Landing pages built for the click you paid for
Doubling the page's conversion rate halves what a customer costs. It is usually cheaper than finding better traffic.
The advertising is working. People arrive, look at a page built for browsing rather than deciding, and leave without telling you why.
What changes
Three things worth more than a redesign.
One promise per page
The advert made a promise. The page keeps the same one, in the same words, above the fold. Most of the loss on paid traffic happens in that first inch.
A cheaper first action
Asking a stranger for a meeting is expensive. Asking a question they can answer in one tap is not, and it tells us what the traffic is worth even when nobody buys.
A reason for every change
Tests run one variable at a time with the result written down, so the page accumulates knowledge instead of opinions.
How it runs
Cheapest fixes first.
The order is deliberately unglamorous. Most of the available gain is in the first two steps, and a redesign that skips them just makes the same mistakes prettier.
Watch what actually happens
Where people stop, on which device, and what the form does to them. A week of honest recording beats a month of argument.
Fix the match
Advert to headline, headline to action. When those three disagree the page leaks before anybody has read a word of the argument.
Cut the asking price
Fewer fields, a smaller first step, and a reason to act that is true. Every field you remove is a percentage you keep.
Then test the argument
Proof, order, offer. One at a time, long enough to be sure, with the losers recorded so the same idea is not retried next year.
What is included
What lands with you.
- A landing page per campaign, built fast and owned by you
- Copy written against the advert, not adapted from the home page
- Forms in steps, so an abandoned one still tells us something
- Page speed treated as a conversion problem, because on phones it is the biggest one
- Measurement built in from the first version rather than added afterwards
- A written record of every test: what changed, what happened, what we concluded
Questions people ask
The ones that actually arrive.
Can you work on our existing site?
Usually. If it is a common platform we work in it directly. If it is slow or locked down enough to block the work, a separate page for paid traffic is often faster and cheaper than fighting it.
How much traffic do we need before testing means anything?
For a true A/B test, more than most businesses have. Below that threshold we work on the things that are wrong rather than the things that are uncertain, which is less fashionable and usually worth more.
Will this change our brand?
No. A landing page should sound like the rest of you, just more direct. If a page only works by sounding like somebody else, it is buying a customer who will be disappointed later.
What if the page is not the problem?
Then we will say so. Sometimes the traffic is wrong, sometimes the offer is, and a page cannot fix either. Finding that out in week one is a good outcome even though it is not the one you asked for.
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Your turn
Bring one question you cannot currently answer.
30 minutes. We will tell you whether it is measurable, roughly what it would take, and whether we are the right people for it.