Imagine Wal-Mart runs a thirty-second television spot that promotes an end-of-summer sale on outdoor grills. The campaign launch is successful and customers visit the store in droves. However, the grills have been placed in the back room for storage and when the customers arrive they are unable to locate them. A percentage of customers will ask a store clerk for help and the rest will exit the store. Failing to display the grills has not only hurt store revenues but also decreased the ROI for advertising spend. Now, apply this theory to the web and remove the store clerk from the equation. Not only will brand reputation suffer because customers are frustrated, but very few qualified customers will convert into buyers.
What can be impacted by poor landing pages?
1. Brand
2. Conversions
3. ROI
Here are three key facets to consider when designing landing pages:
1. Clear Call to Action
2. Message Consistent with the Advertising
3. Targets the Intended Demo/Pyschographic
Furthermore, as Google AdWords continues to increase the importance of Landing Pages in the Quality Score, more than ever advertisers will need to pay attention to these often overlooked pages. For more information on this, take a look at Google.
What I find most interesting is not just the small businesses who need to open their eyes to this but the major brands. Let's take a look at American Eagle.
The other day I was trying to show someone how the search query "Jeans" on Google.com would likely result in top brands with amazing landing pages.
After clicking on an AE.com ad (see left), I was surprised to see their homepage with a small banner at the bottom promoting a Jeans Guide. This company is investing significant advertising dollars into their PPC position on AdWords and failing to tailor ads to landing pages.Take a look this landing page - for a jeans ad.
This is not a good example of user experience. In fact, we probably don't need to look at the Analytics to find out that the ads are not performing as well as they could.
As Analytics continues to become more dominant in marketing, tactics like Landing Page Optimization will become more important and user experience will improve.
Dave @ Epik
