A client once showed us a landing page for a $400-a-month accounting service. It had a gorgeous hero video, a six-item navigation menu, three different buttons in three colors, and a contact form with eleven fields. It had been getting about 1,800 visits a month and producing two enquiries. Nobody on the team could say what was wrong, because nothing looked wrong. That’s the trouble with landing page mistakes: they rarely look like mistakes. They look like design choices.
Here are the ones we see most often when we audit pages for small and mid-sized businesses, and what we usually do about them.
1. Giving visitors somewhere else to go
A landing page has one job. If it’s meant to get a quote request, every link that leads away from that request is a leak. The full site navigation, the footer packed with twenty links, the social icons that open in the same tab, they all give a distracted visitor a polite exit.
For pages that receive paid or campaign traffic, strip the header down to a logo and perhaps a phone number. Keep the footer to legal links. You’re not hiding your business; you’re keeping the visit focused. Pages that live inside your normal site structure, like a core service page, are a different case and usually do need navigation, so decide which kind of page you’re building before you remove anything.
2. A headline that describes you instead of helping them
“Innovative Solutions for Modern Businesses” could be pasted onto any company’s page in any industry. A visitor decides in a few seconds whether they’re in the right place, and a vague headline gives them no reason to stay.
Try this test: cover your logo and read the headline aloud. Does it say what you offer, who it’s for, and what changes for them? “Bookkeeping for Ludhiana manufacturers, done by the 5th of every month” does all three. The subheading can then carry the proof or the detail.
3. Competing calls to action
“Book a call,” “Download the guide,” “Get a quote,” “Follow us on Instagram.” When a page asks for four things, most people do none. Choose one primary action and make it visually obvious, with a button that contrasts with its surroundings and says what happens next: “Get my free site audit” outperforms “Submit” almost every time we’ve tested it.
A secondary action is fine if it’s clearly secondary, such as a plain text link for people who aren’t ready. Just don’t give it the same visual weight.
4. Forms that ask for too much
Every extra field costs you completions. Our own rule of thumb, which you should treat as a starting point and not a law, is to ask only for what you need to take the next step. For a callback request, that’s usually a name and a phone number or email. You can collect company size, budget, and timeline on the call.
Also check the unglamorous details: Does the form work with autofill? Is the phone field set to show a numeric keypad on mobile? Does the error message say which field failed? We’ve fixed forms that silently rejected valid phone numbers for months.
5. Ignoring mobile, or only half-checking it
Opening the page on your phone once isn’t a mobile test. Check the real things: Can a thumb reach the button? Is the text readable without zooming? Does a cookie banner cover the call to action? Do images push the headline below the fold? Google primarily uses the mobile version of your pages for indexing, as described in its mobile-first indexing documentation, so a weak mobile page can hurt more than conversions.
6. Slow pages, especially the hero section
That autoplay hero video or 3 MB banner image is often the biggest reason a landing page feels sluggish. Run the page through PageSpeed Insights and look at Largest Contentful Paint, which measures how quickly the main content appears. Google’s guidance on Largest Contentful Paint suggests aiming for 2.5 seconds or less for most visitors.
Practical fixes: compress and properly size the hero image, use modern formats like WebP, avoid loading a slider library for a single image, and defer scripts that aren’t needed immediately.
7. Proof that isn’t believable
“Trusted by hundreds of clients” with no names is weak. Stock photos of smiling strangers are weaker. Real proof is specific: a named client with a quote and a result, a recognizable logo you have permission to use, a certification, a Google review count with a link to the profile, a photo of your actual team.
If you don’t have a testimonial yet, say less rather than invent anything. Fabricated reviews are both unethical and, in many places, against consumer protection rules.
8. Walls of text, or no text at all
There are two opposite failures here. Some pages bury the offer under paragraphs nobody reads. Others are so minimal, all big images and slogans, that a careful buyer can’t find price range, process, or what’s included. Aim for scannable structure: short sections, clear subheadings, and enough detail that a serious prospect can answer “is this for me?” without calling you.
9. Never testing anything
Most pages are launched and left alone for years. You don’t need a sophisticated A/B testing platform to improve. Change one thing at a time (the headline, the button text, the form length), give it enough traffic to mean something, and record what happened. With low-traffic pages, comparing a month before and a month after is imperfect, but it still beats guessing. Google Analytics and a simple heatmap tool will show where people stop scrolling or abandon the form.
One honest caveat: no designer or agency can promise a specific conversion rate. Results depend on your offer, price, traffic quality, and market. What good design can do is remove friction so your offer gets a fair hearing.
Quick answers
How long should a landing page be?
As long as it needs to be to answer the buyer’s questions, and no longer. A $20 download can work with a short page; a $5,000 service usually needs more explanation and proof.
Should I use a video?
Only if it helps explain the offer. Don’t let it autoplay with sound, and make sure it doesn’t slow the page. A short, clear explainer can help; a decorative background video usually doesn’t.
How often should I review my landing pages?
Quarterly is a sensible rhythm, and any time you change the offer, pricing, or ad targeting.
A quick checklist before you publish
Read the headline without the logo and see if it still makes sense. Count the calls to action and aim for one primary. Count the form fields and cut any you don’t need for the next step. Test on a real phone, on mobile data, not just office Wi-Fi. Run PageSpeed Insights. And ask someone outside your company to tell you, after five seconds, what the page is offering. If they can’t, that’s your first fix.
Written by the team at Technowave Global Solutions, a web design, development, and SEO agency based in Ludhiana, India, working with clients since 2010. Last updated October 2026.