Quick PPC Tips: Evaluate Your Landing Page

So you’ve put in your hours writing killer ad copy, creating highly targeted adgroups, and compiling the best set of keywords ever. Why isn’t your conversion rate shooting up already?

Your campaign may be stupendously good (especially if you use our PPC management software!) but if your landing pages aren’t, you might be losing precious conversions. Unfortunately, we spend so much time on our own websites that it can blind us to their shortcomings. To determine whether your landing page is up to snuff, get an outside opinion. Grab an unsuspecting stranger or call up a friend and ask him to answer honestly these questions about your landing page(s). (And you do have more than one landing page, right? Good.)

1. Are you where you wanted to be? If the PPC ad was for fuzzy pink boots, the landing page should be the category page for fuzzy pink boots (if you sell more than one type) or the product page itself. The landing page needs to be as specific as possible to funnel visitors to the desired action — making a purchase, subscribing, registering for a free trial, etc.

2. Is it clear what you’re supposed to be doing? Marketers have, at best, under 10 seconds to persuade a visitor to stay. 10 seconds. Yikes. Get rid of anything distracting or confusing (overuse of flash, affiliate links, other irrelevant links) between your visitor and the desired action. Make headlines brief, persuasive, and relevant, and put your call to action buttons close by.

3. Are you likely to click the call to action button? Things that help: more than one button placed on different areas of the page, size, bright colors, persuasive text close by the button, language that doesn’t imply commitment (’try’ rather than ‘register,’ etc.).

4. Do you trust this organization? Peer reviews, third party certifications, and testimonials can all make your company seem more trustworthy to your visitor. Even if you minimize navigation to cut down on distractions, you need to keep essential information easily accessible (privacy policy, shipping prices, guarantees, etc). These pieces of information can keep your visitors from abandoning carts or registration forms.

As always, it’s good to test different versions of landing pages in which you change just one factor at a time (headline text, button color, layout, image). Good luck!