Landing Page Critiques by Conversion Experts

With massive advertising budgets, government bailouts and a ton of marketing experts, you’d think these famous companies would be getting a high conversion rate perfected down to a science.

Unfortunately, as is the case with these examples, what you ultimately get is a lot of customers shrugging and giving up in sheer frustration.

Whether its Web design that looks like it was better suited to the 1990's, dense blocks of text or a buried call to action, these pages won't give you the results you want.

Here are some puzzling, unusual and downright irritating bad landing page examples that will have you asking “what were they thinking?” These examples will veer you off the wrong course, just so you can make the best of them.

1. MultiTouch

First the headline: “Marketing simplified!” How original! Instead of simplifying marketing, MultiTouch should focus on simplifying its messaging.

Then there’s the hero shot. And the screenshots? They could benefit from some captions, so we know what’s important or different. Side note: The company is called MultiTouch — emphasis on “multi.” So why is the guy only using one finger?

You’ll notice there are seven qualifying qualities of an effective hero shot: relevance, context, value, emotion, support, education and persuasion. How many of those seven things does MultiTouch pull off? None.

So the next time you’re choosing your hero shot, think of an image for each of these seven qualities.

2. Get Response

When designing a video player, there are several characteristics to consider: the container, caption, poster frame (default image seen prior to clicking play) and play button.

In this case, the container is a fairly standard Apple laptop which conveys the online software aspect. Here there is a descriptive caption up top with a nice little directional cue.

People are drawn to captions placed in close proximity to images and video, as they lie outside of the container, thus breaking the flow of its perimeter.

The poster frame showcases an email template and how it would look on a phone, along with a visual of the tool. (you can start creating, building and publishing the best landing pages with our Lander templates in Minutes!)

It is a little busy though, and could benefit from a simpler visual or some callouts pointing to elements. The play button would be a little more obvious if it used a stronger contrasting color.

3. Zendesk

The team does some exceptional marketing… most of the time. Take a look at the landing page below that was the destination of an AdWords ad. For starters, it’s not a bad landing page at all — it’s their website.

That’s mistake number one. I also want to draw your attention to the order of the copy on the page. Information Hierarchy is concerned with the order in which the copy on your page is presented — both in literal terms and in terms of the visual dominance.

Taking a look at the subhead — it contains all of the clarity missing from the headline: “Zendesk is software for better customer service.” Go look at some other landing page and flip the headline and subhead.

Does it add clarity? If so, consider reworking the order or just change the headline entirely to give it more substance.

4. Roomkey

A big reason for a lack of clarity on landing pages is assuming that the visitors understand your acronyms and jargon. Perhaps the target market is 100% familiar with the term, but we’d be making an assumption, too.

Check out the headline: “Quick implementation {of what} & training {in what} with RoomKeyPMS”. When you look at it, you can see there is something missing in the headline and its ability to clearly state the page’s purpose.

It’s really tough to see what the hero shot is trying to convey here, too, apart from the weird cloud computing reference. To better showcase the app, it would be better using a video or an animated GIF.

It quickly demonstrates aspects of the interface in a more compelling way, and allows you to showcase an important feature.

Conclusion

Reading this list of bad landing pages will help you to establish a common language with the designers and marketers on your team, which leads to better design decisions and more enjoyable discussions around conversion.

Landing pages don't work for many reasons, but they are effective when they speak directly to the audience. What works for one business’ conversion rate might cause another business’ conversions to tank. But that’s how great landing pages are made.