10 Landing Page Mistakes to Avoid to Maximize Funnel Conversion in 2024

A landing page is the first page a prospect visits when entering your funnel. This means this is a page where you have to put in maximum effort to try and convert your prospects into leads or sales.

But it can often get quite challenging because, chances are, you may end up making terrible landing page mistakes that may severely lower your chances of converting potential clients.

Just imagine bringing in tons of traffic to your funnel landing page only to make them lose interest in your offer even if it is a good deal – a waste of time, money, and valuable leads.

Did you know the most common mistake people make on landing pages is using too many CTAs?

Today, you will learn how to avoid making certain landing page mistakes that can significantly ruin conversion rates.

After reading this article, you will learn

• what mistakes to avoid when creating your funnel landing page,
• what is the right approach instead of making these mistakes,

And eventually, run efficient sales funnel campaigns to get more leads & sales.

So let’s begin.

10 Landing Page Mistakes to Avoid In Your Funnel

While planning your funnels, you have to consider the fact that your landing page has to give your prospects all the right reasons to take action. But, if you overdo it (or underdo it per se), you may end up losing several potential leads.

Following are a few landing page mistakes that many still make without realizing it:

1. Poor use of Call to Actions (CTAs)
2. Copy is focused on the product only
3. No clear value proposition
4. Exaggerated promises that are too obvious
5. No Mobile Optimization
6. Cluttered landing page design
7. Lack of personalization
8. To much focus on popularity
9. Trying To Serve Multiple Purposes With A Single Landing Page
10. One generic landing page for all traffic

You will find several other online sources that will talk about landing page mistakes, such as slow landing pages, large image files, lengthy forms, and so on. Well, these are not necessarily landing page mistakes; rather, these are things you must optimize no matter what page you create. The 10 mistakes listed above are errors people make either unknowingly due to lack of experience or knowingly due to lack of time spent creating the page.

Now, let us look at how you may avoid these landing page mistakes in detail.

1. Poor Use Of Call To Action (CTAs)

A call to action is crucial to trigger actions from prospects in any marketing content. And if you do not use it in the right way, you will end up making way less than what you could have.

You need to be careful about when, where, and how you use a Call To Action.

For example, let’s say you placed a CTA button beside an image that has more bright colors than the button. But this means people will focus more on the image and may often ignore this CTA button, which is surprisingly a very common mistake.

Likewise, there could be other such scenarios. Let us learn what other ways you could mess up when using CTAs.

• Use Too Many Call To Actions
  Often people wish to be pushy and use call to actions in almost all elements of a landing page. For example, in a single section, a person may add a call to action in the paragraph, then add a button below it to add a second call to action, and use yet another call to action on the section image. Seemingly you could place a lot of call to actions, i.e., 2 or 3 calls to action per section.
  
  This is a terrible mistake to make. Yes, a call to action can trigger a prospect to take action. But asking him to take action too many times may annoy the prospect and may even question him to think if you are too desperate (which is a sign of unpopularity and low quality).
  
  The best approach here is to add only one call to action in a certain section. If you are using a button CTA, then don’t add a CTA in the paragraph or title of the sections.

• Passive Or Weak CTAs
  Often you may think you don’t want to be pushy and be passive about the CTA. For example, you could write “You May Try It Now.” By using “You May,” you have made the prospect skeptical about his decision. Rather, a direct “Try It Now” is a more appropriate way to influence the prospect to take action.

• Less Highlighted CTA
  Always try to make sure your CTA is well-highlighted for people to spot right away. For example, in the hero section, the CTA button should be the most easy-to-spot element.

• Using CTAs In Long Intervals
  Often we confuse ourselves by thinking, let’s explain everything first and then go for a CTA. But that’s not the right approach. You should have at least one CTA in every section. Leaving out a section with no CTA could result in prospects exiting the page on that particular section.

Remember, a strong CTA can make a big difference, and using it the right way can increase the conversion rate by almost two times.

2. Copy is focused on the product only

When it comes to crafting a sales funnel landing page, it’s important to remember that it’s not just about the product itself. It’s about understanding your customer’s needs and motivations.

