If you’re using Google Ads to drive traffic to your products or services, you want to make the biggest return on your investment possible. Whether that return is signing on new clients or pulling in product sales that make the cash register go ka-ching (what a great sound!), the goal is the same…to get your target audience to take action while spending as little as you can. That’s just good business, right?!
And one of the absolute fundamentals if you want to achieve that is getting your landing page “on the money.” That’s because it’s right at the heart of it all, so can either make or break your campaign. So you could kind of say knowing how to properly optimize landing pages for Google Ads is pretty important.
But just how do you go about doing that? Well to figure that out, I got in touch with 41 paid traffic pros, who are in the trenches living this stuff day-in, day-out, and they were kind enough to share a whole bunch of different ideas on how you can optimize your landing pages and enjoy better results with Google Ads.
Anyway, enough of my waffle. I would urge you to scroll down the page and dig into the good stuff. This article is chock full of golden insights that should get those cogs turning. And remember, take action! Great advice is only useful if you do something with it! And if you’re overwhelmed by the number of tips we’ve compiled; don’t be. Just take a deep breath, bookmark the article and try one thing at a time. You can always come back for more 🙂
Have you used any of these tips? We’d love to hear all about the results you achieved. Do tell us in the comments section at the end of the article.
Google Ads Landing Page Optimization: 41 Great Ideas
Landing page optimization for Google Ads got you in a tizzy? No sweat, we’ve got your back and we’re armed with plenty of suggestions. Here’s an overview of all of the different optimization tips that were shared. Have a read, pick a few out and get testing!
- Make Your Landing Page Trustworthy
- Test Multi-Step Forms to Get MORE Leads While Still Gathering More Information to Get Better QUALITY Leads
- If It’s Not on Your Landing Page, It’s Not True
- Match Your Message to the Intent of the Search, Not Just the Keyword
- Import Landing Page Data Into Google Ads from Google Analytics
- Track Changes and Tests Using Notes Feature
- Measure Crucial Events with Google Tag Manager
- Test a Sticky Header/Footer and Include Your Primary CTA Button
- Messaging to Explain vs Messaging to Convert
- Improve Load Speed
- Configure Your Landing Page Specifically for Paid Traffic
- Test New Landing Pages Using Google Experiment
- Integrate Tracking with your CRM to Carry Data Through the Sales Cycle
- Test, Test, Test
- Consistent Wording Between Ads and Landing Pages
- Focus on Relevance
- Utilise Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Relevance at Scale
- Test a Quiz or Messenger Bot Style Landing Page
- Master the Process and Keep Track of Learnings
- Less is More – Reduce Waste
- Location Matters When It Matters, Which Is Always
- Get Third-Party Feedback on the Content and Usability of Your Landing Page Before Going Live
- Analyze Your Search Terms Report
- Making Money with Google Ads Using Static and Dynamic Conversion Tracking
- Bundle Related Products/Services to Increase Customer Value
- Simple User Interface/Navigation
- Deliver Different Experiences During the Conversion Cycle
- People Scan First, Then Read. Draw People Onto Your Page and Give Them a Reason to Read More to Convert
- Keep On-Page SEO Best Practices in Mind
- How to Use Ad Rank to Identify that Your Landing Page is Letting You Down
- They Didn’t Convert? What You Can Do About That
- Focus on 1 Conversion Goal
- Dedicated Landing Page for Mobile Users
- Use the C/E/A Methodology
- Different Goals Should Deliver Different Goal Values
- Highlight Your Key Selling Points
- Craft the Perfect Offer
- Keep your Call to Action (CTA) Above the Fold
- Think of it as Your Virtual Shopfront
- Less Navigation + Strong CTA
- Split Test Big Ideas
Other Articles You May Find Useful:
- Best Landing Page Builder: 63 Paid Traffic Experts Vote
- 7 Game-changing Lessons I Learned From Optimising 400+ Google Ads Landing Pages
- All Search Engine Marketing Resources
What the Experts Said: A Journey to Better Optimized Landing Pages
In this section we’ve published each of our expert tips in full. They’re packed with real-world, highly actionable advice. If implemented, these ideas should help you optimize your landing pages and improve the conversion rates on your Google Ads campaigns in no time.
You can skip to a specific tip by using the filters below.
- All
- Use Ad Rank
- 1 Conversion Goal
- Consistent Wording
- Message to Convert
- Quiz/Messenger Bot LP
- C/E/A Methodology
- Dynamic Keyword Insertion
- Test Multi-Step Forms
- Goal Values
- Track Changes and Tests
- Focus on Relevance
- Master the Process
- Your Virtual Shopfront
- CTA Above Fold
- Dedicated Landing Page for Mobile
- Get 3rd-Party Feedback
- Split Test Big Ideas
- Less is More
- Sticky Header/Footer + CTA
- Integrate Tracking with CRM
- They Didn’t Convert?
- Different Experiences During Conversion Cycle
- Highlight Key Selling Points
- Location Matters
- Google Tag Manager
- Test - Test - Test
- On-Page SEO Best Practices
- Importing Data from Google Analytics
- Bundle Related Products/Services
- Make Company Stand Out - Quickly
- Simple User Interface
- Less Navigation + Strong CTA
- Make Your Landing Page Trustworthy
- Improve Load Speed
- Search Terms Report
- Conversion Tracking
- The Perfect Offer
- Test Using Google Experiments
- Match Message to Intent of Search
- Configured Specifically for Paid Traffic
- Not True If Not on Landing Page
Johannes Klupfel
Split Test Big Ideas
– “When it comes to optimizing landing pages for Google Ads, there are a million things you could be doing. Split testing is the obvious choice. For starters though, make sure that your landing page is loading blazing fast. Ideally, it should load in 2-3 seconds or less. There is no use in split testing anything if you lose the majority of your website visitors before the page is fully loaded.
I prefer to use a third-party platform like Unbounce to host landing pages for myself and my clients. Another good option is clickfunnels. Unbounce allows me to split test my landing page and provides fast hosting, plus a few other bits and pieces that I like. When doing any split test, test only one thing at a time. For example, test the headline, test a completely different copy or offer. Test an image or a layout. Test a different colour scheme. Don’t get bogged down testing tiny changes like the colour of a button. Yes, I’ve heard the stories of a button colour change increasing conversion rate by 140%. It rarely happens though, so focus on big tests first and keep improving your conversion rate. If you test too many things at a time, you won’t know what made the difference.”
Anton Hoelstad
Different Goals Should Deliver Different Goal Values
– “When you have the option to add goals that you track for a given website, consider the option of assigning each of these different values, so that you can prioritize their value in your digital marketing efforts.
For example, if you have goals like newsletter signup, request for quotation and using the contact form – each of these actions has very different values for the company.
A newsletter signup could be worth 50$, whereas the “request for quotation” could be worth much, much more. These values can be added easily to the tracking, and afterwards your reporting is a lot more nuanced, and you know which keywords delivers the highest value – not most conversions at the best CPA.
This gives you the option to switch bidding tactics to focus on ROAS (or at least value), instead of CPA.
Remember to calculate a value, and not just use your gut feeling. What a lead is worth to you requires that you know the average value of a new customer, and the conversion rate from lead to paying customer.”
Selina Gough
How to Use Ad Rank to Identify that Your Landing Page is Letting You Down
– “Ad Rank is one of the biggest limitations to a Google Ads campaign but weirdly one of the least analysed. When reviewing Search Impression share, there are two limitations that can stand in the way of an advertiser; Budget limitations and Ad Rank.
Ad Rank is a mysterious score that is the combination of a campaign’s Quality Score and Bid. If your campaign is poorly structured, naturally you’ll lose Search IS. If your campaign is structured perfectly but you’re not bidding nearly anywhere where you need to be, then you’ll lose IS.
If you’re finding that your ad rank is low, then there is a simple way to analyse whether it’s due to your landing page. Simply pull up a campaign’s columns for expected CTR, landing page experience and ad relevance. You’ll find on a keyword level which areas are lacking the most and you’ll be able to isolate the keywords that have a low landing page experience. I typically use a google sheet to import this data and automatically highlight which keywords require the most improvement.
Click to Enlarge Once these keywords are isolated, then cross-reference the landing page in correlation with both Keywords and Search Terms. It’s important to check for both types of terms as these are vital for quality score metrics and landing page relevancy to an ad.”
Steven Kwan
Keep your Call to Action (CTA) Above the Fold
– “My one recommendation to anyone who is using Google Ads is to create the main call to action (CTA) above the fold.
What does ‘above the fold’ mean?
Well, before the invention of the Internet, one of the main ways for people to get information was through newspapers. Newspapers use to be folded in half, with the main headline facing on top to capture people’s attention. This is ‘above the fold’ of the newspaper.
This translated to online with the expansion of the internet and ‘above the fold’ now means the top section of your website where people instantly land on your site.
So take a look at these real life examples:
Example #1 
Example #2 Both landing pages look great.
Professionally designed.
Colourful.
However, one has their main call to action bang in the middle of the screen, where people can see it (example #1).
It can’t be missed.
Whereas with the other landing page (example #2), you need to scroll down and actually look for a call to action.
