Lets start with this.
Landing pages are overcomplicated and misunderstood.
~ me. I said this
Across much of B2B there are a common set of mistakes and issues that arise on campaign landing pages, that affect success significantly.
You are a B2B company. You have a new campaign. Your agency get the creative concept absolutely bang on brief. The media is insanely well curated and planned, and the copy and creative delivery is second to none by your agency for the ads. But, the landing page is something the internal team can handle. You have resource and have done this before. No problem, all good, we all love a bit of collaboration…
Please don’t hear me wrong from this point – I’m not calling out a ‘holier than thou’ agency vs client scenario. I’m pointing out the importance of curating and executing the overarching digital experience for your customers and clients. The campaign could be absolutely sh** hot, but when the user gets to the landing page, noone is converting, noone engages, and the experience falls off a cliff.
If you are short of time – these are my 5 top tips to look at why landing pages can fail.
If you have more time, I’ve unpacked each below.
- Lack of focus
- Inconsistent with ad copy or creative
- Load speed
- Conversion flow mistakes
- It’s not actualy a landing page
Lack of focus
A landing page is exactly that. Somewhere to land a key message, give focus to the action you want the user to take, and lead them to that point.
Far too many landing pages try to cater for too many things, they have too much content added in and links off to multiple different parts of the site.
Landing pages should have a single point of focus. With all content surrounding it directing additional value and punch to that focal point.
What good looks like: Shopify B2B
- focussed main message in hero + CTA for enquiry
- message further validated with a video explainer
- features explainer
- testimonials
- more features
- more testimonials
What could be improved here?
Theres only one CTA in the hero and one right at the bottom of the page, which is a different colour style. I’d have suggested these should all be consistent – and at least one more interspersed in the content.
Whilst the content is all rich and focussed on the same purpose, theres also a LOT of content. I’d suggest this may need reducing somewhat for a CRO campaign focus.
2. Inconsistent with ad copy / creative
Quite often in digital marketing as marketers we create variants for ad creative and copy because we’re talking to different user types, audience segmentations or micro variables.
This is brilliant for curating custom experiences and messaging for the right audiences. But this can lead to mis alignment with content on the landing page if the landing page is not carried with those changes or variables.
If I am mid conversation with you, and I suddenly start talking about something else, using words that aren’t coherent, the conversation is broken, you get confused, and it doesn’t always make sense.
Being consistent in message, copy, headlines, even imagery is vital in campaign journey planning from ad to landing page to ensure that any variables used in campaign creative and ad copy are still in sync with the core landing page. This ensures seamless digital experiences, and frictionless campaign journeys.
3. Load speed
Now, this is a bugbear of mine, but also one that I appreciate is not a ‘quick fix’ if it appears as an issue for many B2B brands with in house tech teams. Development improvements can take weeks sometimes or more. I get that. BUT…
It’s vitally important to recognise the significant impact that poor page speed can make on your UX and in fact the success of your landing page and campaign overall.
In a recent survey from Unbounce, 85% of landing pages in the testing pool were slower than Google’s recommendation of 5 seconds or less at a 3G connection.
Wait…
EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT!!
And further to that 59% of people won’t wait more than 4-6 seconds for a website page to load before giving up, with 70% of consumers (ok not B2B but still relates) admitting that page speed directly influences their decisions to buy.
People your page speed matters. Don’t ignore it.
4. Conversion flow mistakes
There are some fundamental things not to do when looking for campaign conversion. One of the major ones is asking too much of your prospects.
Again – imagine the scenario … we’re having a coffee, and the server asks if we’re up for joining their loyalty programme.
“sure” we say, expecting a QR code for sign up by email or at worst a little flyer to be presented to us
“please can you fill this in” they say, and provides us with a clipboard each, a pen, and 2 sheets of double sided A4 with 20 questions each side… we politely give them back and decline.
You wouldn’t do that in real life – so don’t do it online.
Regardless of how much data you actually need to get a user into your system, or for YOU to have all that YOU want from them – they don’t have time, they frankly don’t care and they just want to see, play, download, or get “inside” to see what its about. Stop asking for everything and the dogs name.
I’ve also seen the other extreme once for an event landing page, where the page was beautiful but not converting any ticket sales. They asked for UX consultancy on the page. Within seconds I’d solved the problem:
- there was no price options on display next to the ticket details
- worse… there was no actual CTA button or link or access to purchase tickets and enter the flow.
Sometimes its the obvious things!
5. Your landing page is not actually a landing page
Sometimes it’s all too easy to just use website pages as the ‘landing page’ for a campaign – heck even the homepage. Why not. That’ll do.
No.
As discussed above in point 1, landing pages should have one focus, one goal, and minimal to no distractions. I’d argue we should never send people to a homepage from a campaign, but I’ve often seen this when clients feel thats the best place for “giving users the best access and knowledge of all we do”. I would throw that out too.
Your landing page should:
- Not be multi purpose uses on one page
- Not be full of various content, signposts and different messaging
- Always have one focal point
- Be brief and to the point
- Provide value and additional awareness to the initial experience / ad / copy / visuals that a user first clicked to get there.
- ADD to the story – not change or evolve it
- Have one main conversion option (small, subsidiary ones are fine, but not detracting from the main purpose)
Conclusion
Make better more focussed, faster landing pages that build on a story for the user
Build and grasp a full picture of what the user might or will be doing end to end
Go and do it and make the internet better.