5 Tips For Designing a High Converting PPC Landing Page

Shelby Nousain - September 30, 2013

Have you ever thought about the mass amounts of web traffic that click on one of your PPC ads, view the landing page, then quickly click away before you could even realize how much money was just wasted? With average conversion rates hovering somewhere in the 3% to 5% range, a lot of your advertising dollars are not yielding a return. Every click is valuable, and increasing your conversion rates by only a few percentage points can translate into incredible things for the return on your campaigns. To help you capture more conversions here are 5 tips for creating better performing landing pages.

1. Use Directional Cues

Directional cues on landing pages are like road maps for our eyes. They can direct our focus to important info on the page, and more importantly the conversion point (lead form, buy now button, etc). Often times marketers place so much content, images, and widgets on a landing page that it can be easy for the design to lose visual focus on the conversion point. Using directional cues helps point a visitor’s attention where you want it to go. Many times this comes in the form of arrows (or hands such as in the example below) pointing towards the conversion point.

2. Place The Conversion Point Above The Fold of The Page

Once a visitor has clicked on your ad, and has come to your page, you’ve got very little time to capture & pique their attention. With only a couple seconds to do this before they’ll lose interest and click away, it’s very important to place the most important/eye catching info along with conversion point above the fold on the page. If visitors have to scroll down on your page to see the lead form or download button, then it’s possible they may not see it at all.

3. Include Ad Message Continuity

The idea here is simple. If you’re advertising a free software trial in your PPC ad, then the messaging on the landing page should very clearly reinforce the free trial software offer. That’s likely a large reason they clicked on your ad in the first place. If a visitor hits your landing page and expects a different experience than what you’re providing them on the page, then it’s very likely they’ll lose interest and hit the back button. The example below does a great job of clearly reinforcing the value proposition from their PPC ad.

4. Clearly Tell Visitors What You Want Them To Do

You can build a landing page with incredible graphics, helpful info, and a sleek design, but if they’re not sure what they’re supposed to do when they’re on the page, then you’ve likely wasted your advertising dollars to get them there. If you want visitors to pick up the phone and give you a call, then including large “Call Now” text at the top of the page will help ensure they know how to get in touch with you. If you want them to sign up for a free trial as in the example below, then placing text at the top of the form both reinforces the value of why they should convert, and also clearly instructs the visitor on what to do next. Landing pages that communicate clearly, and specifically what they want visitors to do are the ones with the highest conversion rates.

5. Test!

And finally, testing your landing pages is the only way to discover how to create the best landing page for your audience. The testing opportunities are limitless. You could implement an A/B test to determine whether a multi-page website, or a single page experience converts better. Or, you could go more granular and test variations of headlines, different types of imagery, form layouts, and so much more. There are also software packages that can help save you a lot of time with the testing process. Simply doing a search for “landing page testing software” will yield you lots of options.