People do not want to do extra work, especially sifting through text to find out what to do next.
They don’t have the time…
So make it easy for people to take action.
Have one main call to action.
Stick it so its one of the first things they’ll see when they land on your page.
Make it visible.
Make it actionable.
If you’re doing Google Ads right, you’ll get enquiries.”
Steven Hammer
Consistent Wording Between Ads and Landing Pages
– “You want to sound like a broken record when you’re making a landing page for your ads. If you use a phrase in the ad, use the exact same one on the landing page. Don’t worry about boring the audience. If you call yourself the greatest solution, don’t call yourself the best on the landing page. It needs to be that level of matching.
Remarkable consistency pays off because the user doesn’t need to think if they’re in the right place. Something caught their attention in the ad, so if you don’t use the same thing on the landing page there’s a good chance they might get confused. Think of it like a pop song. The hook that gets you in the first part needs to be around for the rest of the song.”
Freddy Heppell
Make Your Landing Page Trustworthy
– “Gaining the trust of your visitors is paramount when optimising your landing page to encourage conversions.
Unless you have the power of a strong brand, you need to develop trust with your users to encourage them to take the desired outcome on your landing page.
In order to make your landing pages trustworthy, there are a number of things you can do.
First off, you can share more information about your company. This can be done by adding a small ‘About’ section on your landing page, using images of your employees to portray who you are, where you’re based and what you do.
Then, add social proof, a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his 1984 book, Influence. There are many ways you can leverage this psychological trigger. The most effective forms are testimonials from happy customers, ratings and reviews, and case studies. It is important to note that these should not be clickable, so to encourage a conversion on the landing page your user has been sent to.
This landing page from “Webtrends Optimize” includes a testimonial from a customer, along with four case studies emphasising successful KPI increases for their customers.
Click to Enlarge Finally, add at least one “trust element”. This can be any kind of security badge, guarantee, or membership of a trusted organisation such as the ICO, that lets them know the information they are about to share with you is safe.”
Vincent Tobiaz
Keep On-Page SEO Best Practices in Mind
– “It is no secret that Google will scan your landing page to see how relevant it is to the searcher’s query. Based on that relevance and other factors Google will assign your landing page a score. The higher the score, the better your chances are at beating out the competition in search results.
In my experience, using SEO best practices for landing pages will increase the landing page score that Google gives your page. This means that focusing on things like load time, a secure website, and AMP pages are all very important. BUT what a lot of people don’t focus on are the other bits of on-page SEO best practices like:
- Adding ALT tags (that match your targeted keywords) to the images on the page
- Focusing on user experience and how easy your landing page is to navigate
- Adding a meta description that matches your targeted keywords
If you keep on-page SEO best practices in mind when creating a landing page for your Google ads, it will give you the extra edge over the competition that you might need to beat them out in search results.”
Kaspars Brencans
Bundle Related Products/Services to Increase Customer Value
– “When your target audience is reaching your landing page… are they looking only for that 1 thing/service that they originally typed into Google, or, is it only one of the things they actually need?
As a prime example to explain what I mean – we have a cleaning company as a client in Ohio. We originally crafted landing pages for each of the services they offer. While the landing page was converting, after reviewing the lead info – about 80% of the inquiries were interested whether the company offers other types of cleaning services as well.
From there – we ended up creating a “general” landing page where we simply outlined the company’s info; yet, we included a flyer that they have been using for years IRL with promos on different special offers (house cleaning, carpet cleaning, chimney sweep, etc. at discounted rates) – and that was probably the best decision we ever made for that client.
Our conversion rates increased by roughly 22% and the average customer value skyrocketed to nearly 3x of what it was originally by simply adding more services that are not relevant to the original search, yet, can be bundled & that has been absolutely killing it since.”
Flavia Abma
Think of it as Your Virtual Shopfront
– “When creating a landing page for Google Ads, think of it as your virtual shopfront.
What makes potential customers enter your shop? What’s displayed in your shop window? Is it well lit, bright and friendly? Are the products displayed in an appealing way? Are the prices clearly visible? Is your shop name easy to read? Is it easy to access your shop?
While the right copy and the right amount of copy are very important too, so is the layout and design of a page. Your shopfront – or landing page – is what users see first. And based on this first – visual – impression, a user will either stay and enter the shop and explore, or leave and take a look into your competitor’s shop window.”
Thomas Jaskov
Less is More – Reduce Waste
– “If your goal is to better optimize your landing pages for Google Ads, you really need to think in terms of web usability and conversion rate optimization. If you don’t know so much about these topics, you can start with reading a great book called “Don’t Make Me Think” written by Steve Krug.
Then try to imagine this scenario:
- John wants to buy 10 red roses for his girlfriend
- He does a search on Google for “buy red roses”
- He then clicks on your Google ad
- John arives on your landing page… On your landing page, there are 100 different flower types. 99 of those flowers are not red roses. One of them is “red roses”…
Unfortunately John, doesn’t have the patience (or time) to look at all the products on your landing page, so he leaves.
Your bounce rate goes up, this signals to Google, that the user didn’t find, what he was looking for, and your Google Ads Quality Score goes down.
This was just one example of you giving too much. And if you know a little about “Lean” and “Six Sigma”, you would know, that the 99 products, which weren’t the red roses on your landing page, would be considered “waste”.
What you really want to do is to minimize the amount of waste on your landing page, and give your visitors exactly what they are looking for, so they have a higher chance of achieving their desired outcome.
- If your visitor searches for “red roses”, then give them red roses.
- If your visitors are looking for “red flowers”, then give them red roses, red tulips, red dahlias etc.
- If your visitors are looking for “flowers”, then give them roses, tulips, dahlias etc.
A common mistake when designing landing pages is that there is too much waste on the landing page. That’s not good for conversion rates, and it is not good for your Google Ads Quality Score. You need to remove as much waste as possible. Less waste is more sales… less is more!”
David Rothwell
Making Money with Google Ads Using Static and Dynamic Conversion Tracking
– “The purpose of your business is to make money. The biggest problem with Google Ads is not knowing if you are making any money. That’s like putting money into a slot machine and never getting any back. So why do so many advertisers on Google still gamble like this?
Even after fifteen years of client campaign management, I still see the same mistake which makes management, optimization, and scale of Google Ads campaigns impossible – not knowing how much money you’re making and your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
ROAS is the amount of money your campaigns made, divided by the cost. Anything less than 1.00 (break-even) means you are losing money, unless your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) brings you repeat purchases. You want to get to break-even as fast as possible so you can begin to optimise and scale your campaigns to save wasted money, and make more money.
Your ROAS is positive, you are now running a profit center where you want to spend as much money as Google can take off you, instead of a cost center with limited budgets. Imagine putting money into that slot machine and always getting more back than you put in? How much money would you put in it? All of it, until it stopped taking it or your bank account couldn’t hold any more.
Limited budgets means you are running Google Ads as a cost center, not a profit center 
When Google Ads is a profit center, your daily budget is “Please take more money Google” Does this mean we would spend that outrageous amount of money? No! Because there are not an unlimited amount of people looking, or clicks, for any industry. But when your campaigns are a profit center, you want your ads to reach as many people as possible, as often as possible, for maximum clicks, conversion opportunities, sales and revenue.
Google Ads is Math
So how do we figure out our ROAS?
It’s actually simple math. Here’s the equation:
ROAS = (Revenue / Cost per Click) * Conversion Rate %
Where Revenue = (Average Order Value*Customer Lifetime Value)
Every Google advertiser knows their Cost per Click. But what many don’t know is their revenue and their conversion rate of visitors (clicks) to money. This is why conversion tracking is so important. Without it you cannot know two of the three critical numbers to calculate your ROAS:
- Cost per click
- Revenue (money you got paid)
- Conversion Rate (how many visitors to your page paid you)
If you are paying an agency to run your campaigns and they cannot tell you your ROAS, they are getting paid even when you are not.
You can calculate your ROAS with a simple spreadsheet (red means losing money) The key to ROAS – Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is quite simple to set up, and can track sales, bookings, leads, or anything else of interest. It can also track actual purchases and money for ecommerce merchants and digital product businesses who get an online transaction or shopping cart payment.
The biggest challenge for service-based businesses is when tracking leads. I have spoken to many business owners who actually have no idea what the value of their leads is. You have to know the value of the lead, in other words, the conversion rate of the lead to money, and how much money you will be paid. Complex multi-step sales processes really need a Customer Relationship Management tool, or CRM (e.g. Salesforce), which is beyond the scope of this article.
Business is Numbers
Service businesses can still use average order values though. One client who ran an airport transfer service simply averaged out all his seat booking prices at £90. We tracked his booking conversions and because we only ever spent less than £5 to get them (for ten years running, during which time he continually grew his business by 15x) we were getting a ROAS of almost 20x. That’s 2,000 %.
For every £1 he spent on ads, he got £20 back. The slot machine again. That business owner was so successful he bought out two competitors and sold his business to an international company. All because of Google Ads, with over 1,000 campaigns running in 33 countries worldwide.
