Are you frustrated by ads and keywords getting disapproved by editorial? Do you want to make sure your campaign is firing on all cylinders as soon as it goes live? Would you like to convert more site visitors into sales? When there’s a clear connection between the information contained in your ads and keywords and the information found on your landing page, your campaigns are more likely to pass through editorial with a clean bill of health and increase conversions.
The landing page is one of the most important components of your campaign. It can influence users to learn more about your products or services, make a purchase, or abandon your web site all together. For the greatest effectiveness, it must be highly relevant to both the user’s search and the ad so that it will help you convert a visitor into a customer. The more appropriate your keywords and ads, the better.
For example, if I perform a search for “travel deals” and I’m shown an ad for a travel agency that references “travel deals” in the keywords, ad copy or both, I expect that clicking on the ad will bring me to a page where I will find their travel deals. If I click on the ad and find myself staring at the agency’s home page with a picture of their staff and a list of client testimonials, I’m going to hit the back button on my browser almost immediately. I didn’t find what the ad told me would be there, so I need to move on and continue my search. If the ad I clicked on had brought me directly to their travel deals page, I may have become a customer as quickly as I had been turned away. The landing pages that your ads point to can make or break your campaign.
The easiest way to improve your landing pages is to ask yourself 5 basic questions:
1. Applicability of Search: Do my landing pages align with the information contained in the ads?
Your ultimate goal is to inform your customers, empower them to make a decision and compel them to complete a sale. You can achieve that by providing well-organized and business-pertinent content on your pages. Pages must be an extension of your ad and provide relevant information to the users. Otherwise, users will quickly leave if they don’t find what they are looking for.
2. Keyword Prominence: Are all or most of my keywords included on the landing page?
Structure your landing page so it includes the keywords that are the most important to users visiting your site. If you effectively include your keywords on your landing page, it helps to guide your visitors and makes them feel that they are in the right place. In addition, you'll improve the relevance of your landing page for those keywords, which will help make editorial review a breeze.
3. Speed: Does my page load quickly?
Invest time in designing and testing your site to make sure your pages load quickly. Include smaller images, use fewer graphics, reuse the same images which utilize your visitor’s browser cache to load pages quickly, limit or avoid animated graphics, use GIF files rather than JPG files and avoid unnecessary code. All of the above will help decrease the load time of your pages.
4. Actionable: Do I have a clear call to action?
Explain or demonstrate the benefits of your product(s) and insert a clear actionable step such as “Sign in”, “Order”, or “Purchase” buttons on the top or center of your page without the need to scroll. Make the purchase, sign-in, or ordering a simple and straightforward experience. Add a sense of urgency using the words “now”, “instantly”, “free”, or “today” which emphasize a call to action.
5. Trust Building: Does my web site include signs of trust?
Providing clear statements about credit card security, shipping costs, your privacy policy and return policy are the most important steps in building trust in your business and its offerings. Additional examples of trust building elements include information about the company, the owner, a handwritten signature, and photo.
Following these simple steps should help you not only pass through editorial review with flying colors, but also convert site visitors into customers. Good luck!
For more information please see the Landing Pages Flash tutorial. Questions or comments? Please visit the adCenter Forum.