Why do online marketers and conversion optimization specialists recommend creating separate landing pages for each marketing campaign?

When you drive traffic from social media websites or paid advertising campaigns, why does everybody recommend using a landing page, instead of driving traffic to your site’s homepage?

It is because a website’s homepage is often the worst performer when it comes to conversions and lead generation. The conversion rate is almost always awful on homepages.

To give you an idea, well-optimized landing pages can have conversion rates anywhere from ten to twenty percent. It changes from case to case, of course, but a homepage rarely reaches up to that. Generally, a homepage converts at only one to two percent — which is notably less than a dedicated landing page.

That is a significant difference.

But here’s the truth.

You can make lots of separate landing pages (as you should) and do your best to keep traffic away from landing directly to the homepage of your site. However, the homepage your website is still — more often than not — the most visited web page.

Don’t believe me?

Fire up your Google Analytics and see which page receives the most number of visitors? For most websites, it is going to be the homepage.

It is because a high percentage of your website traffic will come directly. They will type in the domain name of your website in their web browsers and land directly on the homepage. Other than that, when people search for a brand or business, search engines usually rank the homepage on the #1 position in the SERPs.

You’re Leaving Money on the Table


Let’s assume that you also have one of those websites that receive the highest number of traffic visitors on their homepage.

What does it mean for you, your website, and your overall business?

It means that you are leaving a large amount of money on the table.

You are not optimizing and increasing the conversion rate on the web page that serves most of your traffic visitors.

That’s just bad marketing.

Let’s assume your website’s homepage receives ten thousand traffic visitors on a daily basis, and you manage to generate leads at a one percent conversion rate. It means, on a daily basis, you generate one hundred leads.

However, if you could manage to somehow increase the conversion rate to just three percent, you would be able to generate three hundred leads every day. In theory, without adding any new web page or marketing campaign, you would be able to triple your profits.

This is why it is important to:

  • Recognize that your website’s homepage isn’t the highest converting one, and to acknowledge the fact that it might not convert at a rate that some of your landing pages do.
  • At the same time, work towards improving the conversion rate on your homepage as much as possible so you could drastically improve your business and profit.

Following are a few proven tips on how to improve to conversion rate on your website.

Tip #1: Use Explainer Videos

It has been proven that using explainer videos on the homepage can dramatically increase the conversion rate.

Although text and images are still great mediums for content consumption, video is quickly overtaking them as the number one channel.

Consuming information via webinars, videos, explainer videos, and live content is becoming the new hot trend. Moreover, we have to admit that it is far easier to use videos instead of reading a two-thousand-word long web page.

Video is the future of online marketing, and it pays to use them on the homepage.

A study by ReadyCloud revealed that 52% of marketing experts claim that videos produce the best return on investment (ROI) when it comes to content marketing.

Moreover, Blue Corona’s data from 2017 reveals that using videos for online marketing purposes lead to 27% higher click-through rates and 34% higher conversion rates.

Tip #2: Create Shorter Homepages

Long copy vs. short copy? Hasn’t that always been the debate?

There always have been two schools of thought:

  • The first group believes that long-form content works better than short-form content.
  • The other group believes that short-form content is more readable and, therefore, results in a higher conversion rate.

They both are correct and wrong at the same time when we talk about online marketing in general. However, when it comes to website conversion rate, we do have a definite winner.

You see, long-form content is in.

Earlier, content marketers used to create three hundred to five hundred word blog posts. What’s more, those “blog posts” worked like crazy. Pretty much the entire web was full of such posts.

Then came a content marketing revolution.

Now, blog posts range from one thousand to two thousand words. In fact, search engines like Google now actually prefer blog posts that have more than two thousand words.

So, when it comes to blog posts, you do need long-form content.

However, when it comes to web copy — especially, the homepage content — you need to be clear and concise.

Lots of big brands use short homepages to attract and engage their website visitors. Here is an example by Slack.

As you can see, the copy is short, concise, and to-the-point.

Crazy Egg also used to have a frustratingly long homepage. However, they reduced the content by as much as sixty percent.

The result?

Conversions increased by a whopping thirteen percent.

Tip #3: Use Only One Call-to-Action

Too often website owners make this rookie mistake.

They end up using more than one call-to-action (CTA) on their homepage.

They might think that providing multiple options would increase conversion rates, potential leads, and sales, but only the opposite of that actually happens.

Too many options lead to confusion, and confusion leads to abandonment. Furthermore, abandonment does not only lead to a bad conversion rate, but it also negatively affects your search engine positions. If too many visitors start leaving your website too soon, Google is more likely to demote your website in the SERPs.

This is why having too many CTAs and options on the homepage isn’t wise.

Instead, the idea is to have only one call-to-action. Focus on just one thing that you want your customers to do.

That level of clarity can dramatically improve your homepage’s conversion rate.

Ellie Mirman from Toast A/B tested one homepage design and, by focusing on just one call to action, managed to increase clicks by 371% and overall sales by 1,617%.

That’s a significant change!

There are also several other case studies that further prove this point.

Even if you go back and look at the amazing Slack’s homepage design, you would notice that there is a single call-to-action there.

Reduce options, minimize the confusion, and focus on just one action that you’d want your homepage visitors to take. And you will be able to improve the conversion rates.

Conclusion

The homepage of any website is unlikely to become the highest converting page. For generating leads and increasing sales, there are landing pages.

However, to completely disregard the homepage is a grave mistake.

As mentioned earlier, homepages receive a lot of organic, referral, and direct traffic. If you fail at optimizing the homepage of your website, you will lose a lot of potential leads, customers, and sales.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. And don’t forget to use our incredible SEO tools to help you optimize your homepage as well as the rest of your website.