You will find several companies launching a funnel that has a landing page explaining every feature of their product. But that’s not the problem. The problem here is they only mention how the feature works or what the feature does in general, not what benefits the prospect will get by using the feature. In fact, many even don’t explain the overall end result the prospect may achieve using the product.

Again, you may often find yourself using too much technical jargon, i.e., terms that only technical people in your industry will understand. But you have to consider the fact that not everyone visiting your site will be a technical person.

This is a serious flaw in the landing page. You have to remember,

• Not all prospects will understand a feature’s use naturally, and they may not call it the same term you use.
• Most prospects will look to see if the problem they are facing or the solution they are looking for is mentioned. They couldn’t be bothered with what features a product may have if it’s not clear if the product will actually help them.
• It is a psychological tactic to highlight benefits to prospects on a landing page because it makes the prospect more excited about the product.

So, long story short, you have to focus more on product benefits and keeping the content understandable for all types of prospects.

3. No Clear Value Proposition

Another huge mistake that many people make is not offering a clear value proposition.

Just like being focused on the product only, you may also end up creating a landing page where you are focusing too much on what offer you have rather than explaining what major values your product/service has to offer for your prospects.

Let’s say you are offering 50% off on your SEO service. Now, if 70% of your content is all about how much the person will save, the limited time opportunity to get the service at a discount, or comparing prices with other tools, this landing page may fail more often than not (unless you are a giant with huge popularity all over the world).

• Remember, your landing page must have a clear value proposition.

And no, saving money cannot be the main value proposition. A discount is only a way to push prospects to make a decision. But the main decision would always depend on the answer to the question, “If the customer can make use of your product or service?”

Your copy should clearly highlight the benefits of prospects and the problems your product will solve, even if the campaign is aimed at your existing leads. At the same time, you can also use comparison tables to differentiate between what the person will get with your product and what they are getting now or will get with another tool.

Once you have a proper value proposition, you can then mix it up with your discount offer in places of CTAs.

For example, in the Hero section, you could highlight the core benefit of your product in the Headline and text, then on CTA, you could use, “Get it now at 50% off!”

In this case, people will get both a value proposition and a discount to trigger them to take action.

4. Exaggerated Promises That Are Too Obvious

We are all excited about our products and want to believe that it is the best. But that doesn’t mean we have to exaggerate what our products can do for clients.

One of the most common landing page mistakes that even well-trained marketers make today is to make false promises that people can easily point out. Basically, you will find people using boasting statements with no data to back them up.

For example, suppose you are a business coach, and you wrote in your landing page copy that you will help businesses increase their revenue by 10 times. But then, you do not have any data to prove this claim. This is a classic case of over-exaggeration. Most successful marketers tend to provide a case study of a past project they worked on where the result was achieved.

Again, some promises are too good to be true. For example, as a fitness trainer, if you promise you will help someone lose 30 pounds in 7 days, it’s clearly not possible for usual people and will affect your credibility. People will be skeptical about it and hesitant to sign up for your program.

So the moral here is, do not make false claims or extreme promises if you haven’t achieved them once in the past. And definitely do not make a promise that is not possible. Most people nowadays as very sensitive to these sorts of promises and will not trust your word for it.

5. No Mobile Optimization

We all know how mobiles rule the world right now. People would rather sit on the sofa and browse through their cell phones than at a PC. Hence, today, it’s crucial to optimize your landing page for mobile devices.

You need to look at a lot of factors to ensure your potential clients do not decide to exit your page.

• Make the page mobile-responsive
  While most CMS and page builders automatically do this, it does not optimize all aspects of the page for responsiveness. For example, if you have 3 columns on a section, then the best practice is to stack them one after another in a mobile device rather than shrinking them to fit the screen.

• Avoid keeping unreadable texts & buttons.
  During the responsive process, often, the buttons and certain text can get very tiny. Hence it is necessary to keep the text on larger fonts and buttons to be larger when it comes to mobile devices. For example, in a few e-commerce sites, you will notice that on the checkout page, the Pay Now button is of full-width size.

