Google has it’s own list of advice for making a landing page, and as usual, its chock full of good practices.
Google breaks a landing page down into three categories:
- Relevant and Original Content
- Transparency
- Navigability
Remember, the page your AdWords ad links to has an effect on the ranking and relevance of your ad, which in turn effects both placement and cost per bid.
Now, what do they mean by all of these things?
Be Relevant and Original
No surprises here: make sure visitors quickly find what you ad promised. In other words, if you dump them into a homepage for a ecommerce website, thats not relevant. You should dump them on a page made specificaclly for the product(s) in your ad or at least to the catalogue listing of the product(s).
Secondly, make sure the written content is unique on these pages, not to be found anywhere else on the web. IE, don’t use the manufacturers description of a verbatim copy of another page on your site. Create something unique and relevant.
Transparency
Don’t try to dupe anyone.
Unless you absolutely need a form to capture visitors information, don’t put it on the landing page, save it for the second page. Why? Because people just don’t trust forms they land on without doing so on purpose. You want to establish trust by being straightforward about your business, what it does, what it sells, and how its going to interact with the visitors computer to do this.
We’re not talking about a technical treatise on the subject. Just no misleading or empty copy with false promises or other mumbo jumbo. Let the visitor get a quick and clear image of who you are, what you offer, and how you deliver it.
Navigability
Visitors are stupid. Ok, maybe they aren’t, but you have to think about your navigation as if they are. It needs to be super simple, super focused and clear. Too many options are distracting, vague button names and link text leaves us unsure of where to click.
If you want them to click there, tell them to do it!
You can read Google’s full advice on landing pages here.
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