Service business with an ROAS (ROI) of 1,944% “Prescription Without Diagnosis is Malpractice”
If you get leads, you usually have to make contact with that person anyway. So that’s effectively an appointment. Instead of leads, take online self-service appointment bookings instead.
You want to diagnose and disqualify unsuitable prospects who may not have the problem you solve, the money to pay for it and other factors. You also want to pre-sell your solution to appropriate prospects ready to have a serious sales conversation during the appointment, with a high probability of converting them to the sale and getting paid.
Say you’re a consultant or coach selling your time. If your average order value is an hour of your time for £200, and your close rate to payment is 30% then the lead is worth £60. If you spend anything less than £60 per lead, you are making money. Then all you need is a full calendar …
Follow the Money
Conversion tracking is all based on cookies (small bits of code placed on the device following the ad click). Tracking fails if users block or clean cookies, or change devices which cookies don’t follow. Google Ads cookies can last up to 90 days.
You have to place conversion tracking code on the page you want people to finally reach which has a known revenue value, like a booking or purchase conversion thank you page. This page has to be on the same domain as the rest of your website, so if you’re using a hosted platform like Kartra make sure you preserve the domain across all pages. Cross-domain tracking is not supported.
Tracking works down to the keyword and ad level, allowing converting ads and keywords to be optimised and scaled.
- Google user types a search
- Your ad may display (an impression)
- You may get a click (clickthrough rate)
- User device is cookied
- If the visitor reaches your final thank you page the cookie on their device matches the tracking code and a conversion is tracked, including the revenue value if so configured
Google Ads Audits Without Money are Pointless
Along with limited budgets as above, not turning conversion tracking on and configuring it correctly is a “smoking gun” that your campaigns are a cost center, not a profit center. It’s the commonest problem, and the first thing I check when doing an account audit. Every agency out there will offer you a free campaign audit but unless you can see the essential “money metrics” of sales, revenue and ROAS there’s no point. Although there are campaign best practices, you will not know what to do unless you are guided by the money you’re making.
Fail! This airline’s conversions were multiple counted showing ridiculous numbers How to Setup Conversion Tracking
1. Click Tools and Settings and select Conversions
2. Click the +Conversions box
3. Select website conversions
4. We’re going to use book appointment for this example
The category you use will depend on what you sell, who buys it, how much you charge, how you get paid, how often, what platforms you use for bookings, online payments, shopping cart purchases etc.
Remember, instead of leads, use self-service online appointments. The platform you use e.g. Calendly.com will need to be able to integrate with Google Ads conversion tracking. There are many to choose from in Capterra.com. Make sure the one you choose plays nicely with Google Ads (not Google Analytics) because not all of them do.
5. Give it a name
6. For appointments and leads, use the same value and £1 or an average order value
Refer to the consultant example above to determine this number.
If you sell digital or physical products and take online payment or shopping cart orders, use different values for each conversion. You will also need to adapt the code to capture the revenue value (dynamic conversion tracking), and this varies depending on what technology your website is built with. There are help files to guide you. Some shopping carts e.g. Shopify make this easy with direct integration.
7. For leads and bookings, count one conversion
For digital and physical sales with an online transaction or purchase, select every conversion.
8. Select 90 days conversion window
Believe it or not, sales can still come in all the way up to 90 days after the ad click.
9. Accept the other defaults but disable Enhanced CPC
10. Install the tag, following the installation and configuration instructions
11. Make sure you install both snippets correctly
12. You’re done
13. Tracking is in place ready to be tested
14. In the campaign overview, select columns for conversions
The columns of data you need to see are not set visible by default, so you have to enable them. You need conversions, cost per conversion, conversion rate, value per conversion, total conversion value, and conversion value / cost (ROAS).
Testing the Tracking
Before spending money on live campaigns, it’s essential to test the tracking setup is working. You will need to make a test lead, booking or purchase on your own website. Sometimes a cost-effective way to do this is to use your own brand name in [exact match] as a keyword. Note: if Google considers this a low search volume keyword your ad may not show. In which case choose another, more general one. You will have to pay the click cost for the test.
With digital or physical products make sure there is a cost for the item (not free) so you can be sure of tracking the actual revenue value. Target your campaign to your own location, then:
- Search your chosen keyword until your ad shows
- Clickthrough on it
- Complete your sales, booking or lead process
- Arrive at the thank you page (on the same domain, remember)
As soon as you have seen your ad and clicked through on it, you can pause the test campaign. Tracking is not real-time so it may be a few hours until it shows. If it doesn’t show up, the implementation will need to be re-checked following all Google’s help links as relevant to your website technology.
Success! Our conversion is showing 
This is for a webinar booking Here we have a count of one, 90 days window, repeat rate of 1.04, 25 bookings with a value of 25.
This is for an ecommerce store tracking revenue (purchases) value Here we’re counting purchases, count of every, all conversions and their revenue value.
Congratulations! You are now ready to run live campaigns and track your ROAS down to product, service, location, device, network, campaign, ad group, keyword, ad, and landing page level. Now you know what’s making you money, you are ready to increase your bids and budgets to achieve your financial goals. You will also be able to save wasted ad spend and make more money safely.
And with sufficient conversion tracking data over time, automated bid management can make campaigns run reliably with no manual bid management needed, sometimes for long periods of time like months or even years – with no agency needed.
The top four most common mistakes I see people make with their Google Ads landing pages:
- Not tracking conversions
- Not knowing their Average Order Value (AOV)
- Not knowing their page conversion rate %
- Not knowing their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)”
Navah Hopkins
Configured Specifically for Paid Traffic
– “It’s vital your paid landing page is set-up for paid traffic, and not bogged down by content walls that serve SEO strategies. SEO and PPC can work together really well, and one of the ways they can empower each other is to share search query data without landing pages.
A paid landing page should be transactional in focus, making it easy to complete the desired action (call/form-fill/purchase).
By setting up separate pages for paid traffic, you’ll have more control over attribution, strategy, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).”
Matt Isaac
Craft the Perfect Offer
– “The most critical element of landing page design has nothing to do with the landing page itself. It is not the design, the copy, the page speed, the images – it is the offer.
With the right offer, even the most bland and ordinary landing page will convert like crazy.
With the wrong offer, then it doesn’t matter how good your landing page is, it will fail.
If you are creating a landing page you should be spending at least 80% of your time crafting the perfect offer that is irresistible to your target audience.
Here is how we generate a list off different offers, refine them and then road test them to end up with 1-2 different offers for our landing page that we can be extremely confident in.
1. Define the target audience
Hopefully you are already very clear on who you are targeting. If, not, take some time to answer the following questions:
- Who are we targeting?
- What problems are they trying to solve?
- What stage are they at in the buyer journey?
- What are their pain points?
- What objections could they have related to your product/service category?
- What could trigger them to take action now?
Describe this in as much detail as you can.
2. What do they need right now?
The purpose of a landing page is to get a visitor to take action right now. When paying for Google Ad clicks we want to make every click count. This step is about trying to think about what could trigger them to take action now.
Asking a visitor to buy your full product or service offering on the first visit is unlikely to elicit the desired response as this type of purchase decision generally requires time, research and multiple interactions.
Instead of asking them to buy everything on the first go, create an offer that gives them a quick win and progresses them to the next stage of readiness to buy your main offering.
Based on their current stage in the buyer decision making process you might offer the following:
- Problem Recognition – Checklist that helps them to understand the extent of the issue or problem
- Information search – Questionnaire that helps them to get a customised solution based on their circumstances
- Evaluating alternatives – Price / feature comparisons
- Purchase decision – Reassurance and social proof
3. What can we offer?
There are an almost endless number of forms that your offer can take. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
- Calculator
- Short course
- Demonstration
- Webinar
- Checklist
- Buyers guide
- Case studies
- Trial
What we are looking for are offers with high perceived value to your target audience but low cost to the business. If an offer requires too much cost or development time then you can rule it out for the moment.
Keep going until you have a list of 5 – 10 different ideas that you can implement with minimal effort.
4. How irresistible is that offer to our audience?
Revisit each of the offers through the lens of your target audience and specifically where they are in the buyer journey. Ask yourself the following questions about each offer you have listed in the previous step:
- Does this offer address pain points or objections?
- Does this offer solve a problem for them?
- Does this offer put them in a better position or give them a quick win?
- Is this offer timely and relevant to where my audience is currently at in the buyer decision making process?
- Does the offer encourage them to take action now?
Ideally you will end up with about 3-4 of the top offers that are a good fit for your audience.
5. Test the top 3-4 offers
This may seem counter intuitive in a recommendation about Google Ads but Facebook ads are actually a great way to test your offer.
Facebook’s audience targeting is far more advanced than Google’s and allows us to pinpoint our target audience quickly, easily and cheaply, particularly using audience lists. It is also a lot cheaper than testing on the fly with Google because you can capture leads without the need for a landing page and all within the Facebook platform.
Here is how you do it:
- Upload a customer list to Facebook to create a custom audience
- Create ads targeting your custom audience or a similar audience
- Use your various offers as the ad copy
- Use lead ads to capture the contact details of anyone who is interested in the offer
Run this campaign until you have either a clear winning offer or 1-2 standouts which you can split test with the landing page.
