This holiday season, your PPC landing pages need a festive makeover! As I mentioned in my previous post about ad text, your landing pages are crucial for a successful holiday campaign. Think about it: a high-performing, holiday-focused PPC campaign needs landing pages that match the expectations of excited holiday shoppers clicking on your ads. In this article, we’ll dive into specific improvements you can make to your landing pages to maximize your performance during the holiday rush.
Just like in my last post, we’ll break down these landing page tweaks into two main categories. Before we get into the details, here’s a sneak peek at how I plan to cover landing pages. These seven tips all tie back to two key areas you need to remember every time you’re building a landing page (not just during the holidays!):
Two Key Areas of Focus for Landing Pages
- Making Sure Your Landing Pages Match Your Ad Text and Search Terms
- Encouraging Conversions
First up, let’s explore how to make sure your landing pages line up with your ad text and what your potential customers are searching for…
1. Highlight Limited-Time Offers and a Sense of Urgency
If your paid search ads are all about year-end deals, countdown promotions, and the like, you absolutely must convey that same feeling of urgency and limited-time offers right at the top of your landing pages. Take a look at this clear example from Amazon.com:
The Landing Page:
Right now, Amazon.com is likely running tons of holiday-themed text ads, many of which probably emphasize limited-time deals and encourage immediate action. To reinforce this message, they’ve placed a Black Friday countdown timer on one of their landing pages, reminding shoppers that these deals won’t last forever.
If your ad copy uses urgent language, find ways to incorporate those same words and phrases on your landing pages.
2. Showcase Promotions and Specials
If your text ads highlight specific promotions, make sure those same promotions are clearly visible on your landing pages. Let’s look at another example…
L.L. Bean: Here’s the Ad…
And here’s the Landing Page…
Notice how well the promotion in the ad text matches the actual landing page header. L.L. Bean has done a fantastic job of ensuring that the “sale” and coupon code mentioned in their ad copy are also prominently displayed right at the top of their landing page, so users don’t have to scroll down to see it.
As a shopper, I know exactly what I’m getting AND feel confident that I made the right decision because the promotion is clearly communicated to me a second time. I know exactly what to do to take advantage of the deal! Providing this level of clarity and consistency to your potential customers will pay off in the long run.
3. Make it Easy to Convert
This tip might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it’s overlooked.
Make the conversion process as simple as possible for your potential customers. Ideally, they shouldn’t have to click more than twice to reach a conversion form. For e-commerce businesses, it should only take one click to go from a product page to the order form. Service-based businesses should have a conversion form directly on their landing page. If it takes more than one or two clicks to convert, your bounce rates will likely increase.
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4. Provide Easy Navigation to Relevant Content
Just like making conversions straightforward, online businesses should also make it easy for potential customers to find relevant information. This might help them discover more targeted content/offers and increase the chances of conversion. REI’s Gift Center is a great example of this applied to the holiday season. Let’s take a look:
REI: Here’s the Landing Page…
Here’s the Navigation Menu…
REI makes it incredibly simple for potential customers to find even more gift ideas on their site by offering a dedicated, gift-focused product menu in their navigation bar. They’ve even highlighted their “gift center” in red to differentiate it from the rest of the menu.
A quick disclaimer: You’ll find differing opinions on this type of navigation. Many staunch landing page experts (often from the inbound marketing world) advise against adding a navigation menu to your landing pages. However, some businesses don’t have the luxury of a dedicated landing page builder that can incorporate this feature. Others find that offering additional navigation from their PPC-specific landing pages leads to more conversions. Experiment with what you have and base your decisions on data, especially during the crucial holiday season when your landing pages need to shine.
5. Embrace Festive Color Schemes and Images
First, let’s look at an example.
Oriental Trading Company: Here’s the Landing Page…
Talk about holiday cheer! It’s almost…too much… Maybe I’m just a Grinch!
But seriously, if you can, create landing pages that use holiday-themed images and colors. A visually appealing landing page can make a big difference in impressing your potential customers.
Just try not to go overboard…
6. Optimize Your Landing Pages for Mobile Devices
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: mobile is here to stay, and you need to adapt. Creating mobile-optimized landing pages is crucial for your holiday campaigns, especially now that enhanced campaigns with improved mobile targeting are the norm.
Imagine Christmas mornings around the world. I’m willing to bet that many people will be unwrapping some kind of mobile device. And (gasp) what’s that? A $100 gift card to their favorite online chocolate shop? Guess who’s going to be searching for your ad on their new phone and trying to make a purchase right then and there? You don’t want to miss out on that business, and studies show that mobile purchases and overall traffic skyrocket during the holidays. If you want to capitalize on this surge in traffic, you absolutely need mobile-optimized landing pages.
Need some resources for building mobile-friendly landing pages? I recommend checking out DudaMobile.
7. Include Social Sharing Buttons and Customize Default Sharing Messages
Last but not least: social media integration.
It’s a smart move to design landing pages with social media sharing options, especially during the holiday season when people are feeling generous and eager to share. Here’s an example from Moosejaw:
Moosejaw: Here’s the Landing Page…
I’ve highlighted the social sharing buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) on the left.
When you enable social sharing on your landing pages, you’re giving shoppers the opportunity to promote your business for you. You can make it even easier for them by customizing the default sharing messages for your unique landing pages. Depending on the tool you use to build your landing pages, you should be able to edit the message that automatically appears in the comment/tweet field when someone wants to share your link. This makes it incredibly simple for your happiest customers to spread the holiday cheer.
Shoppers like knowing that the businesses they’re interested in are also active on their social networks. If you haven’t already, make sure you enable social sharing for the holiday season.
Ultimately, it’s all about making your potential customer’s journey as smooth and enjoyable as possible. Ensuring your ad text and landing pages are in sync is vital not only for creating an experience that’s likely to lead to conversions, but also for pleasing the Google gods and earning your keywords a nice little Quality Score boost this holiday season.