Your ad copy seems to be working. You’re getting lots of traffic with a good click-through rate. But when you take a closer look, you realize something’s missing: conversions.

In PPC campaigns, landing pages can be an afterthought.

However, they’re a key ingredient in any PPC recipe. When a potential customer clicks your ad, they’re excited to learn more about what the ad just promised. But when they’re taken to a poorly built landing page (or worse, your home page), you break that promise, lose their attention and ultimately waste your ad budget.

As you’re building a new campaign or optimizing an existing one, beware of these landing page pitfalls that break your ad promise and erode trust.

5 Landing Page Mistakes

1) You’re driving ad traffic to anything but a landing page

A surprisingly common mistake is simply not having a landing page at all.

If a user clicks on your ad, it’s logical to think they’ll want to learn about your whole company. But the reality is that they’re excited about the one piece of information you shared.

They want more details on that.

If users land on your home page or an interior page, they may be distracted by the rest of the links they see, realize that the one thing they were excited about isn’t as big of a deal as they thought, and wander off—never to be seen again.

An exception to this rule is e-commerce websites. If you’re directing someone to a product, it’s perfectly acceptable to lead a visitor to the product’s page instead of a landing page.

2) You’re leaving navigation on the landing page

Sometimes, leaving navigation on the page just feels right.

After all, if the user doesn’t want the offer you originally promoted, the navigation will allow them to explore the rest of the website. Maybe they’ll even buy something on another page.

Unfortunately, user behavior doesn’t usually follow this model.

When your landing page has navigation, the user will likely click through to another page, regardless of whether or not they actually like the offer on your landing page. Instead of offering a backup plan, navigation creates a leak. The user probably won’t return to the landing page, and the other pages he or she finds will be far less effective at winning their business.

The goal of a landing page is to close conversions as quickly as possible. If that’s the case, there should be no other option on the page except to convert.

3) You’re failing to track landing page performance

Landing pages aren’t “set-it-and-forget-it.” You’ll want to pay attention to how well they’re performing over time and conduct regular A/B tests. In fact, A/B testing is something your PPC team should be doing every single month.

Building and monitoring a landing page is actually pretty straightforward with a tool like Unbounce. It’s one of our favorite tools here at ParaCore. Unbounce has an easy drag-and-drop interface so you can get off the ground without a developer’s help.

It also simplifies A/B testing and allows you to use dynamic content. Dynamic content can be used to show different messages to different people on the same page for a more customized experience.

4) You’re ignoring the mobile version of your page

Did you know that 54% of Facebook users only login from a mobile device and nearly 92% of users login on their mobile device at least once-per-month?

It’s no secret everyone is mobile so your landing page must be optimized for a smartphone experience. That means phone numbers should have click-to-call functionality for easy dialing, text is big and readable, and the page will possibly have less content than it’s desktop counterpart.

5) You’re putting too much content and/or call-to-action buttons on the page

When you’re relying on just one page to convert users, many people feel the need to squeeze in as much information as possible.

Here’s the product you saw in the ad.

By the way, we also do THIS, THIS, THIS, AND THIS. It has SO MANY FEATURES!

And did you know it also comes in blue? Check out the blue one, too!

While it may seem like this approach gives you more bang for your buck, trust us: less is more. Include only enough information to make a compelling presentation for why visitors should convert, and let them discover the specifics later on. Once they have expressed interest, you can get in touch with them again and share the juicy details.

Your landing page still isn’t converting. Now what?

So you’ve confirmed you’re not making any of these common landing page mistakes, but your results are still falling flat. What should you do next?

Here are three steps to take:

1. Make sure the page is working the way it should. You’d be surprised how many landing page conversions are lost simply because of slow load times, incorrect links, terrible mobile designs, and broken form functionality.
2. Reconsider the commitment level of your offer. Are you asking the user to share a bunch of personal information or set up a 30-minute phone call? Those might be big steps for someone who just met you. Consider simplifying it, such as asking them to share their email address or sign up to receive more information.
3. Play with the messaging. What happens when you change headlines or reorganize the information on a page? Get your A/B testing game face on, and see what kind of small copy changes you can make to improve results quickly.

Let’s whip those landing pages into shape

Need some help identifying where your landing pages are having trouble? Want more perspective on how ads and landing pages work together to attract leads?

We’d love to sit down with you and go over any questions you have. We’ll even throw in a no-strings-attached audit of your AdWords account. Contact us now for your free consultation.

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