
You can add to the list “No triage”. People want to choose quickly between whether they are consumers or resellers, whether they want consulting or outsourcing, which genre of movie or book they want, whether to view what is new or what is popular or what is local or whatever characteristic they prefer.
What do you think?
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