Designing Effective PPC Landing Pages for Mobile Devices: Advice From Real Experts

As Google Support explains, “Landing page experience is AdWords’ measure of how well your website gives people who click your ads exactly what they’re looking for—quickly and effortlessly. Your landing page is the URL people arrive at after they click your ad, and the experience you offer affects your Ad Rank and therefore your CPC and position in the ad auction. Your ads may show less often (or not at all) if they point to websites that offer a poor user experience.”

This is true whether people are searching via desktop or mobile, but mobile searching is becoming increasingly common. In fact, Google has officially stated that more than 50% of searches globally are now from mobile devices, and in 2016 a Hitwise study reported on by Search Engine Land puts that figure in the United States closer to 60%.

So, how do you handle the unique challenges associated with mobile landing pages? Step one, of course, is to test your site and then follow through on any recommendations. For more strategies, we asked several digital marketing experts for their best tips.

Business value proposition

Your landing page will not be effective without the right value proposition. Bryan Clayton, CEO of GreenPal, shared how his company originally thought their lawn care bidding app would be of value because users could get the best price from local professionals. Instead, the most compelling value proposition, as determined through testing, ended up being speedy service, including same-day service, and the convenience of the app. Are you sure your business value proposition is the right one? Does it need to be updated?

Google quality score

If your score is low, then you probably won’t win the bid. If you do, people who click on your ad will likely be disappointed and, even if you win the bid next time, it’s a waste of time because clicks aren’t leading to conversions.

That statement is from Brock Murray, the co-founder and COO of seoplus+. The remedy? Brock says that “your page has to be hyper relevant, blazing fast, sleek and clean in UX design, and get my attention with an enticing CTA.”

Here’s more advice from Brock: “With Google’s search algorithm updates, the mobile first indexing shift, and the rise of AMP, condensed content is your golden ticket to a mobile audience in 2017. The volume and depth of content that visitors want to see when exploring on desktop is very different than what they can absorb when they’re on their smartphone or tablet. Think of condensed content like your ‘elevator pitch’ that cuts directly to the chase, your core advantages and key messaging. Know what your customer wants and needs to hear and eliminate anything that confuses or distracts from that.”

Cross-device testing

Ahmed Khalifa, founder and director of IgniteRock, a digital consultancy firm, emphasizes the importance of testing your landing page across multiple mobile devices. “Just because,” he says, “you can see it fine on your iPhone does not mean that those on Samsung S7 will be able to see just as clearly.”

He suggests that you first determine the most popular devices being used to access your site, found in Google Analytics under Audience > Mobile > Devices. Once you have this information, you can prioritize your efforts. But, there’s another related issue.

“To make it even more complicated,” Ahmed says, “you should consider the browser that the visitors are using on each mobile device. For example, those using Safari on iPhone might behave differently from those using Chrome on iPhone.”

So, he offers this additional tip: “Within the same section in Google Analytics, if you open a ‘Secondary Dimension,’ then search for ‘Browser’ and click on it, you will have an idea of the mobile devices and browsers used at the same time.”

Relevance, speed, and functionality

My colleague Joe Hunt, director of PPC at DAGMAR Marketing, focuses on relevance, speed, and functionality as key factors critical to mobile landing page success. Specifically, working within the small view port is one of the biggest challenges.

Regardless of the device type, landing page content needs to be perfectly aligned with search intent and totally relevant to ad copy and targeted keywords. Without this continuity, there will be a disconnect upon visitors’ arrival to the page and they will bounce and go elsewhere.

In the mobile space, the page content must be brief and to the point, and contain a strong call-to-action or next step. In other words, present your value proposition and tell the visitor what you want them to do.

Long page load times are a recipe for disaster in the mobile space. You have only seconds to deliver your page, convey a message, and solicit an action. Streamlined pages that use only the essential elements, light coding overhead, and heavily compressed graphics will keep the bandwidth or total file size small.

Design your mobile pages with your users in mind; they are using their fingers, not a mouse. Place CTAs and conversion devices above the fold and visible in the view port when the page first loads. Use larger fonts for CTAs and links so they are easily read or clicked. Cross-check browser compatibility to be sure that your phone numbers initiate calls when clicked. If forms are used, they must be short and easy to complete. Less is more with form completion, so collect the minimum amount of information required to complete the transaction.

Additional tips

Pratik Shah, the director of marketing at Grin, a social shoutout platform, emphasizes the use of anchor tags to direct site visitors to the section of the website where you want their attention. This is especially important if the text above the fold doesn’t share all of the most important information.

Steve Pritchard, SEO consultant for Dreambooth, provides these tips:

• Ensure the call to action (CTA) is still above the fold; sometimes a responsive design can hide CTAs when they are placed in the sidebar or footer.
• Try to position CTAs to the left-hand side as this will ensure they are above any text when viewed on mobile.
• Minimize text through expandable divs, ensuring only the most important points, benefits, or features are prominent.
• If phone numbers are shown, ensure they include the <a href=”tel:.. variable to ensure the number can be directly called with one click.
• The size of images should be minimized and the page cached wherever possible to improve landing page load times; this also helps to improve AdWords Quality Score, so can help reduce average CPCs.

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