A lot of time and effort has gone into creating your ads for Google Search and Display. Campaigns built. Keywords ready. Ad Copy approved.
Now you’re ready to launch, right?
No, many people mistakenly believe that great ads alone will guarantee high traffic and strong conversion rates. The truth? It all hinges on the landing page.
If your landing page is neglected, users may arrive on your site only to disengage immediately. It might lack the information they’re looking for or fail to inspire trust, costing you conversions.
Let’s explore 4 common PPC landing page mistakes and how you can avoid them to maximise traffic and conversions.
1. Using the Same Landing Page for Everything
PPC landing pages should be tailored to deliver the specific information your customers need while guiding them toward conversion. Using a generic page (like your homepage) for every ad undermines the user experience.
By creating multiple PPC-specific landing pages, you can:
- Improve relevance to user search terms.
- Boost your keyword’s Quality Score.
- Enhance your conversion funnel.
Examples of Tailored Landing Pages:
- Geo-targeted Pages: Reflect the specific cities or locations your campaign targets.
- Product-specific Pages: Send users directly to pages dedicated to the product or service they’re searching for.
Not sure which variation works best? That brings us to mistake #2…
2. Not Testing Your Landing Pages
Testing isn’t just for ads – your landing pages deserve the same level of optimisation.
By using tools like Google Ad’s Drafts & Experiments you can easily set up a landing page test within the platform itself.
If you want to delve deeper into individual landing page performance, you can use Google Optimize. This works with both Google Ads and Google Analytics and helps you to further optimise your conversion rate.
Much like your ads, you should test your messaging to see which best resonates with your customer. This includes tweaking the Call To Action, geo-specificity and product specificity.
3. Neglecting to Build Trust
A trustworthy website is immediately obvious, right?
Not necessarily.
Psychologically our brains are geared to pick up on subtle clues subconsciously and therefore it’s difficult to quantify exactly whether or not a website is trustworthy.
There are more obvious ways, like keeping your website up-to-date (and not looking like it was built in the late 90s!).
Ways to Build Trust:
- Spelling and Grammar: Simple things like spelling mistakes and poor grammar will immediately switch people off. Like your teacher used to say, spell check!
- Partners and Accreditations: By showcasing these it helps legitimise your business and shows that you know what you’re doing.
- Bios and Social Profiles: Adding in short bios about you and your staff, and adding links to your Instagram and Twitter pages help to humanise your business.
- Testimonials & Reviews: People are naturally sceptical of something they have to pay for that has no reviews. That’s why it’s important to include testimonials to show that real people have used your product and have had a good experience of it.
- Contact Information & Business Address: Giving the customer multiple links to contact you can help build trust. Adding in your business email and phone number gives them an easy way to contact you if something goes wrong. Showing your office or store on an embedded Google Maps map looks even better.
A trustworthy landing page builds a personal connection and encourages users to take action.
4. Focusing Only on Desktop
The final sin is focusing on Desktop and forgetting Mobile.
Mobile users now dominate Google Search, yet many businesses prioritise desktop experiences. A poor mobile landing page can cost you significant traffic and conversions.
How to Optimise for Mobile:
- Accessibility: Does the text scale? Can users easily scroll up and down and find the info they need? Ensure you avoid classic issues like the CTA button being half obscured due to the change in resolution.
- Customer Feedback: Nothing wrong with asking your customers to give you their thoughts on what is good and bad.
- Minimal Clutter: Simplicity is the aim of the game. Too much stuff on the page can dissuade people from browsing your site even on desktop, so on mobile with vastly smaller screen size this cluttered effect is amplified. Make sure your website design is simple.
- Test Performance: Use Google’s Test My Site and Mobile-friendly tools to check how your site performs. It can give you a breakdown of areas that perform poorly and cause loading speed issues. You can also use this to test your competitors and see how your site compares to theirs.
Thankfully website builders like WordPress can help you build your mobile page with minimal faff with responsive designs, but do be careful when using external plug-ins that may not scale in the same manner.
Get the Most from Your PPC Landing Pages
By avoiding these common mistakes, you’ll improve your landing pages, boost conversion rates, and make your PPC campaigns far more effective.
Here’s a handy checklist to optimise your landing pages:
- Build a specific, bespoke page for PPC
- Use messaging that matches your ads
- Create a testing plan for tweaks to your site
- Test your page for mobile using Google’s tools
- Use mobile-friendly responsive website-builder themes
- Check Spelling & grammar
- Include Customer Reviews & Testimonials
- Add in Bios and Social Profiles
- Include Contact info
Ready to Maximise Your PPC Results?
Your ads are only as effective as the landing pages they lead to. At Nivo Digital, we specialise in creating high-converting PPC landing pages and optimising campaigns to deliver measurable results.
Get in touch to day to help drive traffic, build trust, and increase conversions.
