Your Website Might Be Preventing Conversions: Here's Why

You have just spent so much time and money on a brand new website, and you are now expecting the traffic to come flooding in, right? 

You agonize over the design and copy of your homepage, only to find out that your journey to sales and leads doesn't end there. But in all seriousness, selling and converting sales through your website is difficult. 

Yes, you could generate traffic to your homepage, but it is getting the traffic to move to the next phase of the sales funnel that gets many business owners stuck.

So why is your website not converting? I’ll let you in on a bit of a secret.

Conversion happens on landing pages, and unfortunately, your homepage is not one of them. 

A landing page is designed based on a specific campaign or call to action, while a homepage is the starting point for pretty much all of the content on your website. 

Your website is there to build trust, not to convert leads.

In many cases, there is nothing wrong with your homepage. It's just doing its job to provide an overview of your business and general information that your visitors need to know. 

It introduces your business's brand, product, services, target market, contact details, etc. It is created to set your business's first impression, contain everything your business offers, and guide your visitors to go through the different pages on your site. 

Since it's tasked with introducing your business, the homepage should speak to all kinds of visitors, even those who have never heard of your business. It should mention what you do and why it matters. While this type of messaging is perfect for informing, it does not turn traffic into conversions.

Why You Should Start Using Landing Pages

Now that you've understood why your website won't give you the conversion you want, it's time to discuss the pages that can provide you with the sales you need. Landing pages are focalized pages that are designed specifically for a particular campaign. 

The primary difference between a home page and a landing page is the target. 

With homepages, your audience is broad. You don't necessarily have a specific target; that's why your messaging caters to all kinds of visitors. 

On the other hand, a landing page talks to a particular audience. This means that landing pages are explicitly made for conversions. This is because this type of page targets your visitors to have a specific experience by providing:

• A call to action or a goal at the end of the page

• Few to no distractions on the page

• Messaging and designs are made to match advertisements or specific campaigns

Your visitor clicks on your "call to action" button. Whatever it is, the overall experience is what matters. They click the ad, email, or social media post. The more targeted and customized your page is, the more irresistible the ad is to your target audience. 

How To Make a Compelling Landing Page

If it's your first time hearing about a landing page, you probably have no idea how they can give you the conversion you need. Well, let me give you an example:

If you get an email promoting 20% off on your next gas bill, you expect to get that exact offer when you click on the CTA button. By clicking this offer inside your email, you'll be redirected to a page talking about gas, any pain points (such as the rising cost), and a call to action to get the promo before the end of the sale. 

This is a landing page. 

It meets your expectations when you first open the email, but you are also directed to the offer that made you interested in the first place. 

Think about it. If the email redirected you to its homepage instead, you'd see an introduction of the brand and not the gas discount you are looking for. This will interrupt your momentum and distract you from making the purchase. 

To make sure that your landing page converts, there are several factors that you need to consider: 

1. Focus on a goal

Focusing on a goal is the most critical factor that can impact the effectiveness of your landing page. Think of it like a faucet filling a bucket. If you open a faucet, the water flows directly from the tap in one direction (your call to action) to the bucket. Your homepage, on the other hand, is a bucket with holes. When you try to fill a bucket with holes, it won’t be able to hold the water. Instead, the water flows out and goes in different directions. 

Wherever your source comes from—Facebook, Instagram, or email, if you’re using a bucket full of holes, you won't know exactly which spot your audience will go to. This makes it much harder to track and ultimately change for future campaigns. 

These holes in the bucket are called conversion leaks. With landing pages, you should focus on one chosen conversion goal, which allows you to control where the traffic flows and where your marketing efforts and hard-earned cash go. 

2. Remove any distractions

Source: Unsplash

A landing page doesn't need all the information (or distractions) you can find on the homepage. 

You only need the information about what you’re selling within your marketing campaign. Unrelated offers, extra links, and other navigation buttons should be removed. Multiple calls to action buttons can draw your visitors away from your conversion goal. 

Don't leave it up to chance, and expect your visitors to take the specific action despite all available options. Direct them straight to your offer with a clean page made for your campaign alone. 

3. Create a customized experience

Unlike a homepage where you can't customize your visitor's experience, a landing page can create a personalized journey, from the ad to click-through to conversion. When you send people to a highly crafted landing page to match the email, ad, or social post, you must have tailored copy, cohesive design, targeted messaging, and a call to action that will give them the same experience from the initial click to the end. 

Because of this focused experience, visitors will have a lesser chance to pause and be distracted, providing you with more opportunities to showcase your offer and show your target audience that you respect their time by giving them exactly what they want. 

4. Target a specific audience

By creating a customized experience, you can also target a specific audience. A landing page can be tweaked, duplicated and A/B tested to speak to different members of your audience and provide what's relevant to them. 

If you have segmented your email into different categories, you can create a landing page that can target and potentially convert them. For instance, you won’t make a page that targets both new sign-ups and existing customers. It will confuse both of them. 

Instead, you need to build specific pages that embody the actions you want these two types of customers to do.  

Final Word

While landing pages can help you get the leads and sales you want, it’s no magic trick. You still need to be able to craft a compelling page, or else you’ll lose these conversions. However, you will still have a better chance of getting conversions with it than using your homepage. 

Remember, conversion happens when you make the overall experience from the source to the landing page as seamless as you can. Ditch the homepage, and start using landing pages to watch the money roll in.