5 Surprising Boo-Boos That Mess with Your Landing Page Conversion Rates

What are some of your main goals when you craft stellar SEO copy?

I can think of three big ones:

1. Higher rankings!
2. Significantly more site visitors!
3. Boosted brand awareness!

Yes! These are all good things, but…

What happens if your content does its SEO job and people flock to your page – yet, your page conversions fall flat, and people don’t take action?

Ouch.

Believe it or not, this situation can be pretty common – and it is fixable. Here are five simple things to check:

Is the main call to action (CTA) clear?

What immediate action do you want people to take while visiting your page? Make a purchase? Contact you? Sign up for your newsletter? Put your main CTA front and center and make it easy to see and take action. If your primary CTA is hard to find, your readers may feel overwhelmed and do…nothing.

Except for bouncing out of your page and scooting over to your competitor.

I’ve worked with a few companies that felt frustrated people weren’t signing up for their newsletter. It turns out the companies didn’t have a “subscribe” CTA anywhere on the page. Instead, the “subscribe” link was buried in a footer link. Is it any surprise that people weren’t signing up?

Is your “contact us” form asking for too much information?

I’ve seen companies create “contact us” forms that required the respondent to list the company’s annual revenue, the company’s approximate budget, and the number of employees – plus a bunch of other data. I’m sure the form provided fantastic data for the sales department. But that’s all information that can be asked during a follow-up call or email. Not during the first interaction.

According to HubSpot, “…marketers need to review their sales and lead generation goals and balance how much information they absolutely need from their prospects vs. how much information their prospects will actually provide on a first form.” Just because you WANT to ask 50 in-depth questions right away doesn’t mean that you should.

Keep your forms simple and easy to use. You can uncover the additional information later.’

Plus, there are other considerations if you’re gating your B2B content and asking people to fill out a form to access your content.

Is the form working?

Technical boo-boos can be an embarrassing issue and one that I’ve personally experienced.

After settling back in from a vacation, I realized I hadn’t gotten any email leads – or even spammy messages – for a couple of weeks. At first, I wrote it off to things being a “slower time of year.” Then, I started to worry that my content was wrong, and it was no longer converting.

I was fully prepared to rewrite the content from scratch and figure out where things went wrong, when…

…I happened to check the back-end of my site where all the original lead messages are stored. And guess what? It turns out that my content was converting, and the lead form was capturing the data. However, the messages weren’t getting forwarded — so I had about three weeks of lead emails to sort through (which wasn’t a bad thing — everyone was cool and completely understood!).

It wasn’t an algorithm update or old content that messed me up. It was a simple technical glitch.

My advice if things get oddly quiet? Double-check for technical glitches and review all forms and autoresponders. You never know the “surprises” you’ll find.

Are you expecting an informational page to sell products or services?

I talk to B2B clients about this all the time.

Matching your CTA to your user’s search intent is crucial. Your “what are widgets” information page may position top-10 and drive scads of traffic. But, these folks are looking for information – not to make a purchase. A big BUY NOW button on an information page will probably get ignored.

That doesn’t mean that informational pages aren’t worth it. You can maximize informational content’s power by focusing on non-sales CTAs – like signing up for your newsletter, checking out a more detailed blog post, or downloading a white paper. And yes, you can link to a sales page from an informational content page — you just may not see an immediate sale.

Is the writing older and slightly off-brand?

A site’s brand voice evolves — and a sales page that reads perfectly in 2018 may not read the same today. Sometimes, it’s because your target audience needs to see different benefit statements. Sometimes, it’s because you’ve slightly altered your brand voice — so the older sales page may feel slightly out of date.

It happens.

If your page conversions have gone stale, why not take the opportunity to rewrite the page and see how you can make it better than before? Yes, it’s scary to rewrite an already-positioning page. But, it’s terrifying to have a top-positioning sales page that doesn’t make you money.

Here’s more information about determining if it’s time to refresh your B2B messaging.

What do you think?

What else would you review if the conversions aren’t clicking? Head over to the SEO Writing Tips group and let me know!