6. Plan the landing page
You should now be ready to craft your landing page with a battle tested offer.”
Cody Jensen
Test a Sticky Header/Footer and Include Your Primary CTA Button
– “We’ve found tremendous increases in conversion rates by adding a sticky header or footer on your landing pages with your primary CTA incorporated. Having a sticky header/footer can be impactful on both desktop and mobile, but we’ve seen the most substantial increases in mobile conversion rates. Take a look at these screenshots to get an idea of what I mean:
Primary CTA in Sticky Header #1 Primary CTA in Sticky Header #2 Notice how I have scrolled down the page a bit, but the primary CTA is still easily accessible? Here’s an example of the same thing but now it’s a sticky footer with the primary CTA:
Primary CTA in Sticky Footer No matter where the user is in their journey, and no matter what value proposition encourages them to take action, the user always has a clear and easy way to take the next step and convert.”
Mate Hernadi
Match Your Message to the Intent of the Search, Not Just the Keyword.
– “Context above all. Already your keyword research should be based on a thorough thinking about your marketing funnel. According to that, you have to differentiate between multiple types of stages: Unaware, Problem Aware, Solution Aware, Product Aware, and Most Aware.
These categories reflect the main stages of your funnel, and basically mirror the intent of your potential customers at those stages.
When you have the segmented keyword research, you have to consider your landing page. You have to satisfy Google so it recognizes your content as relevant, and rewards you with an ‘above average’ landing page experience. At the same time, you have to pay attention to where your potential customers expect to get after clicking on your ad.
Try to match these expectations with an adequate copy style, message, and offer.
Some keywords are broad or difficult to categorize, so if you are not sure which funnel level they belong to, try split testing the page with messages addressing the different stages.”
Elliot Sheen
Utilise Dynamic Keyword Insertion for Relevance at Scale
– “Creating landing pages that are relevant to all of the keywords you’re actively targeting within Google Ads can be resource intensive, time consuming and in some cases very costly.
Fortunately there are some strategies you can deploy to make your core landing pages more relevant to individual keywords at scale – Dynamic Keyword Insertion.
You’re likely familiar with Dynamic Keyword Insertion within Google Ads when it comes to writing ads, passing the keyword a search term matched to as part of the ad copy itself. But why stop there? By implementing dynamic keywords insertion onto your landing pages your can solidify your business as the most relevant offering, improve conversion rates and boost quality score.
The best part is you can implement this yourself using free tools, regardless of the CMS your website is built in!
DKI Using Google Optimize
Part of Google’s Marketing Platform, Optimize allows you to personalise and test website changes backed with the fantastic data and reporting Google is known for.
Within Google Optimize you have the ability to run custom Javascript that can be used to dynamically replace text on your page, be that headlines or other content, based on parameters available within the Ad’s final URL.
You can generate your own custom Javascript for dynamic keyword insertion here:
https://bind.media/cro/google-optimize-dki/
We’ve implemented this on our own homepage for users who find us via one of our Free Data Studio Dashboards, see it in action:
https://bind.media/?src=datastudio
Landing Page Builder Tools
Many of the leading landing page builders have this functionality built in. Unbounce for example offers a solution out-the-box which can be applied to any text elements on your landing page.
Unbounce for example offers a solution out-the-box which can be applied to any text elements on your landing page.
To achieve this within Unbounce you simply need to highlight the text you’d like to make dynamic and select action > Dynamic text.
This will present the menu that allows you to specify the URL parameter that is being passed and how the text should be styled.
Getting Your Keyword in Your URL
Google offers a solution to pass a whole host of data to the Final URL of ads dynamically using ValueTrack parameters.
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6305348
By utilising the {keyword} ValueTrack parameter we can pass the keyword the search matched to through to the URL which can then be used by your DKI method of choice. It’s important you have an effective account structure in place that is directing traffic to the appropriate keywords, particularly as ‘Close Variant’ matching is only increasing!
Top Tips For Dynamic Content Success
- As with everything performance marketing, test test test. Don’t implement dynamic keyword insertion willy nillilly (yes that’s a technical term) and assume it will improve your performance.
- Check how your content is appearing – As we’re making changes dynamically and at scale, it makes sense to check the experience is nothing short of amazing across all of your variants. As a minimum, test the shortest and longest versions of the text you’re changing to ensure the formatting on point.
- Get creative with personalization – Inserting a keyword isn’t your only option. You could make a page specific to industries, location, time of day, the weather if you wanted to or even provide estimated delivery times based on the user’s location! With the free tools and APIs that are available nowadays you can get extremely creative with how you personalize your website to boost conversion rates.”
Adrian Stephenson
Get Third-Party Feedback on the Content and Usability of Your Landing Page Before Going Live
– “Just because you completely understand your landing page doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will.Everybody is different and will see things from their own perspective. This means that your perfectly worded (in your opinion) copy could be misinterpreted.
After all, it’s widely accepted that the ‘general public’ lacks common sense, so if there’s a way to get it wrong, they will find it.Also bear in mind that website visitors tend to be short on patience and will literally scan-read your page to decide whether it solves their problem.
Consequently, and particularly on mobile, you only have a few seconds to win over your visitors.
So, rather than relying 100% on your own judgement, get some extra eyeballs to check out the landing page.
In the perfect world you might run it past three or four people from your target market, but in our somewhat imperfect society, a selection of diverse volunteers would be fine.
You want them to answer three questions:
- What do I do next? – you’re looking to get them to take action. Whether that’s to pick up the phone, fill out a form, or make a purchase, it needs to be obvious what to do and how they need to do it.
- How long does it take to work out what the page is about (i.e. the product or service on offer)? – if they can’t figure it out in a few seconds you’ve got your design wrong. Avoid choices if possible, or anything else which requires a decision to be made.
- What would stop you from taking any action? – anything from poor punctuation/grammar to political incorrectness can sow negative seeds. Make sure your page is squeaky clean. You don’t want fence-sitters either, so make sure that the benefits are clearly displayed.
In summary, you need to have a landing page that a 9-year old could understand and comfortably make it through to the next step in your sales funnel.”
Reece Groves
Test Multi-Step Forms to Get MORE Leads While Still Gathering More Information to Get Better QUALITY Leads
– “Everyone always wants hot leads that fall into their lap who beg to hand over their money to you.
But that’s not always possible.
But PPC managers have vast amounts of data so they can test quickly (a lot of the time). They soon become useful as part of the conversion rate optimisations effort when a/b testing things fast.
If you have more than 5 form fields, test splitting them up into multiple steps, BUT not on separate pages, that slows down the experience (only fractionally but it matters). You can get an idea of what I mean when I talk about multi-step forms, from form builder tools like these:
..or the multi-step form I built here for a home heating & renewable installation company, here:
Take note of how effortless it is to finish and the use of clickable images rather than checkboxes with text next to them
Why does splitting form fields up work?
In a word, psychology.
Start with a simple question, like, if you’re an architect, for example, or how many bedrooms does your property have?
Once people start something they have a higher propensity to want to finish it – you know that satisfying feeling of completing something? That’s what is at play, but as long as it’s effortless. You can always add fun to it with flourishes of funny/brand copy and images as long as it is not overbearing & doesn’t distract from the goal.
On the other hand, if you have a long-form with 6+ fields & you’re asking for personal information, it may come across as daunting and people may not even start to fill it in.
Leave some of the most complicated or personable information at the end or even split up email/postcode in a previous step when applicable before going in for more information to increase chances of at least getting some contactable information like how we have done on the previous example.
Leave a splash of the “trust factor” & social proof in the way of testimonials & accreditations/certifications, so they stay with them throughout the form filling process. Then last but not least, always create a separate thank-you page redirect. As this gives reassurance, visitors have completed the form and is an opportunity for you to encourage people to follow you on socials or download resources of yours in the meantime while you get back to them.”
Justice Ekhaguere
Test a Quiz or Messenger Bot Style Landing Page
– “Oftentimes the best online marketers, are actually offline marketers.
Offline Marketers are great at analyzing conversion issues because they have firsthand experience into how people actually react to things in real life.
So when you start to consider how you can improve your landing page, ask yourself if what you’re doing online would make sense to do offline?
For example, if we were trying to sell cars and someone walked into our dealership… would we jump on them and try to show them our best deals and latest models??
No, a seasoned salesman would qualify the prospect to see what they’re intentions were… do they want to buy now? or just look? etc
Key insight: The salesman wouldn’t qualify you by having you fill out an application right away. He would most likely start a conversation and figure out how to best help you.
In that conversation, he would most likely get all the information he would have gotten on an application without the friction as well.
How does this translate into google landing pages?
If you allow people to qualify themselves to you before asking them to fill out an application, you’re more likely to get them to invest into your sales process.
As they get more invested, you get more information on them without as much resistance.
How can this be implemented?
There are a few ways to go about this:
- You can build a messenger bot that asks people questions in a fun and conversational manner… and send people to that instead of a traditional landing page. Popular platforms include manychat.com, chatfuel.com, and mobilemonkey.com.
