Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) specialist. He's the lead CRO at a ~$15 million a year performance marketing agency.

We ended up talking about common mistakes we see on landing pages — and how to fix them.

I'm going to share with you some of the mistakes we covered. This will help you review your own website and improve sales, opt ins, and more.

Landing Page Mistake 1: Headline is unclear and/or not focused on benefits

Ollie is a company that makes healthy food for dogs. Their original website headline read, according to this CRO specialist who optimized the website, "Make your dog say, Bon Appétit!"

This was unclear AND not in their customers voice. Let's be real, nobody walks around saying "Bon Appetit" on the daily... This original headline also didn't make the product clear. 

+ Is it food?
+ Is it food toppings?
+ Where can I buy it?

In the end, Ollie is actually a food subscription service for dogs. The company strives to make feeding your dog healthy food simple and easy.

Therefore, the headline was changed to the following which improved conversions and clarity:

Takeaway: Your hero section and headline are the most important part of any website or landing page. Make it obvious what your product is and/or how it helps your customer. In the case of Ollie, the benefit is easily feeding your dog healthy food, so this new copy and imagery helped improve conversion rates.

Landing Page Mistake 2: Lack of social proof or "bad" social proof

Most business owners understand testimonials on websites help conversions. However, testimonials don't always help you if presented poorly.

The best testimonials are videos, however if you're using text or customer quotes, use pictures of your customers and star ratings.

Why? This brings validity to the review and someone to reach out to if a lead or potential customer genuinely wants to hear from past customers. A good business won't hide past customers from you...

But the mistake a lot of businesses make are vague quotes, without customer photos, that could easily be made up. They aren't believable.

Here's an example from a business called Hers, which sells prescription weight loss medications:

Sorry, but I'm unconvinced. Anybody could have faked these reviews in minutes, especially given Hers didn't even put someones appearance or photo next to the quote. The "Real Hers Customer" isn't helping me feel better about your products...

What would be better? Video testimonials + testimonials showcasing customers before using the product vs after using your product. Your reviews would then feel more real, and customers would feel safer ordering.

Takeaway: Include plenty of social proof on your website and make sure your testimonials are real-life stories of verified customers (with videos and photos).

Landing Page Mistake 3: No waitlist for unavailable products

The WORST thing you can do is let interested leads slip away from your website. Why? Because they may never return.

If you're selling any type of limited product, this is why it's crucial to have waitlists.

This can occur in 2 scenarios:

1. You're selling a physical product that is out of stock

If someone wants to buy your product but there's none available, let browsers sign up for inventory updates! If you gather contact information and send messages when items do come back in stock, your sales will increase.

Here's an example on the "Hers" website again (sorry to keep picking on them) ... But look at these items that are out of stock:

They're offering up safety information, but if a buyer wanted to buy the product when it becomes available they'd have to manually remember to check the Hers website again. And well... No one is going to do that.

2. You offer a service, cohort, or membership with limited spots

If you offer any type of service or rolling enrollment window, build a waitlist of future clients.

Leads can come and go at any time. The worst thing that can happen is you allow a warm lead to disappear forever because you didn't capture their information while you could.

If someone has a problem, they'll get it solved one way or the other. Make sure even if you can't help someone immediately that you capture contact information and build a relationship so you can work together when the time comes.

Takeaway: Don't let potential customers slip away because you can't help them right now. Capture contact information and build a relationship in the interim so you don't lose prospects to competitors.

Landing Page Mistake 4: Call-to-actions (CTAs) that aren't value added

Most calls to actions are boring and lack a desireable outcome for readers.

An example for a digital marketing newsletter signup page might be a CTA button that says "Subscribe To Our Newsletter."

Yaaaaawn. To improve this CTA button, answer this question for browsers of your website → "What's in it for me?"

With this in mind we can turn our CTA button into a CTV button, a Call-To-Value.

A Call-To-Value button in the above example might read "Get Better At Ad Creative." Now the CTA button is focused on the outcome for our browsers. Much better.

Here's some other examples written by my friend, Jasmin Alic:

Takeaway: Make sure your Call-To-Actions are clear and focused on the outcome one receives if they take action. 

That's all for this week!

We hope you'll leverage these tips and head over yo your own website to improve your conversions.

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