Consider this:
- More than 25 percent of accounts send all of their PPC traffic to just one landing page.
- 20 percent of small businesses send clicks straight to the home page of a website.
- Less than 50 percent of small businesses’ landing pages have conversion tracking enabled.
This research coming from WordStream is one of the reasons the company launched its newest free tool, the “AdWords Landing Page Grader.” This software gives PPC advertisers a detailed diagnostic of how well the landing pages are performing for the PPC traffic.
The landing page audit tool evaluates:
- Conversion rate compared to industry benchmarks.
- Keyword relevancy.
- The landing page against landing page best practices in PPC.
- Conversion elements, like lead-capture forms.
- If the page is optimized for mobile users.
- Campaign effectiveness over a 90-day period.
- Top five landing pages and their performance.
The benchmark metrics come from years of collecting and analyzing customer data, said founder and CTO of WordStream, Larry Kim. “Because we’ve worked with thousands of customers in so many different industries, we have pretty good insight into how the auction varies from finance to insurance to ecommerce.”
Kim said that from this “billions of dollars worth of data,” WordStream was able to identify best practice benchmarks for landing pages as it relates to PPC.
Here’s a sample of what that diagnostic report might look like:
WordStream said the data submitted is “completely secure, and users can log in quickly and easily via a secure one-time OAuth connection.”
“We invest millions into creating these free tools for marketers,” Kim said. Tools like the AdWords Landing Page Grader, he said, are a valuable way for marketers to build a case for improving landing pages because it provides context and a starting point for a conversation around data.