- You can create an online quiz experience as opposed to the traditional landing page using a platform like typeform.com. I’ve seen a lot of nutrition and supplement companies use this method on their landing pages with great success.
Here are a few for reference:
– https://ketocycle.diet/
– https://usaf.yourketo.diet/
– https://simpleketosystem.com/
The theory behind why this experience works comes from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence.
The Theory is called Commit and Consistency.
Essentially, if you can get someone to take a small action, they’re much more likely to take the another bigger action. The goal is to slow play them to your intended goal, instead of going for it right away.
Now go and test it out for yourselves!”
Jeenfer Wilson
Focus on 1 Conversion Goal
– “When you spend dollars on a click from Google Ads, the usual mindset is to get as much revenue from that particular click. I have seen landing pages that promote a free e-book, also promote the business and in addition to providing a free demo of the product. While this school of thought might look harmless, most landing pages built with this objective end up counter-productive. Let me explain why.
With a multitude of options available, people’s attention span is too low. If they gave you a chance by clicking on your ad, give them what they want right away.
If you promised a free-ebook in the ad, just give them the e-book. Mention only about your e-book and nothing else. Of course, you can give them as much detail as possible about your awesome e-book, but don’t talk about how awesome your business or product is; no, not yet. Once you get the lead, you will have a lot of time and channels to do that.
Every landing page should have one and only one goal.
I’d even say even if the goal is one, give the visitor only 1 choice. Let me explain that a bit.
Consider you are a local moving company and you process both form inquiries and leads, I’d strongly recommend using only one of the channels. If you want the user to pick up his phone and give you a call, only add your phone number as buttons. Don’t add your form anywhere on the page. Persuade them to give you a call. That’s everything the landing page should do.
But what if you believe form inquiries also might do well? Do an A/B test. Keep all design elements the same and instead of the call button use a form that asks the visitors to fill the form to get a free quote. Channel 50% of the traffic to this version and run the test till you get statistically significant data to decide the winner.
This is exactly what we have done for one of our clients who had this dilemma.
Click to Enlarge It’s still early days, but I believe I brought home the point.
But there is still an option to let the visitor know more about your business or your product. Any guesses? The THANK YOU page. You have already got what you wanted and so has the visitor. Now you can nudge the visitor closer to what you offer without pissing him off.
So, to summarise 1 landing page = 1 conversion goal and 1 way to attain them.”
Vincent Iachetta Jr
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Location Matters When It Matters, Which Is Always
– “A little story…It’s lunch time. You’re starving with a side of hangry and that trail mix bar you grabbed after another late-night with a late start whirlwind out of the apartment wasn’t enough to feed a gerbil let alone provide adequate fuel to power you through a grueling day of crunching numbers and answering phone calls from pissed off clients.
At the exact moment the pixels in your phone shine 12:00 pm you excitedly snatch your phone like an ancient hunter out in the unforgiving wilderness grasping for his bow and ask it “Hey Google, find me the best pizza place in NYC that delivers”. You can almost taste the fresh crispy, sauce covered mozzarella goodness as you anxiously await the .5 seconds it takes for Google to return you the search results page.
You really want to take your time to read reviews and look at the gooey galleries of pizza porn but the beast in your belly forces you to smash the first result that looked somewhat relevant enough.
The website page is only partially rendered while your finger hovers over where you somehow instinctively know the menu will be but unknowingly your efforts are in vain.
Content and structure reveals itself and you frantically search and skim the page to get to the goods. You notice a title so you pause and stop to read. It says “Voted Best Pizza Place Chicago” 🙁 Bounce rate 100%
How Do You Prevent This Pathetic Modern Day Failed Food Hunt?
If you are building or have built a local campaign that is targeting users specifically looking for a product or service in a specific area like a town, city, county or state then make sure you double down on communicating that on the landing page.
If you have multiple locations break them out into their own campaigns, with their own relevant landing page about the location.
“But Vini, we’re targeting SOOOOOOO many different goes with 1000’s of geo-modified keywords. What are we to do?”
Easy, time consuming AF but not difficult. Stop overcomplicating the campaign and think about who you are targeting and where they are looking for what you have to offer them, and try to group them. If it can be broken out by county or metro area then do that to start. Separate the campaigns and create landing pages for each.
If you really went full on Merlin on your campaign with expert level geo wizardry that is forbidden to even whisper the smallest details of and I could never understand the god-like complexities and immaculate conversion rates and CPC’s that you have conjured…….then consider Dynamic Geo-Insertion. But that’s a tale for another day. Godspeed.”
Amy Hebdon
If It’s Not on Your Landing Page, It’s Not True
– “If I’m your ideal prospect, I need your landing page to meet my expectations before I’m willing to take action. This is true whether the expectations were explicitly set by your ad, or they exist silently unchecked in my head.
Let’s say you sell blenders, and I want to buy a dishwasher safe blender. If your landing page doesn’t tell me your blender’s dishwasher safe, then in my mind it’s not – and I’m going to look elsewhere. If I bounce, that means you spent the money on acquiring the click, but didn’t make it back on the conversion.
Now that was a small example, easily fixed by just including a feature of your product. But it’s just as important with intangibles – things that matter to your audience on a deep level.
Study your prospects and customers. Interview them. Research how they describe their problems in their own words. Find out what matters to them, and build your landing page to address their needs and concerns.
You also want to make sure that everything in your ad – every feature, offer, value proposition, benefit, differentiator and promise – is supported on your landing page.
With expanded ad copy, dynamic keyword insertion, and multiple ad extensions that can live at any level in the account… it becomes really difficult to track what details your visitors are seeing in the first place.
Don’t include anything in your ads that isn’t backed by your landing page, and don’t expect your prospects to do the work of extra research to learn more about your offers than you were willing to tell them.
If there’s something they need to know before they’re ready to buy – whether it’s a feature, a benefit, a result, a risk-reversal, assurance, or an explanation – remember, if it’s not on your landing page, it’s not true in the mind of your customer.”
Oliver Ewbank
Focus on Relevance
– “When it comes to optimizing a landing page for Google Ads its vital that you consider Quality Score. Quality Score is metric from one to ten and it impacts your Ad Rank and Cost Per Click. Put simply, the higher your Quality Score the more often your ad will show and the cheaper your CPC will be.
Page speed is obviously important but I would also make sure you focus on relevance.
If you’re bidding on the search query [cheap flights to Barcelona] make sure this term is featured in the Header once and once or twice in the body copy. It’s also worth using relevant images with appropriate alt descriptions.
Increasing the relevance of the landing page will increase conversions and earn you a good Quality Score.
If you’re working with big budgets on large campaigns it’s worth creating landing pages directly relevant to each query you are bidding on. You can do this at large scale using the Unbounce Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) feature.”
https://documentation.unbounce.com/hc/en-us/articles/203661004-Working-with-Dynamic-Text-Replacement
Patrick Jongbloed
Master the Process and Keep Track of Learnings
– “Landing Page Optimization for any business can be an exciting project. Who’d have thought that changing the colour of a button doubles conversion rate or that using “Purchase here” vs. “Buy now” really doesn’t work? And that’s exactly why it is not enough to just learn and apply the individual tactics and tips that you’ll find on this page. You also need to have a solid process and way of storing your conclusions in one central place.
See, sometimes you’ll test a hypothesis and you’ll be right. But frequently, you’re going to be wrong and you’ve learned something surprising about human behaviour. It is precisely those times you are wrong that tend to give you the most valuable insights. But what happens if in 6 months, a new member of your team looks at your landing page and says, “Why is that button round? Surely it would do much better if it were square? Let’s change it”, and they go and undo all your rounds of testing.
Unfortunately, in larger companies and agencies, this happens all the time. New members of the team or even experienced people with solid assumptions, see something that doesn’t make sense to them and “improve” it. Don’t get me wrong – these are the kind of people you want to work with! People should always take initiative and put their thoughts forward. But it has to be done in a logical and accountable fashion.
So what’s the solution here? After all, new colleagues can’t read your mind and can’t possibly know what you did 6 months ago. It gets even worse when you think of the loss of knowledge when you eventually move on to another company. Because of that, you want to have a really easy document to keep track of any tests you’ve done and insights you’ve had. Here is an easy example on Google Sheets which you can look at.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tudRDHpLw_DI_Dd5AJAtj0VT7FDxogNF5AEzvu_J7Xc/edit?usp=sharing
You can make a copy and alter it to fit your purposes.”
Billy Robinson
Use the C/E/A Methodology
– “This stands for Confirm/Engage/Act. Basically if the search query is health insurance for women, then when the user lands on your landing page, in the top left corner, she should see an image of a woman – yes you can gender target your campaigns in Google Ads too. She should also see the phrase she just typed “health insurance for women” as well – that’s your “C” for Confirmation Zone.
Next, moving from left to right, top to bottom, you should show some content that explains why your business is the best place for a woman to get her health insurance. Awards, user reviews, stats & more are ideal here. This is your “E” for engagement zone.
Finally, to the right side, but above the fold is your “A” for Action zone. This is where your desired call to action should be present. A common action is “Get a quote” or “Book a consultation” etc.
