Why Your Landing Pages Don't Convert (And What To Do)

You’re paying for traffic. Google Ads, Facebook, SEO, whatever. Visitors land on your page, look around for 30 seconds, and leave. They don’t call. They don’t fill out the form. They’re gone.

The average home service website converts 3-4% of visitors. That means 96-97% of your marketing spend produces nothing. The traffic you paid for disappears without a trace.

Top-performing landing pages convert 8-12%. Same traffic, 2-3x more leads. The difference is execution, not budget.

Load speed kills conversions

Pages that load in 1 second convert 3x better than pages that load in 5 seconds. Every additional second costs you 7% in conversions.

Most home service websites load in 3-5 seconds. That’s not terrible, but it’s not competitive. The homeowner searching on their phone while waiting for coffee doesn’t have patience for a spinning wheel.

Test your landing page on Google PageSpeed Insights. Anything below 80 mobile score needs work. The usual culprits are unoptimized images, too many fonts, bloated JavaScript from plugins or widgets, and slow hosting.

Compress images before uploading. Use a content delivery network if your host doesn’t include one. Remove widgets you don’t actually need. These fixes are technical but straightforward.

Too many form fields

Every form field you add reduces completions. One study showed removing a single field increased conversions by 26%. Most home service forms ask for too much.

Name, phone, email, brief description of the project. That’s all you need to call someone back. You can get address, project details, and timing on the phone.

Forms that ask for address, project type, budget range, preferred date, how they heard about you, and a detailed description intimidate visitors. The homeowner who just wants a quick quote looks at 8 required fields and thinks “I’ll do this later.” They never come back.

Reduce your form to 4-5 fields maximum. Make only 3 mandatory. Test whether removing fields increases submissions. It almost always does.

Weak or missing calls to action

The visitor needs to know exactly what to do next. “Contact us” is vague. “Get a free estimate” is specific. “Schedule your free inspection today” is better.

Your primary call to action should be visible without scrolling on both desktop and mobile. The phone number should be clickable. The form should be above the fold or immediately visible via a sticky button.

Many landing pages bury the CTA at the bottom. The homeowner who scanned for 15 seconds and didn’t see how to reach you moved on. Don’t make them hunt.

Use action verbs. “Get,” “Schedule,” “Book,” “Request.” Avoid passive language like “Learn more” or “Submit” as your primary CTA.

Generic messaging that sounds like everyone else

“Family-owned since 1987. Quality service you can trust. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

Every contractor says this. When everyone’s message sounds identical, customers choose based on something else. Usually price. Sometimes speed of response. Sometimes random chance.

Your landing page needs specific claims that differentiate. “We answer the phone 24/7” is specific. “Same-day service for emergencies” is specific. “100+ 5-star reviews” is specific.

Speak to the homeowner’s actual concern. Someone searching for emergency plumber at 11pm isn’t evaluating your company history. They want to know you can be there tonight. Someone searching for exterior house painters wants to know you’ll protect their landscaping and clean up daily.

Match message to search intent. The landing page for “AC repair near me” should address the urgent need. The landing page for “HVAC maintenance plans” can talk about long-term value. Same company, different messaging.

Mobile experience is broken

Over 60% of home service searches happen on phones. Probably 70%+ for emergency searches happening in the moment a problem occurs.

Your landing page might look great on your desktop. Pull it up on your phone. Is the phone number easy to tap? Does the form work without zooming? Can you read the text without squinting?

Buttons need to be large enough for thumbs. Text needs to be 16px minimum. Forms need to be simple enough to complete while standing in a flooded basement or staring at a roach.

Click-to-call should be prominent. The phone number as a link in the header isn’t enough. A button that says “Call Now - Free Estimate” that actually dials your number removes friction.

No trust signals

A visitor landing on your page from Google has never heard of you. They’re trying to figure out if you’re legitimate, competent, and trustworthy before they hand over their phone number.

Trust signals answer those questions. Reviews and star ratings show social proof. Logos of industry associations show legitimacy. Photos of real technicians (not stock photos) show authenticity. Years in business, number of completed projects, specific certifications.

The landing pages that convert show trust signals immediately. A review widget with recent 5-star reviews. A badge for “Google Guaranteed” or “BBB A+ rating.” A photo of the owner or team with names.

