Landing Pages Can Work but Few Brands Use Them

December 31, 2012

Some people love landing pages and some people do not. Few people have no opinion about landing pages.

Research has shown that well-crafted landing pages can increase conversion rates. Why aren’t more brands using them? Is it just the ongoing perception that consumers don’t like landing pages that’s keeping brands from creating them? And what about the brands that do create landing pages? Are they as good as they can be? Probably not.

Ion Interactive and TechValidate conducted research to identify the barriers to landing page optimization as reported by marketers from Ion Interactive’s customer base. Highlights from the research findings are shown in the infographic below and include barriers to optimization such as:

Too much time and effort = 67%
IT and code-heavy practices = 57%
Little or no testing due to internal infrastructure = 46%
No actionable insights from testing = 35%
Inability to segment, personalize, or target = 33%
Inability to efficiently optimize for mobile = 26%
Inability to create interactive content = 26%

You can see the complete infographic below.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), many of the barriers to landing page optimization cited by marketers in this study are all internal problems.

Certainly, breaking down these barriers should be a strategic imperative for marketing executives who need to improve and quantify marketing program results. Unfortunately, this priority is too often overlooked. It takes guts to speak out against the obstacles created by internal struggles, hierarchies, decentralization, and “we’ve always done things this way” mentalities.

The marketing executives who succeed in doing so truly are the best leaders, but the reality is they’re not always seen in that light. It’s a corporate mindset that needs to change from the top down in order to improve not just marketing performance but overall company performance.

Do you agree or disagree? Should landing page optimization and removing internal obstacles to improve marketing efforts be prioritized in 2013? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Svilen Milev

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Susan Gunelius

President & CEO at KeySplash Creative, Inc.

Susan Gunelius is the author of multiple marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and blogging books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, a leading blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com, a featured writer for Forbes.com, and the Guide to Blogging for About.com. Additionally, her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com, WashingtonPost.com, TheStreet.com, SmartMoney.com, TodayShow.com, BusinessWeek.com, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Small Business, and more. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Susan also appears at in-person and virtual events where she speaks about marketing, branding, social media, and more (visit www.SusanGunelius.com for more information). You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.