This sequence is in order of how the user’s eye naturally moves across the page, from left to right, top to bottom. It provides the things the user needs to see in order to be most likely to take action.”
Mirena Boycheva
Simple User Interface/Navigation
– “Creating a one-of-a-kind website is something you might think is a great idea! Having tons of buttons, many calls to action, blocks of text, different colours, a menu that comes up in a special way and drop-down menus at different levels, hidden sections… It will definitely distinguish you from the competition, right?
You do not want to copy anyone else, you would rather spend more time and money to have a customised website created for your own brand to make it as detailed as possible, as interactive as possible, etc. This would generate you many sales, you would think…
The truth is that the more your website differentiates itself from other websites, the more lost your visitor might feel. There are best practices for creating user navigation, which will lead the user straight to their goal in as few clicks as possible.
It is important to take into account the way average user thinks and the way they are used to finding the information they need on any website. Every little change might make the user feel lost and this means they will drop off your site.
Of course, you should try to keep people on your site and make them explore further. You can create a variety of links to inspire the user and make them curious about what great offer they might find behind every button. However, you need to make sure that there is an easy way back or an easy way for them to navigate to the place you want them to. If you’re selling stuff, you don’t just want visitors interested in reading your blog, you want them to buy. So make sure all your paths end up there. The user should never be more than 3 clicks away from the end-goal. You can still use nice fonts, colours, images, videos, form designs. However, do that keeping in mind that no matter how pretty your lead form is, what is most important is that users can find it.
People are used to finding certain types of information in specific places on a website. For example, if they were interested in the delivery options or payment methods, they would look in the website navigation menu, on the product page or the website footer. You need to make sure you have that information covered in all three places.
If you are not sure whether you have built an easy to understand flow of steps to conversion, you can check Google analytics. You can see how many pages users visit on average before leaving your site. Alternatively, you could check on which step or landing page users leave your site. Then you can change the navigation flow. If the users end up on your testimonials page and then leave, then you might want to update that one or even remove it to see if that changes their behaviour. If you have too many fields to fill out on your lead form, that could harm your conversion rate.
To conclude, you can add as much content and as many links to your website as you wish, but limit the number of clicks required from entering the site to the conversion to the absolute minimum necessary.”
Eric Farmer
Less Navigation + Strong CTA
– “There is a time and place for lengthy, wordy website pages where visitors can navigate your website at will. Your PPC lander is not this place. Since you’re paying hard-earned money for every visit to these pages, you need a conversion rate that gives you a solid ROAS (return on ad spend).
You can hold your visitors hands down the conversion path without them even really knowing it. This is the balance you’re looking for: not too pushy, but minimal choices that guide visitors to convert.
So what exactly am I referring to? Well, it can be a lot of things, so I’ll give you my top 3 tips:
- If you can’t code the landing page to your needs, use a third-party service that specifically helps you create PPC landing pages in just a few hours (I’ve had great success with unbounce and instapages).
- Remove the nav bar. This gives visitors way too many options to get distracted and lose their way. You want to keep them on the page you paid money to get them to!
- Include one, very clear and visible CTA (call to action) that lets visitors know exactly what they are committing to.
Overall, in my experience, the more honest and transparent you are, the more you will be trusted and the more your landing page will convert. Good luck!”
John Williamson
Improve Load Speed
– “My single tip for a Google Ads landing page is to focus on improving page load speed. Working on page load speed is an often forgotten and under-utilized tactic when it comes to PPC and digital marketing in general. Many site owners may not realize that landing page experience is a big factor in one’s Google Ads Quality Score, and that page load speed is a factor in that landing page experience. A higher Quality Score means lower ad costs and better ad placements.
Page load speed has become an increasingly important factor over the years, both as an organic ranking factor and as it applies to Google Ads Quality Score. It has also been empirically shown that users are more likely to convert and less likely to bounce from a quick-loading page. Modern users expect a fast page load; if yours takes more than a few seconds, they’re likely clicking the “Back” button to move on to your competitor.
Here are 9 things you can do today to improve your website’s load speed:
- Pick a solid web host. A good hosting platform and whether or not you’re on shared or dedicated servers can make a world of difference for your load speed. Server response time has a huge impact.
- Enable compression. This should be a simple setting with the host or you can implement it manually in your htaccess file on an Apache server. The application itself is usually Gzip.
- Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML. Minifying simply refers to reducing the file size of these things and removing extra spaces, commas, etc. There are plugins available for this, depending on your CMS.
- Enable caching. Browsers “cache” pages, essentially saving a copy in flash memory to retrieve quicker in the future. You can safely cache stylesheets, images, etc. that won’t change very often.
- Use a CDN. A Content Delivery Network serves your content from a server closest to the end user, reducing latency.
- Compress images. Smaller image file sizes mean quicker load times. You can usually compress images without it being visible to the human eye.
- Reduce unnecessary redirects. These hog resources.
- Defer Javascript loading. You can usually safely defer scripts, having them load in the footer of the page rather than the header, so that the page load doesn’t have to wait for those scripts.
- Delete unnecessary plugins and unused code. This regular housekeeping eliminates the unnecessary use of resources.”
Bruce Chant
Messaging to Explain vs Messaging to Convert
– “No matter your service or product or niche or goal, there is no substitute for great copy.
Most web copy is beige at best, and rarely is it focused on converting the user effectively.
The most common trap is to believe we just need to get all the right information across to the user AND THEN they will convert. Information is not the issue, persuasion is.
- Start with a problem. Human minds are drawn to wanting to see that resolved
- Stop telling the user about yourself, and engage with them by describing their pain point
- Once you’ve identified the problem, be laser sharp with how YOU can help them
- Create tension – draw the user down the page
- Take out Adverbs & adjectives (bring focus), use Pro-nouns (be relatable)
- Delete. Remove unnecessary words.
Use this type of structure for your landing page which will see your ability to convert improve dramatically:
- Headline statement – say what you do. Be VERY clear. Avoid vague buzzwords that say nothing!
- Strong Call to Action – give users something to accept or reject. Add it in the Top RIGHT making use of the eye’s natural Z pattern. AND add in middle of the header.
- Failure – Tell me what will happen if I don’t take action. Present the cost of NOT buying.
- Success – Tell me what life looks like if I do buy. Show results.
- The Way Forward – Spell out the way forward. Breakdown the process of doing business with you.”
Chris & Alicia Whitbread
Deliver Different Experiences During the Conversion Cycle
– “In Google Ads you can use custom-combination lists to build sets of conditions from existing remarketing lists (including the Remarketing Audiences you create in Analytics), and then display your remarketing ads to users who meet those conditions.
You can use this feature to show ads to users at different periods of their conversion path – Example: 1-7 Days, 8-10 Days, 11-14 Days.
For each of these remarketing ads, you can deliver a customised landing page with different offers or messages to encourage the user to convert. And hey – Don’t be lazy! Split test those CTA’s!”
Dan Rospedzihowski
Measure Crucial Events with Google Tag Manager
– “Visually appealing and navigable landing pages lead to a well optimised, user friendly experience. Get all of those combinations right and you can reap the rewards of profitability!
Here I’ll be highlighting some of the most important KPIs to optimise towards, enabling you to get the most out of your ad spend. There are many analytics tools to choose from but I’ll be guiding you on one of the most important of those, Google Tag Manager (GTM).
Introduction to GTM:
GTM works in conjunction with Google Analytics (GA), which is widely known to be one of the most effective and free eCommerce reporting tools. GA sends event data (events are just another word for goals or actions completed by a user on your landing page) which can then appear in your Google Ads account. Having this data link to your Google Ads account offers the ability to optimise with maximum effectiveness as it means everything sits under one roof, giving you visibility on all key metrics. This helps to save you time and achieve the best possible performance.
How Does GTM Work?:
- GTM gathers event data specific to each channel or campaign
- This is sent directly to Google Analytics
- Google Analytics sends that data directly to Google Ads
- All the data is viewable in Google Ads
Getting Started:
To get started, you’ll need to install the GTM code (container snippet) on the pages which you’d like to track. Here’s a link to the full support guide:
https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6103696?hl=en
If you’re using WordPress, Shopify or other templated platforms like Wix, Squarespace or Unbounce you can find guides quite easily online.
Top 5 Tags/Events:
This is the most important part where I’ll explain what events are, why to use them and provide links on how to install.
Form Submissions:
Most landing pages are geared towards form submissions and these are typically the most important goal to measure. These should be tagged individually as sometimes there may be more than one way to capture user data. Typical examples of these goals are: leads, call backs, quotes etc.
Button Clicks:
Landing page best practice guides would usually steer you down the path towards only focusing on one main call to action (CTA). If you do offer multiple CTAs on the same page it’s important to tag these separately to ensure you can measure the impact your optimisations may have on the different goals. If one is performing much better than the other, consider removing the lower performing CTA in a split test scenario. Another reason may be to understand individual campaign or keyword level performance within your ad account.
It’s common to see variations in user journeys based on different keywords or campaign entry points. For example, upper funnel queries may result in button A performing better than button B. This type of scenario may lead to new landing pages being built for different keyword groups.
