To launch an effective advertising campaign, you need not only a Google Ads account with a bank card linked to it, but also a website that will convert users into potential customers. How to understand your website is the very thing?

Global Internet business constantly intensifies competition for each user. Sometimes elementary mistakes can significantly reduce the conversion rate of your site and lead to wasted budget. One of the most common mistakes is the technical unreadiness of web resources to work with visitors. We have made a checklist that will help prepare the site for the launch of an advertising campaign, increase its conversion rate, and save money.

1. Setting goals

Before launching online advertising, you should first determine what will be considered a successful campaign. To do this, you need to set goals and corresponding KPIs. Any indicator can be chosen as a KPI: the volume of attracted traffic, if the goal is to increase brand awareness; the number of orders placed, if the goal is to increase sales, etc. It should be a specific number, clearly limited in time. For example, the goal is to get 80 hits per month, with a CPA of no more than $30.

2. Analytics, event and conversion tracking

The site should lead your potential client to a conversion. To do this, you need to decide what actions bring the user closer to the goal, build a conversion funnel, set up tracking of each step and the final goal. Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics service that helps you complete all the settings. This system builds a visualization of the conversion funnel and conveniently tracks the step when users
cannot achieve the final goal. It is good to already have some statistics before launching an advertising campaign. Then you can analyze the data “before” and “after”.

3. Call-tracking

Often, conversion is performed through a call, so it is impossible to track this action on the site. For such cases, we recommend setting up call-tracking. How it works? A certain script is added to the site, showing different phone numbers to different visitors who come from different sources. After the user has landed on the site from the advertisement, he sees a dynamically substituted phone number, which at that moment associates the user, session, channel and source and sends information about the conversion to the analytics system.

4. Page speed

By clicking on an advertisement, the user expects the page to load instantly. Long waiting time can lead to an increase in the bounce rate. That is, users you have already attracted to your site and paid for that simply close the page and go to competitor sites. Put more focus on downloading the mobile version. Website speed can be checked with PageSpeed Insights. The optimal loading time is 1-2 seconds.

5. Preparing landing page

Once users click on your ad, they are taken to your site. From now on, you have a few seconds to convince the users that they got exactly where they wanted. On the first screen, it is recommended to use visual elements illustrating the theme of the site, your logo, company name, title, region of your business, your USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Describe in more detail exactly those messages of your ad that
interested the user: the conditions of the promotion, delivery, special offers.

6. Sophisticated site structure and user-friendly interface

The user got to your site and assured it meets his needs. Then the interaction with the system begins. A user-friendly interface (usability) helps the visitor to explain, and the system to perform his request.

The interface should be:

  • Intuitive. The user must understand how to register, where to click to see the price, where the basket is located, where the purchase button is, how to place an order. If the user does not understand how to interact with your site, he will go to a more convenient resource. The site should have a logical structure and an accepted placement of elements. For example, users got used to see the shopping cart in the upper right corner, the “Contacts” tab as the last item in the menu, and the terms of delivery and payment in the footer.
  • Predictable. When looking at the interface elements, the visitor should intuitively understand how they work. Consider the example of buttons and icons. If an element looks like a menu (“burger”), then it must work like a menu. The slider should move something, the switch should toggle, and the envelope icon should open a chat with messages. Buttons should look three-dimensional, so they are more like buttons in real life, and the user understands that they are clickable.
  • Minimalistic. Do not overload unnecessary elements and texts. Highlight the most important information, and place additional information in the appropriate sections. It is important for the user to immediately see how he can satisfy the request, and not be distracted by unnecessary elements.
  • Loyalty to user errors. There will always be visitors who will find it difficult to understand your interface. Take care of them, think over all possible errors when interacting with the site and ways to solve them. If the user accidentally deletes the information he needed, he should be able to restore it; if he gets to the wrong page, he should be able to return to the previous page by clicking the “back” button. Use hints and cautions. For example: “Are you sure you want to close the page? Changes won’t be saved” or “Fill in all required fields”.

Usability will help shorten the user’s path to conversion and turn them from a visitor into a customer.

7. Semantic core

Contextual advertising should as clearly as possible meet the user’s needs.

  • Compose a semantic core that provides answers to all visitors’ questions on your topic. To do this, you can use the keyword planner from Google or Serpstat.
  • Make sure each query group has a landing page.
  • Fill the pages with keywords from the appropriate group.

This will help increase the relevance of your ad and lower your CPC.

8. Region-specific website adaptation

Make sure your site is customized for each region of your operation. The specified prices and language must correspond to the location that the advertising campaign will target.

9. Mobile version

As statistics show, the bulk of Internet traffic falls on mobile devices. Take care of the responsive version of your website to reduce the bounce rate and make it easy for users to convert.

  • Content must not extend beyond the screen.
  • All structural elements (images, tables, buttons) are adapted and do not overlap.
  • The buttons are easy to press with your finger.
  • The font size is large enough and easy to read.

10. Visual

Large, high-quality images clearly showcase your products and services. Users are very receptive to visual content. This is what the brain processes first. In online shopping, when there is no possibility of viewing live, visual demonstration of the product becomes extremely important. Poor quality images can spoil your impression of the product. Make sure to post high-quality images.

11. Contact form

The contact form must be on every page, catch the eye and call to action. The user should easily find it on the page and understand what he will get by filling it out. The form should contain only the fields that are really necessary, usually a number or email is sufficient. Try to make the process of placing an order or filling out a form easier. Users who encounter difficulties may prefer your competitors. Also don’t forget about testing. The application must come to the responsible person for subsequent processing of the request. Check your spam folder.

12. Company profile

The site clearly presents the company’s activities, provides all licenses, describes successful cases and a section with customer reviews. Post photos of management and employees, your office, shops. All this increases the level of user confidence, because making decisions over the Internet can be very difficult.

13. Customer information

Make sure to list all useful information on the site, whether in a separate section or on the product page. After the user has selected the right product, he wants to understand what his next steps are. Delivery terms and payment options should be clearly described (the more options, the more likely it is to make a purchase), and the user should be able to find them easily. After all, a convenient service pushes customers to make a choice in favor of your store. Also in this section you can find the most frequently asked questions.

14. Contact information

The site has a separate page with your contacts: a contact form, phone numbers with corresponding region codes, links to instant messengers and social networks, email, all physical addresses with a map, location map, and working hours. The main phone number should be fixed in the header in the right corner. Check the clickability of all contact elements.

The success of advertising campaigns depends on many difficult-to-predict factors. Follow these recommendations to be able to prevent many mistakes in advance.

The WellWebMarketing team works with many clients in contextual advertising. Auditing web resources and optimizing landing pages is one of the mandatory steps to start working on a project. Contact us if this issue is relevant for you, we are looking forward to cooperating with you!