Which Attributes Describe a Good Landing Page Experience?

In PPC advertising, it is common for marketers to optimize their campaigns for better results. However, one factor which is often overlooked by many is their landing page experience.

If your landing page experience is poor, then making any changes to your advertising campaign would have little to no effect.

For an effective advertising campaign, you need to ensure that all the moving pieces are in the correct order… From choosing the right keywords, to a good-looking creative, to a good landing page experience… all these are important to make a winning PPC campaign.

This raises the question of how to improve the landing page experience!?

Well, the world of PPC advertising is massive, and there are a lot of players such as Google, Bing, etc. And each of these players has its own formula for assessing the landing page experience.

However, some factors are shared among the majority of the PPC platforms… So today, we will be revealing what attributes describe a good landing page experience.

And more importantly, what’s exactly a landing page experience in the first place?

What is landing page experience & why it matters?

Landing page experience is a metric to determine the relevance & usefulness of your landing page to the people clicking on your ads. This is a standard metric that is used by all the major PPC advertising platforms (each one usually uses a different term for this metric).

According to its majesty, Google, a landing page with good experience attributes has relevant text related to the end user’s search terms. In addition, a good landing page is also well organized & provides a clear solution to the user’s query.

Google divides the landing page experience into three categories:

1. Above average
2. Average
3. Below Average

You can see the landing page experience for each keyword present in your PPC campaign.

In general, a score of  “above average” or “average” indicates that there are no problems with the landing page experience. However, a score of “below average” means that your landing experience is not good enough for the selected keyword and needs some changes.

There’s a good chance that you might have some keywords in your campaign with an “above average/average” score along with “below average” keywords as well.

This usually happens when you have not optimized your landing page for all the selected keywords, or you simply have selected the wrong ones.

Now that you understand what landing page experience is, the next question is why it matters…

According to Google again, a poor landing page experience can lower your chances of generating conversions through the ads. Now, a conversion can be anything based on your advertising goals, such as sign-ups, sales, donations, etc.

In short, a good landing experience actually helps you get more results from your PPC campaigns & even saves you precious money.

Now before we talk about what attributes describe a good landing page experience, we foresaw presenting you with the concept of Quality Score first to further highlight the importance of landing page experience!

What is quality score & why does it matter?

Quality score is a measure of the following segments:

• Landing page experience
• CTR (click-through rate)
• Ad text relevance
• Keyword relevance

By looking at these elements, Google assigns a quality score of 1-10 to each keyword present in your PPC campaign. So, you can say that landing page experience is a part of the quality score metric used by Google.

By using the quality score metric, Google can determine the quality and relevance of your PPC campaigns. This helps Google to only show relevant advertisements to the end users.

But what’s the benefit of a quality score for an advertiser like yourself? Well, it also plays a key role in determining the CPC and rank of your advertisements. So, if your PPC campaign has a high score, it means that your advertisements will receive a higher ranking and a lower CPC cost.

Out of all the components that make up the quality score, the factor which is the most important is the landing page experience! And this is exactly why we chose to discuss what attributes describe a good landing page experience in this article!

5 attributes which describe a good landing page experience

Not sure what attributes describe a good landing page experience? Well, if you are in the process of making a landing page or already have a landing page, just make sure that it contains relevant and unique content, it loads fast & is easy to navigate. Lastly, it’s overall transparent and trustworthy.

Let’s look at the five qualities of a good landing page experience in more detail:

Relevant content

The first attribute of a good landing page experience is that it contains relevant content. Basically, the keywords and the ad text of your PPC campaign must be relevant to the content present on your landing page.

If your target keyword is related to a particular mobile phone model (iPhone 14, for instance), then make sure that your landing page is about iPhone 14, not a competing product!

Creating a landing page that focuses on all types of mobile phones will not be relevant.

Similarly, if your keyword is related to “crocs for men”, then your landing page should be about “crocs for men” and not shoes in general!

If you have a lot of keywords in your campaign, then it would be wise to put keywords with similar meanings into one ad group. Then you can create a landing page specifically for that ad group & repeat the process for all the other ad groups as well.

In short, ensure your landing page has relevant and to-the-point content related to your ad text and keywords.

Unique content

While you focus on relevance, you can’t just forget about the uniqueness of your content as well. This means that you can’t just pick the content from a competitor’s landing page and add it on your own!

The titles, headings, images sometimes, and of course, the copy of your landing page should be unique and free from any plagiarism. You can use tools such as Copyscape and Grammarly’s plagiarism checker to check the uniqueness of your written content. As per images, unless they’re produced initially by your team, you can rely on free stock images!

Note: We recommend avoiding free stock images as they may harm your brand’s originality. Invest in premium images, a shooting session, or a photographer to take care of this endeavor!

Google and other PPC advertisers pay close attention to the originality of a landing page’s content and then compare it with other advertisers.