Call Tracking:
Often overlooked or set up incorrectly, call tracking enables the advertiser to see how many calls were made by users who clicked on your ad. This works by dynamically changing the number on a landing page to a ‘google forwarding number’ without any extra cost. Call details can then be tracked without interfering with the user experience and can be localised to minimise any performance issues. You’ll be able to see the duration and volume of calls which will give you valuable insights into call quality.
To test this you can use the standard method via the Google Tag Assistant tool. If you’d like to see it in real time, you could do so at the expense of a click on an ad so make sure you choose the keyword wisely to save on cost! More information on call tracking here:
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6095883?hl=en-GB
Scroll Depth:
This handy metric can tell you how far a user has scrolled down a particular web page and is one of my favourite secondary KPIs to measure. Secondary KPIs can help to decipher why primary objectives are not being met. It’s also a good alternative to the time on site metric as users can often leave web pages open which can skew the data (you can adjust the idle limit for avg session duration if this is a problem you’re having).
Scroll depth tracking can be configured towards the percentages that you wish to measure. If it’s crucial for you to know how many users scroll 15% down the page, that’s easy to set up. You can choose the pages which you wish to measure too so that it doesn’t fire across your whole website. With the correct information, this can be a really powerful optimisation goal!
More info and how to install here:
https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/7679218?hl=en
Custom Events:
This feature demonstrates the versatility of GTM as a powerful goal tracking tool and is able to tag almost everything else you might wish to report on. You can tag a wide variety of events from mouseovers to combinations of goals, some of which may not be within the standard event list. These may need some developer work to create customised scripts. There’s a great blog which will help with your overall understanding here:
https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/google-tag-manager-custom-event-trigger/”
Justin Weyant
Analyze Your Search Terms Report
– “The first step in determining how to optimize your landing pages for Google Ads is to analyze your Search Terms report in your ad account. If you sort your search terms by impressions, you can look for trends in the most commonly searched terms that your ads are showing up for. Your landing pages need to match your market demand, so you should create landing pages that are relevant to the trends that you notice. You may already have relevant landing pages on your website, so you can direct users to those pages if that’s the case. However, you should create new landing pages when you find search terms that are relevant to your services, but you don’t have a specific, relevant landing page for that search.
For example, if you are a general contractor, your customers come to you for a wide range of projects. Someone looking for window replacements should go to a landing page about windows, and someone looking for roof repairs should go to a landing page about roofs. Businesses get higher Quality Scores and Conversion Rates when they create landing pages that are relevant to a specific location (ex. town,county,state), service (ex. criminal defense, corporate law, family law), or intent (ex. discount, 24/hour, free shipping). Additionally, you should consider creating a competitor comparison landing page if you notice users are looking for your competitors a lot! That way you can convince them why they should use you instead of the brand they are searching for.”
Melanie Gray
Importing Landing Page Data Into Google Ads from Google Analytics
– “As we split test different campaigns, ads, keywords, landing pages etc. it is important that we gather as much information as possible to determine what is working.
One tip that allows you to see this information directly in the Google Ads interface, is to import Google Analytics data. By linking your accounts and importing data, you will be able to see the following metrics directly in Google Ads:
- Bounce Rate
- Pages/Session
- Avg. Session Duration
- % of new sessions
You will be able to see this information for each individual keyword or ad copy, providing insight into what’s working well and what’s not. Here are the steps to implement this:
- Set up Google Analytics (if not already) https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008015?hl=en
- In Google Ads, select Tools & Settings > Linked Accounts > Google Analytics (Details)
- Locate your Google Analytics account in the list
- Select “Link”
- Hover over the pencil icon in the View column
- Select import site metrics and save.
- Go back to your Google Ads campaign and/or ad group view
- Select Columns > Modify Columns
- There should be a new option for Google Analytics (you may have to wait 1-2 minutes for the new link to go through). Select all columns you want to add. We suggest all!
Click to Enlarge 
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Click to Enlarge You will then be able to analyse different ad copy and keywords for their bounce rates, and time spent on page, showing you further valuable information about how the user is interacting with your landing page after they’ve clicked on your ad.”
Tam Doan
Test New Landing Pages Using Google Experiments
– “Make sure to test new landing pages using Google experiments instead of just swapping out the URLs. You can use other programs to do a landing page test, however they may not have access to 1st party data like Google does – which is why using Google for LP testing is more effective.
In order to set up an experiment, you must start by creating a “Draft” of an existing campaign. Using this draft you’ve created, go ahead and swap out all the final URL’s to point to the new landing page. Once the URL’s are all updated, navigate to “Campaign Experiments” and click on the “+” to select the draft you set up to run as an experiment. Configure this experiment to your liking, then click “Save” in order to start running your experiment.
Any results that show statistical significance will be denoted with a blue asterisk next to it, like so:”
Roy Steves
Track Changes and Tests Using Notes Feature
– “If there’s one small thing (so small, most people totally overlook it) that can make a huge difference, it’s keeping track of the changes you’re making and tests you’re running with the Notes feature in Google Ads.
If you’re making big moves, be sure to drop notes into your Google Ads campaign to indicate what you did, and why. It’s a lot like the Annotations in Analytics, but you can add date-specific notes to either individual campaigns, or to the account itself. With the date of the change within your date range, click on the chart to “Add Note”.
Then, add some details for the person managing this in the future (especially if it’s you!).
Little gray boxes will appear under the timeline, which reveal the notes for that day when clicked:
Whether it’s a month from now, or a year from now, you’ll be thankful that you’d stashed that context somewhere, so that you can quickly make sense of what might be driving changes in performance.
I certainly notice the absence of Notes when I’m trying to make sense of a new account, or one I haven’t looked at in a while. When a campaign suddenly changed behavior in the past, a well placed Note can be a life saver!”
Adam Mackay
Highlight Your Key Selling Points
– “When people are searching for something, whether it be using Google Search, Bing (or even the Yellow Pages!), they all have something in common:
They all want the best solution for them, at the specific point in time that they are searching.
When they search, they are going to be provided with a bigger range of options than they have ever seen previously. The ease of online advertising means that you now have more competitors going after that customer than ever before.
This makes it more important than ever to ensure that when someone does click your Ad, and arrives on your Landing Page, that they are provided with a genuine point of difference. Your Landing Page needs to sell the reason why they should take the next step with you – and not one of your competitors.
All too often, businesses and ad agencies look at the competition, and try to replicate what they are saying. This results in websites and Landing Pages from every advertiser saying the same things as each other: “best service” or “most experienced” or “locally owned.”
Not only are these statements boring platitudes that offer nothing to a prospective customer – they are also the same things your prospective customer is going to read in the Ads and Landing Pages of your competitors. If they see the same thing from every advertiser, how are they supposed to choose?
This is where it becomes crucial to highlight very early on in your Landing Page content the specific benefits, selling points, and competitive advantages your business has to offer to your prospective customer. They need to understand what’s in it for them – why should they take the next step and enquire or buy with you?
Don’t just follow what your competitors are doing and saying – and don’t say anything that can’t be proven. If you say “we have the best customer service” and believe that its a key selling point, then you better be able to back it up with strong evidence and prove how your customer service is different to, or better than, your competitors.
The people who visit your Landing Pages are still people. Write your Landing Page to speak to them, in the same way you would speak to them face to face. It’s all too easy for them to just hit the ‘back’ button and keep on searching, if you can’t give them a reason to work with you.”
Natasha Ahmed
Integrate Tracking with your CRM to Carry Data Through the Sales Cycle
– “If you’re using paid media to capture leads for a nurture campaign or sales team, integrate your PPC tracking and other paid media tracking with your CRM customer data.
Each CRM customer profile should include the channel, keyword and campaign that the user originated from (at a minimum). This gives your agency visibility into the channels, campaigns, and keywords that actually generated revenue and in turn, the power to optimize your campaigns towards better lead quality and boost your actual ROI.
Some CRM’s offer seamless integration (Zoho, Salesforce). Others require a workaround with UTM parameters. If you’re looking into CRM’s, add this feature to your list of considerations.”
Scott Salwolke
People Scan First, Then Read. Draw People Onto Your Page and Give Them a Reason to Read More to Convert.
– “People clicked on your ad because something about it attracted their attention. Now that they’ve landed on your site you have to keep their attention.
If what you do or are offering is simple to understand, then you might only need a paragraph or two. If your product is more complex or your business more competitive, however, you might need a lot more content.
There is nothing wrong with longer copy if that is what it takes. Unfortunately, if all they see are blocks of text their eyes are likely to glaze over and they will hit the back button.
No matter the length of the page, you most likely will have to draw them in first.
It is easy to say people don’t read anymore, but when they’re searching for information on a business, product, or service they’re often in a hurry. To capture their attention, you need to give them information they can grasp just by skimming your page.
There are several ways to capture their attention and provide relevant information in bite-size pieces. What you want to highlight is the pain they are feeling, the benefits of your products or services, or the experience of your company.
Headlines and subheads automatically stand out on a page. Many sites simply have a single headline that they haven’t put too much thought into.
Use headlines throughout a page to break up the content into different sections. They should briefly summarize what is to follow and why it’s important.
