You'd be surprised at how many things distract someone on a page that they arrive at. Buttons, navigation, images, bullet points, bolded words… all of them capture the attention of the visitor. While that's an advantage when you're optimizing a page and purposely laying out those elements for the visitor to follow, adding the wrong element or extraneous elements can take the visitor away from the call-to-action you're wanting them to click through and convert on.
Copyblogger released this fantastic infographic that creates an analogy between the visitor on your site and someone following directions, 9 Landing Page Goofs that Make You Lose Business. I really love this analogy because it's very appropriate as you think about the trips that you're taking.
The first thing that we do on a trip is map the origin and the destination, then provide the most efficient path in between. When you're mapping out your landing page, hopefully you're doing the same thing – thinking about where your visitors are coming from and leaving no question as what the destination is. Here are 9 common mistakes you can make when creating landing pages (but should avoid):
- You did not explain the benefits of conversion.
- You did not provide a simple path for conversion.
- You did not clearly display a single destination or outcome.
- You did not communicate key information effectively.
- You did not eliminate unnecessary content.
- You used too much jargon and complicated terms.
- You did not support your content with data, details and testimonials to enhance your trustworthiness.
- You did not remove extraneous options like navigation and additional links.
- You did not make sure your landing page loaded quickly!
