Is the website your campaign enemy?.

Today we will devote some time to the website. From this material you will learn whether she is the enemy when running advertising campaigns. In addition, you will learn about tools that will help you evaluate the site yourself.

Is a website a business card for a company?

Many of us treat a website like a business card. Let's go one step further in this metaphor and look at the activities and visit to the website like meetings with a client. After reading this text or watching the video above, you'll be ready to ensure that your customer doesn't throw your business card (website) in the trash.

We will consider one by one:

• Why we're late to the meeting, or page load speed.
• Why do we make an appointment with a customer, that is, what is the purpose of this website.
• The course of the meeting, that is, what elements, depending on the purpose, should appear on the site.
• Ignoring customer questions, or the role of key phrases.
• Costly stumbles, or you set up a campaign expensively and ineffectively.
• How to say goodbye and make future appointments, or analytics.

Page loading speed

None of us likes delays. Equally, our potential or current customers who visit our website don't like them. Data from Google shows that the longer a page takes to load, the more likely it is to be rejected:

• From 1 to 3 seconds it is 32%,
• 1 to 5 seconds is 90%
• 1 to 6 s. - 106% increase
• From 1 to 10 seconds it is as high as 123%.

It is important to remember that each of us has some expectations for the meeting. The same with a visit to a website. The longer a user waits on a site, the more likely he or she is also to be negative about what he or she saw on it.

Let's assume that a user waits 9 seconds on a page. There is a very high probability that he, after entering this page, will look more negatively at the product or service shown there. All because he waits so long for it. We can't afford something like that in an advertising campaign. Ideally, we shouldn't allow ourselves to do this for organic entries either. So we have to keep loading time in mind. Otherwise, no one will show up for the meeting we are late for.

How to check if a page loads fast?

It is not worth relying on one tool. But it's always good to have a reference point. Here are a few tools to help you evaluate loading times.

Google PageSpeed Insights

The easiest and most intuitive is the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. What does this tool contain? First of all, it is very intuitive, because we have in a very simple way shown the score of the page on a scale of good/bad.

• Page loading rating on a scale of 0 - 100.
• Evaluate page load times by device type.
• A list of suggested actions with the source of the error.
• Time-lapse visualization of page loading
• Google Core Web Vitals.

The latter are expected to be one of the main page ratings for search results starting next year. It can be assumed that this will also be reflected in advertising campaigns.

But as a general rule, the more clues we take into account (and correct), the better.

Link to the tool: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Web.dev

Web.dev is less popular. It is an expanded version of PageSpeed Insights. This tool already focuses on the overall quality of a page. What it includes:

• Site Speed Assessment (Performance),
• SEO,
• Availability,
• Best practices,
• Google Core Web Vitals.

This includes, for example, evaluating the use of a security certificate, the use of images, or the accessibility of content to the user.

Link to the tool: https://web.dev/pl/measure/

GTmetrix

This is a tool for people who are a little more in the optimization topic. Perhaps they have programming knowledge or want to give very detailed guidelines to the programmer. In such cases, this tool is much more convenient. Unlike previous web.dev tools, it includes a list of items with an explanation of what to do. It easily allows you to export it to PDF. Consequently, it is quite easy to hand it over to the programmer.

Link to the tool: https://gtmetrix.com/

Google Analytics

Let's not forget a tool that every website should have, namely Google Analytics. In Google Analytics there is a behavior and load time report, where you can see the speed of individual pages. When we click on a particular page, we get even more detailed information. We will be able to break down this data by operating system, by browser, on which this time varies. This allows us to assess how important specific sub-pages are for repair.

One tool or several?

I recommend using GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights tool together for comparison. In PageSpeed, very often, despite a lot of work to improve speed, you don't see improvement results. This is because not all of the tips address what they seemingly address. As a result, we often work hard and the result of that speed does not increase. In GTmetrix, errors are described in more detail. Therefore, this score actually reflects what is being done on a given site. You can easily assess what work has been done and how effectively. So it is worth comparing the results from both tools than relying solely on the solution from Google.

What is Google Core Web Vitals?

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), which is how long the largest element on the page takes to load.

FID (First Input Delay), which is the delay of the first element visible on the page.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift), which is how long the elements on a web page take to change their place as it loads.

