Picture this for a moment: You have your new PPC campaign up and running burning the midnight oil, hoping to maximize returns from your budget. You’ve worked really hard at your keyword research, digging out relevant keywords which you have grouped strategically into tightly themed ad groups. You have also complemented them with creatively written ads, enticing enough to invite loads of clicks. You have the targeting pinned down precisely to areas from where you expect only interested traffic to come in. You rest assured that you’ve done everything for a successful campaign and wait to count the conversions in your basket. One week into the campaign you see that you are getting quite a lot of clicks, but the basket is still empty. You have the dreadful realization that the script has gone horribly wrong. Alarmed, you rush to Google Analytics for the diagnosis and a high bounce rate figure stares right in your face. All that targeted traffic that you’ve painstakingly gathered hasn’t engaged with your site at all and has left before even having a look at what you have to offer. It dawns upon you that you have a landing page problem. It can be quite shattering, but it’s not an uncommon scenario in PPC management.
Landing Pages – Why They Matter
A landing page might be the most neglected component of a PPC campaign setup. The fact is, the role a landing page plays in the success of a campaign cannot be overstated. A specialized and optimized ad destination page is of prime importance in making the traffic coming to your site actually convert. You can have everything else right about your campaign, but if you get your landing page wrong, then you will pay for it, and rather heavily too. Reason enough for due diligence to be observed while strategizing on landing pages.
Landing Pages As An Experience
Straight from the horse’s mouth, Google speaks of landing pages as an experience in themselves. When a visitor arrives at your website after clicking on an ad, it’s so much like when you visit the roadside shop for a purchase. The ambience, the customer service, the ease with which you can find your items, these are all factors that leave their imprint on you and ultimately decides your choice. It doesn’t matter if the shop has all the items that you need, if you are not impressed by what you see, you are going to leave. The same holds true for landing pages. It’s the experience your page gives that influences the visitor and pushes him or her to commit the desired action which you call a conversion.
Providing the Right Landing Page Experience
It follows from above that the landing page problem is essentially an issue of visitor experience. Enhance that experience and the problem is solved. Let’s see how this can be done by focusing the attention on different aspects of the page.
- Relevance – The fundamental feature any landing page should possess is that it should correspond to the ad as closely as possible. Bear in mind that a visitor lands on your page after reading your ad text. He would obviously expect the page to mirror the message that he read before in the ad. So ensure your landing page is directly relevant to your ad text and keyword.
- Reliability – Deliver what you promise, or don’t promise at all. If you offer enticing discounts and deals, then let the content state them clearly in no uncertain terms. You don’t want visitors to leave your site feeling deceived. Another point that should be strictly adhered to is making it easy for the visitor to find your contact information. Whether it is your phone number or your address, don’t make the visitor look around.
- Simplicity – Keep it simple with the design without going overboard with fancy imagery. In an effort to lift the aesthetic appeal of the page, designers can easily overdo things and the result might be disastrous if it turns off the visitor. The point to be noted is that the visitor, first and foremost, is influenced by the messaging in the content. If you compromise content for design it will be at your own peril. A simple page also means that it will load quickly. Page loading time is another critical factor in convincing the visitor to stay on.
- Optimize for the Mobile Device – This is particularly important, as the number of users who browse from mobile devices has been increasing exponentially with the popularity of smartphones. Directing mobile users to a landing page designed for desktop computers will only lead to an increased bounce rate. A mobile friendly website that fits well in the smaller screen size with concise content on the pages can be a great asset in improving conversion rates.
Landing pages are undoubtedly an important part of paid search marketing that greatly impact the conversion cycle. The fate of your PPC campaign hinges on the experience they provide to the visitors. As a tactic to better visitor engagement and conversion rates, landing page optimization deserves to be given attention to detail. Any questions about landing pages or PPC campaigns? Feel free to contact us!