An effective landing page is essential for a successful pay per click campaign.

With AdWords campaigns, perhaps you follow all of the best practices for:

campaign structure
keyword targeting
negatives and compelling ads

But, if you fail to create a customer experience within your site that gets a click – that becomes a conversion – then all of your hard work may not pay off.

Elements of an effective landing page

The first step is to determine whether or not you are landing your customers on the best page within your site. Here are simple recommendations for your pay per click campaign, so that you don’t frustrate your customers:

your brand terms should go to the home page
specific brands or types of products you sell should each have unique pages so that you can land your traffic on those pages
if you are product marketing (bidding on a specific product/formulation),you should take them to the relevant product page

The second step is to meet expectations that are promised in your ad copy.

If you are offering something for free or at a discount, then that info must be on the landing page. If it’s a “price match guarantee” type of offer that requires more explanation, make sure there is a page on your site to explain the program.

Don’t communicate that you have something that you really don’t, in the hopes that they will still convert.

The third step is to make it easy for the primary online conversion to be completed.

If it’s a hard conversion such as a purchase or sign up, make the process happen in as few clicks as possible. Making your customers feel like your site was easy to use will make them more likely to come back.

If your primary online conversion is a softer conversion, such as a phone call or completing a contact form, make sure it’s visible on the landing page and give clear direction what you want them to do and why.

A few bonus tips for your pay per click campaign

See how your site runs and how fast it runs on each browser. If your site is slow, it may be a barrier to online conversion.
If your customers are bouncing, use Analytics to determine the step that is causing them to bounce. For instance, if it’s at the shopping cart, try to diagnose the problem. It could be that your shipping charges are too high or that you require information that customers aren’t willing to provide.

Need help creating an effective landing page?