October 8, 2021
The Ideal QA Process in Digital Advertising
At Metric Theory, it’s important to us to be more than just an agency for our clients. We strive to act more as an extension of our advertisers’ marketing teams. That means providing recommendations and strategies beyond that of direct paid media efforts. One way to do so is by investigating ways to improve and optimize landing pages. To illustrate, I’ll use an anonymized example of how I approached this with a client, so that you can perform this type of examination on your own.
Enhance User Flow
I had a client that sent 98% of their ads to a landing page that didn’t really show the user why she should become a customer. I dug into their Google Analytics and saw that most users navigate to the FAQ page after landing on their site to get more information. This shows that the user isn’t getting what she needs right away from the initial landing page. By prioritizing the most popular information on the FAQ page (if you list questions at the top of the page and use anchor links to jump to answers, this is trackable), and finding a natural way to add that information to a landing page, you can eliminate hurdles to conversion.
Perform a Competitive Analysis
I then performed a competitive analysis by searching for the top keywords in the account. I looked at which competitors show up in high positions organically, arguably top competitors in that space. I analyzed the content, videos, images, headlines, etc. of the competitor landing pages. What is it that they are optimizing for? Are you optimizing for the same things? Are there items that competitors are doing well that you can mirror? I recommend performing a few searches and clicking on multiple pages in order to gather stronger information that will lead to an even stronger recommendation.
Take Learnings from Top Converting Pages
Look at the highest converting pages on the site and see what elements are on that page that some of your other landing pages are lacking. Is there a clear call to action? Is the information provided on the page presented in a way that is easy for a user to digest? Is it the offer being presented to the user that’s especially compelling? As with competitor pages, borrowing from your own best-performing pages is a quick route to performance improvement.
To Sum It Up
Even the best digital ad campaigns won’t live up to their potential without strong user experience once the visitor gets to your website. Maximizing ad performance requires testing your landing pages the same way you test ads or new targeting. Looking for ways to enhance user flow, performing competitive analyses, and learning from top converting pages are just a few ways you can improve user experience and ultimately drive stronger performance. Contact us to learn more.