Generic stock photos of models in hard hats signal that you bought a template. Real photos from real job sites signal that you’re a real company.

Wrong traffic, right page

Sometimes the landing page isn’t the problem. The traffic is.

If you’re running Google Ads for “HVAC maintenance” and sending visitors to a page about emergency AC repair, the page won’t convert. The intent doesn’t match. The visitor wanted one thing and found something else.

Check your keyword-to-page alignment. Create separate landing pages for separate services. “AC repair” traffic goes to an AC repair page. “Furnace installation” traffic goes to a furnace installation page. Generic homepage traffic is fine for branded searches but wastes money on service-specific keywords.

Read your search terms report. Are you paying for clicks from people searching for things you don’t offer? Are you paying for clicks from people in areas you don’t serve? Wasted clicks on the wrong traffic make your landing page look worse than it is.

No follow-up for partial intent

Not everyone is ready to call right now. Some visitors are researching, comparing, planning a project for next month. They’re interested enough to visit your page but not ready to commit.

Most landing pages only capture people ready to call or submit a form. Everyone else leaves with no way to reach them later.

Lead magnets work for some audiences. “Download our guide to choosing the right HVAC system” captures emails from people researching purchases. Not every visitor will engage, but some will exchange their email for helpful content.

Retargeting keeps you visible to people who visited but didn’t convert. They see your ad on Facebook next week while their AC is still broken. Second exposure converts better than first.

The 96% problem

For every 100 visitors to your landing page, 96 leave without converting. Even excellent landing pages only capture 10-12%. The majority of your traffic produces nothing measurable.

Some of those visitors weren’t qualified. Competitors checking you out, job seekers, random clicks. But many were homeowners with real projects who decided to call someone else or wait.

Traditional analytics tells you that you had 500 visitors and 15 conversions. It doesn’t tell you that a homeowner at 456 Oak Drive spent 4 minutes on your water heater page on Tuesday evening, didn’t call, and scheduled with a competitor the next morning.

When you can identify which households visited which pages, you can reach out to people who showed interest but didn’t convert. A postcard that arrives two days after someone researched your services feels relevant. It catches them while the project is still on their mind.

Read more about capturing lost leads from your website.

Testing is the answer

The fixes above are starting points. What actually works depends on your market, your services, and your specific audience.

Test one change at a time. Reduce form fields and measure whether submissions increase. Change the headline and see if bounce rate drops. Add a review widget and check if conversions improve.

The contractors with 10-12% conversion rates didn’t get there by accident. They tested headlines, forms, layouts, and CTAs over time. Each improvement stacked on the last.

Start with the biggest issues. If your page takes 5 seconds to load, fix that before worrying about button colors. If your form has 10 fields, reduce that before testing headline variations. The foundational problems matter more than the fine-tuning.

What to fix first

Look at your analytics. Where do visitors drop off? If they leave within 5 seconds, the page is too slow or the initial impression is wrong. If they scroll through the whole page and still don’t convert, the offer or CTA is weak.

Ask customers how they found you and what made them call. Their answers reveal what’s working and what’s missing. “I liked that you had lots of reviews” tells you the reviews section is effective. “I almost didn’t call because the website looked outdated” tells you the design needs work.

Most landing pages fail on basics: speed, form length, mobile experience, clear CTAs. Fix those before worrying about advanced tactics. A fast-loading page with a 4-field form and a prominent phone number outperforms a slow, cluttered page with clever copy.

Beyond the landing page

The best landing page in the world can’t save slow follow-up. 78% of customers go with the first contractor to respond. Converting traffic into a form submission is step one. Converting that submission into a booked job requires speed.

Leads that sit for 47 hours (the industry average response time) go cold. By the time you call back, the homeowner booked with whoever answered first.

Auto-responders that fire within 5 seconds buy you time. “Thanks for reaching out - someone will call you within 15 minutes” keeps the homeowner from calling your competitor while waiting.

Read more about the 5-minute rule for lead response.

Your landing page is one piece of a larger system. Traffic generation gets visitors. The landing page converts them to leads. Follow-up converts leads to estimates. Sales process converts estimates to jobs. A weak link anywhere in that chain costs you revenue, even if individual pieces look fine.