eyeAds Team on Google Marketing Challenge

When a user makes a search with Google and clicks to an Adwords advertising we consider him a potential target. When the potential target makes a click where we want him to, we consider it an accomplished objective and the page we’re making an on line advertising campaign will proceed to consider him a potential costumer.

But, what exactly is a landing page? Does it have anything yo do with airplanes and landings? In fact, it does, more than it looks like.

The landing page is the website where the Adwords advertising redirects the user. Its objective consists on calling the potential client’s attention and manipulate him so he does what we want him to (in marketing and advertisement terms, of course). Metaphorically speaking, it’s the page where “our future costumer has to land” and where we must be able to lead him to our product.

What’s the difference between a good landing page and a bad one? The answer Is simple: EFFECTIVENESS.

We need that behind our advertising there’s an effective landing page, a landing page that calls the user’s attention. Then so, we are going to give some advices for an effective landing page:

Advices fon an effective landing page:

1.A single picture speaks more than a thousand words: We agree that a minimum of written information is needed, bot not so much that it comes to the point of overflowing the user. If the user hasn’t related what we’re showing with what he’s looking for during the first five to seven second, then we’re losing a potential costumer. If we get a grip on him, he’ll be already interested in investing some of his time on the web page behind our landing page.

2.Click here: Buttons, we need buttons. Buttons taking an important part of the screen, if possible in a bright color (though one that doesn’t hurt the eye) and with a clearly guiding message.

3.Color does matter: We have to know how to play with colors. In my opinion, there are two well differentiated strategies we can follow

• The first and most commonly used strategy is to use similar colors in the landing page as in our business’ website, if not the same. That saves us from a lot of trouble thinking about every combination ans its meaning (almost for sure that’s what a graphic designer would have advised us to do during the page’s creation).
• A second possibility is to display colors freely, trying not to make combinations hurtful to the eyesight. For example, blue tonalities, from pastels to deep blue, they show seriousness. The green ones, tranquility. Red, aggressiveness and passion… (we can play with all this, though at a personal level it’s better to leave these subjects on professional hands).

Whatever we do, we have to avoid unattractive combinations:

Lime green + yellow letters = user clicks backwards as son as the landing page is downloaded.

You can check this effect by yourself. If you look right here and feel how you half-close your eyes in a grimmace of pain, then for sure something’s wrong.

4.Too many fonts are bad: this point comes from comments from Itsaso. They advised me not to use more than two different fonts on the same landing page (counting the ones logos and so on could contain).
It really looks like a silly detail, but it’s amazing how the eye dismisses anything unlikeable or unexpected.

An example: the eye is reading a text in a Times New Roman font. If you put a word in Lucinda Handwriting (which looks like school calligraphy) the eye will feel it strange so you’ll have to pay special attention to the word to get to understanding it. You won’t read it as easily as the rest.

5.Don’t use unnecessary punctuation signs: the abuse of exclamation or interrogational signs can make you look nervous, uneasy, even anxious in any text. It would create a sense of urgency/violence to the user and that, as a rule, is bad…

6.Try to make appear the keywords of your advertising in the landing page: Over anything, it will help you to get your advertising on Google. The Google spider loves that kind of things.

7.Don’t put text invisible to the human sight: that’s one of the things that displeases the Google spider; it could even make it unleash its fury against us.

If you follow these practical advises you can make a quality landing pages with a decent rating of conversion.