The fact is, you probably know how to create a simple website using a CMS such as WordPress. It doesn’t take much effort. But if you ignore the fact that you also have to optimize your web pages for mobile phone users, you will end up losing many potential clients.

6. Cluttered Landing Page Design

You probably want to make a very attractive landing page while giving all the necessary details possible for a potential client. However, while doing so, many often overdo it. People often include too many elements into a single page which can make visitors feel like it’s too cluttered to focus on. It distracts the prospect from seeing the real message you want to deliver on your landing page.

It’s mainly because globally, human attention span has been reduced to as low as 8 seconds (Devrix). This means people tend to browse through landing pages quickly, and if the right message doesn’t catch their eyes quickly enough, they will lose interest.

Following are some common mistakes you may avoid to bypass this issue.

• Long titles & paragraphs
  This is a common challenge many faces because it’s difficult to convert a complete message into fewer words. That’s the main reason people hire copywriters, who tend to be experts in this matter. The fact is, if you have a very long headline or large paragraphs, people will not stay focused on the purpose of the landing page. They will be busy trying to read rather than trying to understand what’s written.

• Too many visuals or images
  Yes, having a colorful website is great. But, you do not want visitors to only observe your images and leave. You want them to understand the purpose of your landing page and the reason to take action. Having tons of images will distract them from the main reason why you brought them to this page. You should try to maintain a balance of images and text and make sure your prospects do not get overwhelmed with too many visuals in a single section.

• Too many things to focus on in a single section
  You will be surprised how many tend to confuse prospects on the landing page with too many things to think about. I have even seen a landing page with a Menu, Image, Title & Paragraph, Video, Sidebar, Social Images, & Contact information, all in a single hero section! Stop doing things like this.

Most successful landing pages don’t have a menu at the top. It’s supposed to be a dedicated landing page for a planned campaign with a fixed purpose. So having so many elements is unnecessary. Stick to a simplified design, fewer words on headlines & paragraphs, one message per section, and focus on a single goal throughout the landing page.

Do not confuse your prospects with too many things to focus on.

7. Lack Of Personalization

One of the most common pieces of advice you will get from copywriters is “use personalized content.” This really means that you need to address your whole landing page to a single prospect.

Let me explain.

While the landing page is created to convert as many visitors into leads or sales as possible, its whole content and design should be created in such a way that every person visiting the page feels like, at that moment, you are trying to help him only, and nobody else. The prospect should be able to relate all the pain points or imagine all the benefits for himself alone.

Here are some of the things you should avoid –

• Do not use a generic headline
  As explained in the example above, do not sound like you are focused on everyone. Make the client feel like he is the one who needs your help and you are here to help him specifically, whether others are facing the same issue or not.

• Avoid focusing on too many types of prospects
  Your product or service could be for many types of users. But you should stay focused on a single type of prospect on a landing page. Do not try to serve everyone. Rather go for a targeted approach and focus on one type of client on a single landing page. It will give you more scope to explain pain points and benefits.

• Use a “second person” point of view
  The “second person” point of view means addressing the target audience directly. And it’s as simple as using “You” or “Your” throughout the content. Rather than saying, “Here to help businesses succeed,” use “Here to help your business succeed.”
  Instead of saying, “It’s a feature that was never seen before,” write, “It’s a feature you have never seen before.

Overall, the idea is to make the user feel like you understand him, he needs help, and you want to help him exclusively.

“Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer.” – Shirley Polykoff

**To successfully pull off personalization with high effectiveness, you will need to gain some landing page copywriting skills. You can consider studying the StoryBrand formula for this.

8. To Much Focus On Popularity

Suppose you have grown to become a popular figure in your country. Now, it’s true that if you run a campaign, many will trust the offer just because they know you and your skills. But that is not why you created this landing page.

People who are gonna convert because they know your value will also convert if you create a mediocre landing page and share it on social media. You don’t need to spend so much time and money in creating a funnel journey with a high-quality landing page.

