Drive paid search ad conversion with basic usability principles
What’s nice about using paid search advertising to promote your products and services is that programs like Google AdWords give you a vast amount of analytical insights and optimization tools. With a reasonable budget to get the campaign off the ground, its manager can cover it from every angle: well-chosen keywords, smartly written ads, and well-tailored landing pages.
The irony is that usability, often one of the most overlooked bedrocks of a well-oiled e-commerce machine, has the ability to single-handedly derail the whole effort.
In a recent article by Stoney deGeyter pitting usability vs. SEO, we are introduced to a fairly common scenario. A small business owner has a large base of potential customers, but only a small proportion are buying anything.
Does she try to get in front of more potential customers, or does she try to convert more potential customers into actual paying customers?
In Stoney’s article, at the heart of the matter is the notion that SEO (search engine optimization) is relatively useless if you send people to a site that is difficult to navigate. Your PPC (pay-per-click) ad campaign is vulnerable to the same result.
Some of the most obvious usability flaws include:
- Confusing site navigation
- Lack of a “hook” phrase to hold attention
- Artwork & graphics incongruent to the rest of the site
- Lack of intelligent connection to the original keywords queried
Remember that on average, any visitor to your site will decide within three seconds whether to click away or read on. If you lose that, you not only lose the reader’s attention, but you lose the money you paid for your ad to get in front of the reader to begin with.
As the old proverb goes: “A stitch in time saves nine.” Go the extra mile while designing your site, and you’ll reap the cost savings down the road.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 @ 6:36 am on the category Pay-per-click advertising, SEO, Small business, Usability.
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