Keep It Simple, Stupid – 6 Tips for Creating Clean & Simple PPC Landing Pages

When I was in high school, my geometry teacher said his favorite saying to live by was “KiSS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.” No matter what topic we were covering, he usually tried it squeeze it into the lesson plan. Although it might not apply to every situation, I find that applying it to landing pages always works wonders for my clients.

All too often I come across landing pages or websites that are overloaded with text, images, forms, animations, and so on and so forth. It becomes overwhelming and often times confusing – “What’s going on here? What am I looking at? Where am I?” Potential customers or leads take off before completing any actions because they don’t know what action they are supposed to take.

What?

Six Tips for Keeping Your Landing Pages Nice & Simple

Whenever creating a new landing page, keep it as simple and clean as possible. I usually like to follow these rules:

• Keep the text to a minimum, but make it count. List key features, attributes or services with brief descriptions. Talk about what separates you from the competition. Make sure it’s original and relevant to your ad copy!
• Have clear, relevant images – either of the product or something closely related. Don’t overdo it though – usually a large banner image is sufficient. You can also test swapping the image for a short (less than a minute) video.
• If you have a form on the landing page, keep it short & sweet. Just ask for the most important information and what you need in order to contact them. Typically name, email, and phone number are going to be sufficient.
• For lead generation, try giving away a “freebie”, such as a webinar or whitepaper, to get people to fill out the form.
• Utilize arrows – try incorporating subtle (or even not so subtle) arrows pointing to the action you want the visitor to complete.
• Always Be Testing – Continuously test images, copy, and even form fields. Sometimes the images and copy that work best are the ones you least expect!

That’s more like it.

(Read more: A Formula to Create the Best Landing Pages For Your Google AdWords Account)