Why Most Landing Pages Don't Convert — A Builder's Perspective
The page that speaks to everyone speaks to no one. The page that tries to say everything says nothing.
┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HEADLINE │
│ Sub-headline │
│ │
│ [Start Free] [Watch Demo] [Pricing]│
│ [Learn More] [Book Call] │
│ │
│ nav: About Blog Careers Contact │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
visitor arrives. visitor leaves.Four buttons are no button. Seven links are no path.
The ancient test of the caveman:
Hand the page to someone who has never heard of your product. Five seconds. Ask them: what does this thing do?
Not what it could become. Not its vision. Just: what does it do.
If they cannot answer — the problem is not the font. The problem is the essential thing.
What the numbers have observed:
1 CTA ──────────────────────────────→ 266% better
no nav ──────────────────────────────→ 2× conversion
< 100 words ─────────────────────────────→ 50% strongerThe sage removes before adding. The novice adds before understanding.
The button that says “Get Started” lives on a thousand pages. It is nobody’s button.
The button that says “Get your first client this week” lives on yours. It was written for one person. That person clicks it.
Sixty-two people in a hundred leave when the page says “productivity for teams” but the ad said “task management for freelancers.”
The promise and the landing must speak with one voice. A broken contract at the door costs the price of the click.
Do not test with two hundred visitors. The river does not carve a canyon in a morning.
Instead: find ten people who visited and did not act. Sit with them. Ask what confused them. Ask what they thought the page was selling.
Their answers are usually simple. The fixes take an afternoon.
The short version:
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remove the navigation ← give them no exits
keep one path ← make the choice obvious
shorten the words ← under 100 is almost always better
specifify the button ← write it for one person
then: talk to ten non-convertersThe rest is implementation. The rest has always been implementation.
— Ilao Dzindin