‘Seven landing page bloopers’ is a report by US-based landing page specialist Ion Interactive, outlining some of the mistakes made with landing pages which can have a big impact on conversion. Hopefully this painless medicine will be taken by many out there who suffer from the malady of bad landing page design.

Let’s go through the 7 bloopers one by one.

1. Do your landing pages actually work?
Don’t assume they do! You have to test them in all browsers and you should be testing them at least monthly. I’ve seen landing pages work fine one day and just stop working for no reason the next. Test them completely and test them on a regular basis!

2. Pop ups
Some very smart folks out there will tell you that pop ups work very well for conversions, but the report states that most people find them annoying. I agree, pop ups have a terrible reputation among users and are best to avoid.

3. Do your landing pages match with your ads or links driving traffic to them?
A great point that we tackled on this blog in detail before! If people are searching for a specific product or service and then come to your landing page and don’t find that information front and centre, they are likely to abandon it. Make sure your landing pages are consistent with the expectations your advertising creates with the visitor.

4. Don’t break the promise of the link
A link promises something to a visitor. Click here and get this. If they don’t get exactly what they expected because of mix messaging, you won’t get the conversion. (Also read: Jeffrey Eisenberg on landing page conversion: “every hyperlink is a contract”)

5. Calls to inaction
Never assume the user knows what you want them to do. A landing page really should only have one clear main call to action with perhaps one or at most two secondary calls to action. And no, ‘click here’ is NOT a good call to action! Create visual CTA buttons or use a CTA button generator – there are plenty of free ones online.

6. Don’t overload with information!
Keep your landing pages clean and uncluttered! Give visitors the option to drill deeper for more information if they like. Test different landing page copy and calls to action to see what works best.

7. Don’t be boring
Landing page design can be habit forming and most of those habits will be boring to visitors! Put a little effort into a design which is engaging and will compel visitors to convert. If you can spot a boring stock photo from a mile away then it’s a good bet your potential customers will too!