Building better PPC landing pages

My apologies for this article being late off the press: two new staff and being asked to author Practical Ecommerce’s Conversion Report Card has meant a bit of overload during the last two weeks. But here it is now…

So you’re spending all this money on your Google Adwords, but are they really worth the expense? I often have people tell me they’ve cancelled their PPC spend because they’re not getting a justifiable return. So what could be going wrong?

Let’s run a test search for one of your campaigns. Hopefully your pay-per-click ad shows up OK: now, click on the ad. Where does it send you to? Please don’t tell me it’s your home page!

In the previous article, I explained how landing pages designed for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are very different from the landing pages designed for search-engine optimisation (SEO). To recap, landing pages built for SEO live inside your website’s main structure and are designed to get noticed by Google. Landing pages for PPC, however, are specifically designed for conversion and not for getting noticed by Google.

PPC Landing pages have one job: to get you a conversion! You’ve just paid for a warm lead, so now’s the time to make the most of it and not leave it to chance.

Here are some ideas that can help you get more respondents to convert.

Focus the page on converting them

You’re not trying to educate people here, you want them to buy something or do something, so the message here is: Focus, Focus, Focus!

Keep your pages short, simple and to the point. What’s the point? It’s to get this person to take a specific action! To make this happen, the entire content of the landing page needs to be focused on that one specific conversion goal.

To keep focused on conversion, don’t include anything that can take prospects off the task of conversion. So that means no navigation and no links to external sites. Only include links to other content if they have a specific purpose that will step the user towards the conversion goal.

Remember, because you created such a great Google ad, these people are already predisposed to buying what you’re offering, so the page should only be about 1) giving them the information they need to make a decision and 2) helping them to take action — e.g. Buy Now, Get your free whitepaper, or Send us an Enquiry.

Give them the information they need

Put your customer’s hat on for a moment. Think about the search they just did and what they are looking for. What information do they need to make a quick decision?

Unless these people are already sold on what your offering (very few are), then they will be looking for specific information that addresses the purchasing decisions they have in their mind. Think about what information they could be needing and give it to them. If you don’t, you’re more unlikely to convert them and you could lose them for life.

The message is simple: Nobody will buy if they don’t get the information they need.

Show them pictures

You know the saying: a picture paints a thousand words. Pictures are an awesome way of getting key messages across quickly. Photos of your product or of satisfied customers help you to sell and take up relatively little space for the amount of information they can convey. So use them often.

Avoid using Flash or plug-ins

Because you’re paying good money to get people to click through to your landing pages, you should think very carefully about using something that may require a plug-in. People who click on Adwords ads are often the less sophisticated internet users, may be on dial-up, and may not have these plug-ins installed. A landing page that asks these people to install a plug-in would be a conversion killer.

However, if you’re totally confident that your target market will have the plug-in and a flash movie would be instrumental in communicating your offer value, then go ahead.

Match messages to what people search for

I’ve already said about keeping your pages to the point. What is the point? Well, that depends on what the customer searched for, right? Your pages will have a much better chance of conversion if the key messages in your landing pages are matched to what is in the front of the customer’s mind, and this is usually what they searched for. Sounds obvious, right?

Think about creating customised pairs of ads and landing pages for each group of key phrases that you are targeting. If you’ve got a luxury holiday venue that’s great for honeymooners and for families, then that’s two sets of message-matched ads and landing pages. Creating more message-matched ads paired with message-matched landing pages, you’ll do much better than if you try to create one landing page that caters to all possible respondents.

Tell them what you want them to do.

Start thinking about your matched pairs of ad creative and landing pages as a cunning plan to get someone to take a specific action. With that in mind, it no longer makes sense to cram the page with content that the customer just may be interested in, and which does not support the goal.

What you must have is highly visible and persuasive calls to action — but not too many of them! Ideally just one, but a maximum of two, e.g. “Buy Now” or “Enquire”. Make sure the calls to action have a design that draws the visitor’s attention: for example, nice large buttons with colours that stand out.

Most importantly of all, make sure the calls to action are above the fold. It would be a big mistake to put the calls to action in a pace that requires someone to scroll down to see it. If you do have a longer landing page that does require scrolling, then put the same calls to action at the top of the page AND at the bottom. Make it easy for people to take that action.

Give them a relevant testimonial

Testimonials can be a strong ally in establishing the credibility of your product or service, and can dramatically increase conversions if done right.

The key to good testimonials is making them believable. This is VERY important. A believable testimonial will tell the prospect that this is a legitimate product and that other customers are really happy with it. If you can’t make your testimonials believable, then don’t display them at all, as they will do more harm than good.

Once again, think about matching the testimonials to what people search for. Imagine you’re selling pain killers and someone has searched for back pain relief: some testimonials from happy customers saying “it’s taken my back pain away” will be much more persuasive than a generic statement like “I really like this product”. If you can provide one or more genuine testimonials that are matched to the customer’s needs, then your landing pages will be much more compelling.

Test your pages, again and again.

Let’s not forget, you’re paying good money to Google for your click-throughs, so you need to get the best bang for your buck. You do that by finding new ways to make your landing pages perform better.

The easiest way to do this is by testing different approaches. Try setting up two identical ads, send each ad to two different landing pages and see which converts better. Try small differences or completely different approaches, the choice is yours.

The nice thing about doing this is that you get evidence about what works and what doesn’t. So when the boss says put a flashing promo banner on the page, you can confidently tell him why it’s a bad idea.

Testing is an ongoing thing and is never finished. Keep testing (and acting on the results!) and you’ll keep squeezing more conversions out of your pages.

In summary:

1. Keep focused on conversion
2. Provide the information people need
3. Use pictures
4. Avoid flash and plug-ins (unless you’re sure)
5. Use message-matching
6. Use ads and landing pages as matched combinations
7. Have clear and persuasive calls to action
8. Provide relevant and believable testimonials
9. Test, test and test again

All going well, by designing better landing pages for PPC you’ll convert more prospects into buyers and get a better return on your ad spend.