What is the purpose of the site?

Paradoxically, we very often forget about the goal, and it is to it that we need to choose the tools. You need to think about it and plan the way you want to reach it. We will pack something different for the mountains and something different for the lake, right?

Acquiring a sales lead

Acquiring a lead requires establishing a relationship and building user engagement. For example, a website with such a goal should be divided into stages. On the first screen of the page, the user should be able to select very general offer options and click „NEXT.” This should be the only visible button at this stage. It should also attract attention.

In the next screen, the user should get more detailed options. Importantly, they should only apply to the general option he selected earlier. They should be followed by another „NEXT” button.

In the next step, a contact form may already appear. And again - the only visible button „SEND”.

In this way, at each stage, we give the user the impression that it is he who chooses. He is the one who searches. And in the end - he is the one who makes the decision. And since he's the one making it, it can't be wrong after all.

The security certificate is also important. After all, we are dealing with the transfer of personal data, so a security certificate should be mandatory on this site. Marketing consents are also a must.

Views

Sometimes we want to increase the number of page views. Perhaps we have an advertising system built in and then those page views work to our advantage. Perhaps we direct advertising to a page that shows us information in such a portioned way. Perhaps it's a photo gallery, such as a gallery of how some wheat variety behaved throughout the season from sowing to harvest. Then we want that user to get as far as possible.

In such situations, we have a very simple mechanism. They work here:

• large, good quality photos,
• catchy title,
• description under gallery.

The most important element - the gallery - should be placed at the top of the page. You can then click „View gallery” and then we will click through the individual photos, the individual stages of development of this wheat of ours. If page views are the goal, the „View gallery” button should be strongly emphasized.

Watch the video

When the goal of the site is to maximize the video views by the target audience we take other measures. In this situation, the video is the main thing given to the user right away. The only thing he can press is „Play”. Of course, all files (video, graphics) we show must be lightweight.

The role of key phrases

Key phrases are like customer questions in a meeting. They cannot be ignored. Phrases can be extracted with:

• Google Keyword Planner
• Google Search Console
• Google Search Engines
• Other paid or free tools.

Google Search Console is more tailored to a specific page, because it shows the real queries by which someone came to that page.

Why are these phrases so important at all? First of all, phrases tell us what our customer calls the product, which allows us to use the language our customer speaks, not what we think is appropriate.

The phrase also tells us about the user's intention. We look for different information when we type „XYZ tractor reviews” and different when we type „XYZ tractor price.” This is also a completely different stage in the sales funnel, and it's worth paying attention to.

In addition, phrases can signal the needs that our customer has. If we know the phrases by which users access our website, we should ensure the presence of content that answers these questions and customer needs.

How do I put phrases on the page?

We know that people call the product differently. It is therefore necessary to:

• use synonyms,
• use inflectional variations,
• Use phrases in a natural and varied way.

If the page does not contain phrases in key places for the user's attention, he will most likely leave the site without realizing the goal. That's why it's a good idea to ensure the presence of phrases in headlines, quotes and bold.

Costly stumbling blocks in advertising landing pages

Wasting the potential of the site is associated with the stages discussed above. The most common ones are shown in the table below.

error	consequences
landing page too slow	Ad clicks do not translate into website hits, Negative attitude of the customer towards the presented offer
poor site design	user pursues other than intended purposes on the site high rejection rate
attacking with a contact form	high rejection rate
no key phrases	low quality rating of the landing page in Google low number of ad impressions high CPC rates high rejection rate

The key role of analytics

Making that next appointment, that is, getting people to come to the site again, that's analytics. You have to check the numbers. Check what percentage of people enter and leave the site without going to any other sub-pages or performing any actions. You have to try to hypothesize why this is happening. There could be various reasons, such as the color is not right, perhaps the copy needs to be changed, perhaps it's the arrangement of the content. We can't test everything at once. We have to assume one cause, which we think is the most important reason for not achieving the goal.

If we already have such an error tracked, we can run an A/B test, i.e. run an ad on two variants of the site - one is the old variant, the other is the one containing the fix. If the test shows that the assumption was correct, the fix should be implemented. Then another hypothesis can be tested in the same model.

The work on a website never ends, so this process in both the landing page and the ads themselves will be repeated.

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