On the Web, you have mere seconds before someone decides whether or not they want to engage with your business online. That’s why your PPC advertisements should lead to landing pages where the next step is clear and easy to perform.
That’s why in this post, we’ll ask you to perform two actions in 2 minutes to determine just how well your PPC landing pages are laid out for your potential customers.
If you can’t figure out what to do on your landing pages in a short amount of time, you have some problems to address to help boost the conversions that your PPC traffic drives.
Minute 1: Check Your Relevance
What happens after someone clicks on your ad is just as important as the steps leading up to that. Let’s say you’re looking for pink BAND-AIDs for your 6-year-old daughter. If you click on this ad:
Does this page give you options for what you’re looking for?
Maybe … the site only lists two options for pink bandages, and both are not BAND-AID brand.
The ability to give people what they need on your site after a PPC click seems like such a simple concept; yet time after time, advertisers can miss this detail and send users on a wild goose chase to track down the items they’re looking for on a website.
The last thing you ever want to happen from your PPC campaign is bewilderment by your website visitors. They should never feel lost, or start guessing if maybe they clicked on the wrong ad.
This is not only bad for your potential customers, but also bad for your PPC Quality Score.
Being relevant also means including the keywords the ad is targeting on the landing page, in the headline and in the Meta information – so carrying out basic on-page optimization for search engines.
Tying the keywords in helps your website visitor know they’ve come to the right page. Sometimes you may even have to build special standalone landing pages for each PPC campaign (versus a category page, for example), depending on the needs and type of business you’re in.
To test how well your PPC landing page makes good on its promise, put yourself in the user’s shoes and check out your ad and its subsequent landing page.
If you can waste a few clicks on testing, try to get to the ad from the search results using the keywords you’re targeting, so you get the full experience. Or, ask a friend or colleague to do so and give feedback.
Minute 2: Check Your Calls to Action
Is there a way for someone to purchase the product, download the content or contact the business with ease on your PPC landing page? A call-to-action button that’s front and center is key (above the fold so the person does not have to scroll down to see it).
Make sure the call to action is easy to find, whether it’s “add to cart” or “click here for [whatever thing you’re offering].” Call-to-action text or buttons should be very concise. Let people know what they’re getting into by clicking on that button or filling in that form.
If you have a form fill, try not to bombard a person with an endless list of qualifying questions. Make it as simple as possible for the person to give the email in exchange for whatever it is you’re giving (free consultation, e-book, etc.).
Try not to complicate the landing page by a lot of text, links or competing directives, either. Landing pages should exist to drive people to the goal or action intended without much distraction.
Here’s where A/B testing can be essential. The colors of your buttons, the placement, the words and so much more all go into making actions simple and desirable for a person to take.
3 Examples to Go By
Conversion optimization is a whole discipline within itself. But following some very simple steps can ensure you have landing pages that are clear and tie well to your PPC campaign.
Here are just a few examples of PPC ads and the respective PPC landing pages that have several key elements that keep them relevant and simple to engage with.
1. Cognex – B2B Company
Here’s an example of a standalone landing page unique to the advertising campaign. This is a B2B company, and the goal of this landing page is to qualify the lead and have the person contact the business.
2. James Medows – Attorney
This attorney has a campaign for DWI/DUI defense in Brooklyn. The ad campaign is reinforced with the language on the page, and the form and contact information is clear and easy to find.
3. Vermont College of Fine Arts – Educational Institute
This college website’s landing page reinforces the advertising copy from the PPC ad, uses content to highlight the value of the course, and has a simple form to fill in.
So there you have it: a simple PPC landing page audit you can do in just a couple minutes. We hope some of these steps can increase the ROI you see in your PPC campaigns, just like it has for ours.
