When a visitor arrives on your landing page, the first thing they will normally do is scan it quickly. If they don’t like the first impression they get, they will abandon ship quickly. This can even happen if your page is too slow to load. Most people on the Web are impatient.
Up to 50% of your visitors could leave your site within a few seconds if it doesn’t make a positive first impression. Sad, but true.
This is why it is so important for a landing page (or any web page actually) to be designed for quick scanners. You must use a headline, plus lots of sub-headings and bullet points etc to get across your key message at a glance.
If your landing page is very good, and presents a great offer, you may get a reasonable number of visitors sticking around to read your copy and consider the offer.
Many of these visitors will not be ready to buy. They may be interested in your offer but are still hesitant. So they will leave.
A small number of visitors will have arrived at your page ready to buy. But they will still need convincing that they should buy from you, from this particular page. Typically, they will look around for reassuring information, such as your physical address, shipping information and costs, guarantees and returns policies etc.
If everything stacks up in their mind, they will complete the purchase. The average conversion rate of a well-designed landing page is around 3.5%. So it’s a pretty small number who will stay around long enough to buy.
This may seem depressing. But the good news is, you can substantially increase the conversion rate of your landing pages by careful planning, testing, tracking, and tweaking.