Rather, your campaign should be aimed at those who are yet to acknowledge your expertise and go for your offer.

At this point, if your whole landing page is all about how popular you are and how great people speak of you rather than explaining the true benefits of taking your service, you will find it difficult to convert new leads.

In such cases, you should avoid

• Do not keep on repeating your followers or social popularity.

• Stop using too many testimonials scattered around on the website. A single section is enough.

• Avoid boasting about accolades & awards at every chance you get.

• Do write a copy that gives the vibe that a person should trust you only because you have a proven track record. You have to highlight the paint points you will solve and the benefits the prospect will get.

• Even if you have data on successful projects, do not build your whole landing page around this data. A single section to highlight your successful efforts should be enough.

Your landing page should be focused on transitioning a prospect from realizing that you know their pain points to get excited about the benefits he/she may get when taking your product/service.

The bottom line here is your popularity, testimonials, accolades, and endorsements should play a part in gaining authority. But they should not be the main focus of the landing page.

9. Trying To Serve Multiple Purposes With A Single Landing Page

You may often get excited about promoting your business and get confused about the main purpose of a funnel landing page – a landing page should have only one purpose.

You may have 2 or 5 different types of services, or you may want to collect leads, make sales, and grow your social presence. But your landing page should only focus on one – offer a single type of service, only collect leads, only try to make sales, or only grow social presence.

Do not attempt to try to create a landing page that will get multiple actions from prospects. There is no scope for “lets at least collect leads if not a sale” or “lets at least get a follower on Twitter if not leads.”

• Do you want to collect leads? Then the only action expected of visitors should be to submit a lead form.
• If you want sales, then the only action expected of your prospects should be to accept your offer and get ready to pay.
• Offering a free session? Then the prospect should only have one choice – to book an appointment.
• For social growth, the CTA should only take the prospect to visit your social profile.

It’s as simple as that.

10. One Generic Landing Page For All Traffic

Besides specific landing page mistakes, another common flaw you will notice is that many often tend to create a generic landing page and then drive all types of traffic there.

For example, let’s say you own an agency and offer digital marketing and web development services. Now, if you are to collect leads, who will you target? Not all businesses will require both of your services. At this point, if you create a funnel with a landing page where you try to focus on both of your services, this will hamper your business in many ways.

• First, when promoting your landing page via Paid Ads, you won’t be able to run the same Ad for both services. You will need one Ad set for Digital Marketing & another Ad set for Web Development services (mainly because finding clients that need both will be quite difficult and will cost more in terms of bidding cost).

• Your landing page conversion rate will not be optimal. For instance, if a client needing digital marketing services enters your landing page, he will also get unnecessary details on your web development services. This will distract the prospect from making a decision. If the copy is not well-written, it may even confuse him into thinking he needs to take both services at once.

• Due to the lower conversion rate, the ROI on Ads spent will be less than desirable, and the number of leads you get will be significantly less.

On the contrary, if you create two landing pages – one for Digital Marketing and another for Web Development services – and then run Ad sets for each separately, you are more likely to get a higher conversion rate with significantly higher ROI from your Ads.

So, you should aim your landing page at one goal, and all your content should be aligned accordingly. Plus, your traffic generation efforts should only focus on getting prospects that are more likely to convert as per your goal.

Final Thoughts

As you saw above, preparing and designing a landing page copy is not as simple as creating an article about your product. You need to focus on a lot of factors that may hamper your conversion rate if not done right.

As they say, a lead generation campaign is only as good as the landing page of your funnel. The same can be said about your sales campaigns, social growth campaigns, affiliate marketing campaigns, and so on.

Hence, you should work on honing your skills and avoid these landing page mistakes at any cost. Whether you hire a professional or train yourself, your landing pages should be well-planned if you want your funnels to be successful.

• If you are looking to learn various ways to run lead generation campaigns, here is a great guide you will find helpful.
• Here’s another guide to help you learn to write an attractive landing page copy.

So go ahead and make your next marketing campaign more successful with a high-quality landing page and a higher conversion rate.