 Easy to navigate

After checking that your content is unique and relevant, the following attribute is ease of navigation. This notion suggests that the structure of your landing page should be designed with the potential visitor in mind; i.e, a visitor can easily navigate the page and the website overall!

There are many ways to promote “easy navigation” on your landing page… For starters, ensure the page design is well organized so that a user doesn’t have to look too hard to find the relevant information.

Ideally, the information a potential user is looking for should be above the fold so they don’t have to scroll down. While improving the landing page experience, this practice will also make it easy for visitors to convert through your funnel as well.

And while you work on improving navigation and user experience, make sure not to include anything that annoys the end user. For example, using full-screen popups can interfere with the navigation of a user.

Another tip to remember is not to confuse the users by offering them multiple offers or adding links to many website pages. Your goal should be to avoid distractions at all costs so that the end user can convert without wasting time.

And last but not least, all the features and elements on the landing page must work correctly. This includes ensuring all images/ videos are working properly & information is adequately arranged.

Fast loading speed

Your landing page is taking a good 10 seconds to load? Then there’s a (very) high chance that the majority of users will close the tab! In fact, research by ToolTester found visitors would leave a landing page before it loads if it takes longer than 2.5 seconds on desktop & 8 seconds on phones!

These bounce-backs would most probably end up going to your competitor’s landing page by clicking on a different advertisement!

And even if they stick around to allow your landing page to load properly, it would only send a poor signal about your brand! This can actually hurt your brand image & will end up lowering the conversion rate drastically as well.

Surprisingly, you can check the loading speed of your landing page for free through Pingdom, GTmetrix, and even Google’s PageSpeed Insights! One thing to note here is to also change the location on Pingdom/GTmetrix based on your target country, while Google relies on global data to deliver an analysis.

For instance, if your PPC campaign is targeting an audience from Germany, then select a location from Germany from the website speed testing service. This will give you an accurate reading of your website speed in relation to your target country!

Ideally, your website should load within 2 to 3 seconds for a good landing page experience. But if your website loading speed is higher than that, then you would need to make changes such as:

• Moving to a better web hosting company or upgrading your current hosting plan
• Optimizing images, videos, and javascript on your landing page
• Avoid using media files with a large size on your landing page
• Use a CDN service such as Cloudflare
• Use a cache service on your landing page

It is usually best to hire a professional web designing agency to get a well-optimized & fast-loading landing page that converts.

Transparent & trustworthy

One of the attributes that describe a good landing page experience is that it should be completely transparent about everything… From what your brand does to any other relevant information, everything must be accurate and proven!

Many things can be done to promote transparency and trustworthiness on your landing page. For example, include contact details so that a potential visitor can contact you (if required). Such information can be included in the footer and can consist of email, address, and phone number.

If your landing page requests user information, then be clear about how you collect information and for what purpose you will use it! Include what third parties may access that data & for what purposes as well!

But the most important of all is that the nature of your business should be legal… This means that your landing page shouldn’t include, promote, or imply any illegal information or practice.

Yet, the legal definition in this light is from an algorithm standpoint, so you may want to check your own case further if you’re skeptical!

If you have some testimonials and reviews about your product/service, then also include them on your landing page. This will promote trust and trustworthiness among the visitors knowing that other people are already using your product/service.

And last but not least, also mention it clearly if your website uses cookies. And if the user doesn’t consent to the use of cookies by your site, then also include a way to achieve that.

4 Things that lead to poor landing page experience

Here’s a quick rundown of some things that should be avoided on a landing page to deliver a good landing page experience. This will help you to generate more conversions and to improve the landing page experience:

1. Avoid using links that can drive people away from the landing page. This would even include adding links to other sections of your site which are irrelevant. However, you can include links that lead to different sections of your landing page.
2. Content length should be moderate (not too short or long). You can figure the best length out by spying on other advertisers in your targeted keywords!
3. Avoid annoying pop-ups that appear every few seconds.
4. The use of stock images should be avoided at all costs. Instead, try to use original and high-quality images.

Tip: If you’re running a nonprofit, it might be interesting for you to use a good website builder to ensure the delivery of an immaculate landing page experience.

Conclusion

As you can see, it shouldn’t be too hard to improve the landing page experience… As long as your landing page is relevant, unique, easy to navigate, and loads fast, you should be all set.

However, if you’d rather rely on an off-house web design agency, make sure you pick the right one! Relying on a web design agency that doesn’t have experience with landing page design may not produce satisfactory results.

With many voices in the market, choose an agency whose website is its trademark!

At Canadian Digital Consulting, we have exposure to a lot of different industries, which allows us to offer unmatched landing page design services.

So, if you want a landing page that looks good and also converts nicely, then contact us and we can schedule a meeting with one of our experts!