Adding subheads can help to provide crucial information. These are smaller headlines that appear just above or below the headline. Subheads should focus on a benefit they will find in that content.
Put in the time necessary to create headlines that are compelling.
Bullet points are another way to convey important information. Typically, you have 3-5 elements listed. Keep the lines as short as you can, although varying up their length can be effective.
Your list should either focus on what makes your business stand out from the competition or the benefits of your products or service.
Use bolded text in sentences, even in lists, to highlight specific benefits or facts. When determining what information to bold, focus on the elements that are unique to your business or product.
Another place to use bolded text is in your testimonials. Highlighting something unique or specific they said about your business. Anything to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Remember that your bolding needs to make sense on its own even if it is not a complete sentence.
In the example below I’d argue the bolded text is being misused and doesn’t make sense out of context. Instead of highlighting “get max money,” it would be better to highlight “know the value of your claim.”
And does being a real auto accident attorney separate you from the competition?!
In the second example below, bolded text is put to better use. And the bullet lists provide a strong overview of what clients can expect with their services.
I’d suggest their list would have been even more effective had certain elements of the list been bolded as well. They could have bolded “immediate financial relief” or “secure the medical treatment you need,” for example.
One thing to notice in the example is that they’ve used captions for their photo. Captions and text on a graphic are another way to relate information.
Although the goal is to make your page more accessible when you have a lot of content, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t edit your copy as much as possible. Edit it down as much as you can, then incorporate these suggestions.
The goal of your work should be to either convince the reader to take an action or at the very least read more.
You only have a short amount of time to capture their attention and keep them on your site or take some sort of action. Anything you can do to make your business or what you offer to stand out, the better.”
Athena Pham
Dedicated Landing Page for Mobile Users
– “Ever come across a landing page that’s clearly NOT optimized for mobile users? Here are some examples of landing pages that don’t have an optimized user experience.
Long forms on mobile…no! 
Text heavy landing pages don’t convert well on mobile Forms are already dreadful to fill out on desktop but when you’re requesting invasive questions on mobile, you’ll find significant drop offs and not many form fills. If this sounds like your mobile landing page, A/B test a shorter form with only the necessary questions and see which variant converts higher.
In the second example, you’ll find a text heavy landing page. With the attention span we have today and the nature of mobile users, we’re not likely to read all that text but instead, bounce, and look at your competitors. To prevent this from happening, try creating a simple yet to the point headline and subhead. Watch your conversions skyrocket.
Another tactic here would be adding a mobile friendly description under the Call To Action ‘Download Free Report’. Since users associate PDF downloads as an action only taken on desktop, this may deter visitors from filling out your form. Try adding text below the CTA, ‘Mobile-Friendly PDF’. This will let users know the download can be easily downloaded on mobile.
Now here are some companies that have mobile users in mind:
Drift 
hulu Drift does a great job in preempting users for what they can expect – ‘No credit card required’. This is a major plus for users to sign up instantly because of the no hassle Unique Value Proposition. And getting users to your mobile page is already a challenge but they put the icing on the cake with a bright CTA button that holds your attention. Well done Drift!
Moving onto Hulu, they do a great job with keeping the important information and CTA above the fold. Scroll depth is an issue on mobile and desktop so we want to make sure we put forth the main points that drive the user to take action immediately. The last point I’d make is they hone in on imagery for the user, which is key for the product they’re selling – TV and movies online. Showing their most popular or current films will compel users to sign up and start streaming.”
Jeremy Templer
They Didn’t Convert? What You Can Do About That
– “Should you do remarketing? Yes, but make sure your conversion rate is up to scratch first.
Your ad and landing page are two sides of the same coin; both play a critical role in getting conversions.
You know this: you’ve got everything in sync, and you’ve followed up on the other recommendations in this article. But if your conversion rates are still underwhelming, don’t jump straight into remarketing.
Most advertisers don’t give remarketing a second thought. They think that merely presenting their offer over and over will get them more conversions.
Yes, you should remind non-converters what they’re missing out on (but only those interested enough to have spent quality time on your page). And yes, with repeat ad impressions you should see an increase in conversions.
But before you flip the remarketing switch, dig deeper to find out why they didn’t convert in the first place.
Put yourself in the shoes of your would-be customer. Compare your competitors’ offers with yours. Spot check your landing page. And double-check your analytics reports to make sure that everything is working as expected.
If your conversion rates are a problem, you should do what you can to improve them before you get to remarketing. You’ll increase your chances of winning over returning visitors gracious enough to give you a second chance.
Yes, an incentive (a discount or additional bonus) can help sway the fence-sitters who didn’t see enough value in your original offer. But that alone is unlikely to change your conversion rates from subterranean to stellar.
So, remarketing? Yes, but check you have the basics right first.
Make sure you haven’t skipped over any of the expert recommendations in this article. Then let’s look at what else might be going on.
Tracking issues: Check for significant disparities between click and session numbers. Make sure that UTM referral code is not being overwritten: page redirects, missing analytics code, on-page elements with UTM tracking, and payment gateways are usually to blame.
Technical issues: Look closely at your analytics reports. Are conversion rates worse for some devices, browsers or operating systems? Are page load times up to scratch? Turn to session tracking software like HotJar, SessionCam and Clicktale to see exactly where the problems are.
Competitor offers: Does yours stack up? See who else comes up in Google paid and organic results. If you checked before writing your ads, check again. Alert competitors and newcomers may have matched or undercut your offer, and now they’re converting the visitors you couldn’t. Any amount of remarketing is not going to change that unless you can respond.
Search queries: Your keyword list may look good, but what about the actual search queries triggering your ads? Often the sheer volume of unique queries means that search query reports don’t get the attention they deserve. But you don’t have to work through them row-by-tedious-row. Look for any common but irrelevant themes, and add related terms to your negative keyword list.
Poor placement: In the same way that irrelevant search queries can kill a search campaign, low quality websites, apps, and YouTube channels can undermine display ad performance. Be selective — this is why you have a placement exclusion list.
Credibility: Yes, your page may be oozing with social proof (you’ve got testimonials, third party reviews, and high-fives from your recent customers). But make sure everything is plausible, and bold assertions are substantiated elsewhere in your copy.
And don’t stop there. Sometimes it’s the little things that undermine people’s trust, stopping them from converting. That includes poorly written copy littered with typos and spelling errors. Cheesy stock images. And calls-to-action that fail to address concerns as to what happens next.
Your value proposition: Is it obvious what you’re offering? Make sure you’ve described your product or service in language that your customers use, not in your own marketing jargon.
Not every solution can be unique (but if yours is in some way that’s important to your customers, then say so).
Are you addressing a common problem that your target audience has? If it’s a new or niche product, are you making clear what problem it solves? Your target audience might not be aware they have a problem.
And try to make sure that your most important selling points appear above-the-fold.
Your conversion funnel: If dropout is high once people start checkout, look for obstacles in the process. Forms that ask for too much (or too sensitive) information or where the expected input is not obvious. If payment options are limited, shipping fees high and delivery times too long or your return policy too vague.
Your analytics will highlight where you have the problem, but session tracking software (or user testing) will unearth why there’s a problem.
Pricing options: If you think that the issue is your price, then you’ve not convinced people you offer enough value. Check to see what competitors are doing, and what you can say that makes your offer stand out in comparison. But also, don’t be afraid to test different price points. And, if your product or service allows it, present 2-3 prices for different options (too many and you’ll make it too hard to choose). Make sure it’s easy to compare what you get (and don’t get) for each option.
Checked everything? Done everything? And now your conversion rates have improved?
Then, yes, by all means. Remarketing.”
Barrie Smith
Test, Test, Test
– “You’re paying for every click so optimise everything to make the user convert.
Firstly, define your goals/KPIs first and make sure your tracking is setup correctly. A lot of novice PPC consultants simply track sales, but the PPC expert tracks a wide range of metrics – revenue per click, per keyword etc. Make sure you’re an expert with Google Analytics and Tag Manager.
In an ideal Google Ads campaign, your product or service keywords will be separated into their own Ad Groups, allowing you to dedicate your Ad Copy to the query and directing them to the appropriate landing page. Optimising your landing page isn’t just about sending users to the correct page – you can still have the correct page, but badly optimised.
Having the freedom to create landing pages specifically for PPC campaigns is a dream. This allows you to build pages to drive more leads or sales through your paid campaign by cutting out a lot of the distractions on the page and pointing the users in the direction of your call to action. Ultimately, raising your ROI.
Split test your landing pages – no matter how much of an expert you are, you cannot beat real data. So continuously testing your landing pages to improve the conversion rate is of huge importance. If you have a CPA of $100 with a 1% conversion rate for example, just think of the savings you can make by increasing that to 2% or 3%.
Don’t overlook the content of the page. You want to use this to convert your users. Test different headlines, different call to actions, different product descriptions; test everything. With Google offering free split testing there is really no excuse not to:
Having control over your landing pages also allows you to optimise your them to improve your Google Ads Quality Score. This can make a significant difference in the price you pay per click. By having an ‘Above Average’ landing page compared to Google scoring it ‘Below Average’ results in better rankings and lower costs per click.”
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