When your customers click through on your PPC ads, they may be prepared with credit card in hand to buy your product.
But if the landing page they are directed to isn’t properly designed (or worse, does not exist), odds are incredibly high that they will abandon your product for your competitors’.
Here are five steps you can take to ensure that doesn’t happen:
Keep it simple
The copy on the page should directly address the call to action from your ad, with all critical information appearing above the fold. You should include your logo, but don’t pack in your company history or other lengthy pieces of information about your brand.
And remember to keep it easy and simple when it comes to your prospect completing the desired action. Don’t include any unnecessary outbound links that lead away from the page, and consequently, the sale.
Also, if you want your visitors to download a study, enter a contest, request a proposal or make a purchase, your landing page should be designed with that one deliberate outcome in mind.
Feature vs. value
Prospects seek value when making decisions, and value lies in the benefits a particular feature delivers. A feature is an aspect of your product that has no real value to a client because it doesn’t address a specific need.
If 3M were to try to sell Scotch Tape based on features, they’d probably use copy like, “it’s transparent, pressure sensitive, and cellophane adhesive.”
But the benefit of Scotch Tape is what sells. So instead, 3M would want to use copy like, “no one can see it, just press down and it’s stuck, and best of all, it’s clear.”
Credibility
Do you have a small link to a privacy policy on your landing page? Is your landing page branded appropriately? And if you want someone to make a purchase from your landing page, have you included the appropriate security measures and settings?
If your potential customer doesn’t feel safe, they won’t stick around to dig deeper and find out if that feeling is warranted or not.
Use the appropriate landing page
This is where many catalogers go wrong. If your ad is for a specific running shoe, don’t send them to the running shoe category on your Website, but to the exact shoe they’ve showed interest in.
Your ratio of success drops dramatically with every extra click a user is forced to take.
Gather the necessary information
There’s nothing more off-putting than having to fill out a bunch of form fields that require excessive information. Think about the information you need to obtain from visitors to your landing page–everything else, you should leave off.
A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t want to fill it out on someone else’s landing page, don’t make your prospective customers do it on yours.
Getting people to your landing page is only half the battle. Persuading them to take the desired action is the rest. Make sure your landing page is designed effectively, ensuring that your prospective customer feels comfortable taking the desired action–turning clicks into sales.
Lisa Wehr is CEO/founder of Oneupweb, a digital marketing agency.