10 Tips to Improve Your Google Ads (AdWords) Landing Pages

An Adwords landing page is a page on your website that visitors reach when they click one of your Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads. It’s goal is to deliver on what your Ad has promised the visitor and should provide a great user experience for them too.

 

Landing page experience is one of the three main factors behind your Quality Scores. If you have high bounce rates and low visitor engagement this will show in your quality scores as Below Average landing page experience.

 

Also, a poor landing page experience for your Adwords visitors means you are unlikely to achieve good conversion rates that would make advertising on Google worth it.

 

So, here are 10 tips to help optimise your landing page experience and boost your Adwords campaigns:

 

Avoid popups

If you can, avoid adding popups, especially if they are not in line with the content on the landing page. Popups can be annoying for users and usually are not relevant for PPC campaigns because everything the visitor needs should be available on the landing page in most cases.

 

Also, Google will disapprove ads if a popup distracts visitors and is not relevant to the ads and keywords.

 

A popup can be ok if you would like to highlight a special offer, like a discount voucher, that’s related to the product or service on the landing page. In fact, this can lead to higher conversion rates because it can be a strong incentive for visitors.

 

Also, popups are more of an annoyance on mobile devices because they are harder to close. One option is to have it appear for your desktop visitors and not mobile visitors. Mobile visitors usually have less time and patience and will quickly click the back button if they are obstructed.

 

Remove all distractions

Don’t stop your visitors from doing what they have arrived on your landing page to do. Remember they have clicked one of your PPC ads and you have been charged by Google and this should motivate you to make the experience as best as possible.

 

One common distraction is having too much text on a landing page. Most visitors don’t read website text, but just scan through it to pick the most important points.

 

So, If you have too much text on the page, then that could be off-putting for many people and will make it difficult for them to scan and find what they need.

 

Popups and banners can be distractions too and should be avoided at all cost. If you have to add them, they should be kept to a minimum and relevant to the page content and offers

 

Add a call to action

A call to action is a definite must for all your PPC landing pages. The call to action on your ad should be the same one visitors see on the landing page. So, if the Ad has promised a white paper download, this should be available on the landing page, without the visitor having to search the website for it.

 

Also, the call to action should be visible ‘Above the fold’, which is what visitors see as soon as they land on the page.

 

This is especially important on mobile devices which are harder to navigate than desktop. Your conversion rates will be higher when the call to action is visible at the top, on mobile devices – without them having to scroll down to see the call to action.

 

Many features can act as a call to action and these include a phone number, banner, email, form, button and others.

 

Use software like hotjar

Hotjar is an amazing analytics platform developed in 2014 that helps you analyse your website traffic, receive feedback, carry out surveys and do much more to optimise your website and landing pages.

 

One of the best features is the recording of website visitor actions which gives you the ‘big picture’ of how to improve your site’s user experience and performance or conversion rates.

 

 

Use white space

Break up your text with white space to make it easier for your visitors to scan or read easily. There is nothing as off putting on a landing page as large chunks of paragraphs with very little white space in between.

 

Visitors will find it hard to digest your content and will completely ignore anything that looks difficult to read. So, you will fail to get your key points across and completely lose them to competitor sites that have well structured content.

 

Add reviews

You are at a great disadvantage if your competitors have reviews and your landing pages do not. Many website visitors will be looking for proof of your expertise or past performance from reviews – and without them, you will find it difficult to convince them of that fact.

 

There are many credible third part review sites like Trustpilot and Feefo and for a small monthly fee, you can collect customer reviews, and this will be a great investment for your business.

 

 

Have an “About Us” page

Many of your visitors will be looking for an ‘About Us’ page to learn more about your business before they decide to trade with you. It still amazes me to find many sites don’t have an About Us page and this is one of the most basic features to add.

 

Having the About page visible from any of your landing pages will make it easy for your visitors to learn about your business. And after reading that and having gained more confidence, they will return to the landing page to complete a conversion.

 

Add a contact form

A contact form is a must if you want to turn visitors into leads. People are more likely to contact you if you have a well designed and targeted form on the landing page.

 

It’s especially important for mobile visitors who are able to fill out the form quickly and move on to whatever else they need to do.

 

Of course, you should have a separate contact page for visitors who want to use that, however, including the form on the landing page will help to boost user experience and conversions too.

 

Have a “Thank You” page

It’s better to have a ‘thank you’ page for your contact form than an in-line thank you message. A thank you page helps to reduce bounce rates for your website and increases overall visitor experience.

 

You can also use the thank you page to set expectations for your visitor about when you will get back to them. This is more difficult with an inline message which will normally just say ‘thank you for contacting us. We will contact you shortly’.

 

Again, with a thank you page, you can promote other areas of your website and even a white paper download or eBOOK which they can read to learn more about your business.

 

Finally, a thank you page makes tracking your Google AdWords traffic a lot easier. With an in-line message, you would have to setup event tracking, which can be tricky to setup at the best of times. With the thank you page, all you need is the URL which you will use to setup goal tracking in google analytics and track your PPC traffic easily.

 

Update your footer

Your footer represents the end of the line for your landing page visitor. They have read your content and have reached the bottom of the page, but are not sure what to do next.

 

This is where you can promote other pages on your website by adding links to those pages. You can also add a newsletter signup or a contact form to make it easy for them to make contact.