The ad click that lands on your home page

The ad report arrives at the end of the month. There were 640 clicks, the price per click went down and the ad often showed among the first results. Every number is green. The phone rang about as often as last month, and the form brought three enquiries, one of them a sales pitch.

You ask the person who runs your ads what is wrong. They say the ads work: people see them and click. You ask the person who made your website. They say the site works: it opens fast and looks good on a phone. Both are right. The fault sits in a place that belongs to neither of them: the page the click lands on, and what the person sees there in the first few seconds.

The ad is a promise, the page is the rest of it

Somebody searches for "gutter installation Tartu". They are shown an ad: "Gutters with installation. A quote within 24 hours." It is exactly what they were looking for, and they click.

They land on the home page. There is a large photo of a house, the heading "Quality and trust since 2009" and a menu of nine services: roofs, facades, window flashings, snow guards, rainwater systems and so on. The gutters are in there somewhere. But this person did not come to get to know your company. They came for the promise you made them yourself, and now they have to search for it again on your site.

Some do. Many go back to the search, where the next ad is waiting with the same promise. By then the click is already paid for. You paid for somebody to walk in through your door, look around and go next door.

The home page is for everyone, the ad click is for one

A home page has a hard job. It has to serve a person you know nothing about: did they come to see a price, look for a job, pay an invoice or just browse? That is why a good home page is a little of everything: who you are, what you do and where to go next.

An ad click is the opposite. About this person you know nearly everything. You chose the keyword the ad was shown for. You wrote the line they read. You know what they want, because you promised it to them yourself. Send them to the home page and you throw that knowledge away and treat them like a passer-by.

The same goes for Facebook and Instagram ads. There the person was not searching for anything, but your post offered them something specific: a sale, a new service or a free slot next week. When they click, they want to see exactly that offer, not an introduction to your company.

What people want on the first screen after the click

The first screen is the part of the page you see before you start to scroll. On a phone it is short. That is where the person has to be told they came to the right place, and see what to do next. That takes four things.

• The same words as the ad. If the ad said "gutters with installation", that is also the page heading. Not "Professional roofing solutions". The person looks for the words that brought them here, and if they do not find them, they decide they are in the wrong place.
• The promise, kept. If the ad said "from 49 euros" or "a quote within 24 hours", that is on the page straight away, together with what the price includes. A price that was in the ad and is missing from the page reads as bait.
• One action. Call, ask for a quote or book a time. One of them is the main one, and its button is big enough for a thumb to hit first time. The phone number can be tapped, and it rings.
• One reason to believe. A photo of real work, not a stock photo, or one short line from a customer. Not ten logos and certificates, but one thing that shows you have done this job before.

How an enquiry form should be built, and why people hesitate before writing to a firm they do not know, is covered in the article on why nobody gets in touch through your website. What matters here is only that the form or the button sits on the first screen, not at the bottom of the page.

One page per promise, not per ad

This does not mean every ad needs its own page. There may be dozens of ads, but there are usually few promises. Group the ads by what they promise. Three services means three pages, not thirty.

Often the page already exists. A service page that names gutter installation, the price and how to get in touch is a far better destination than the home page. The cheapest fix is sometimes just changing the ad's address, so that it leads to the right service page instead of the home page. In the ad account that takes a couple of minutes.

If there is no service page, or it holds three paragraphs of general text, you need a page that carries the promise. The good news is that such a page pays off without ads too. A service page that says plainly what you do, where and at what price is the same page Google wants to show to somebody who searches for the same thing in ordinary search.

For a short campaign you can make a separate page that is not in the menu. Then think about the end of the campaign as well. A page promising December's price in March always turns up in front of somebody, and it does more harm than a page that is not there.

Google looks at the page too

Google does not judge only the text of the ad. In its advertising help pages Google writes that ad quality includes the experience a person has after the click, on the landing page. A landing page is the page the ad leads to. Google adds that higher quality ads generally cost less per click and get a better position.

In the ad account you see this as Quality Score: a number from one to ten next to a keyword, once there is enough data. It has three parts: how likely people are to click the ad, how well the ad matches the search, and how relevant and useful the page the ad leads to is. The last part depends not on the ad text but on what is on the page. Google calls the score itself a diagnostic tool, not an input to the ad auction, but it shows which part is worth fixing.

So the wrong page costs you twice. First you lose the person who already clicked. Second, you may pay more for every next click than a competitor whose page keeps the promise. A slow page does the same. Why slowness costs you customers is an article of its own.

Who counts what happened after the click

The ad account counts clicks by itself. What happened after the click it does not know on its own. Whether the person called, sent the form or booked a time reaches the report only if somebody has set up the measuring. That needs the website side too: code that tells the ad account a form was sent or a phone number was tapped.

Consent is needed as well. Measuring code is advertising code and falls under the same cookie banner we cover in the article on cookies. That is why no ad report is complete. Some people decline the cookies, some write the number down and call an hour later from another phone.

So the better question for the person who runs your ads is not "how many clicks?" but "how many enquiries?". And the surer answer comes from you: how many calls and emails you got this month, and where those people say they came from. Ask new customers directly. Which number really counts is covered at more length in the analytics article.

Two firms and one gap between them

In a small business one firm often runs the ads and another made the website. Each answers for its own side, but the ad and the page telling the same story falls between their contracts.

This gap is not hard to close, because it takes an agreement rather than a big job. Decide who owns it. One simple way: before every new ad or campaign, the ad maker sends the site maker the ad text and the address it leads to. The site maker opens the page on a phone and confirms the promise is on the first screen. That is five minutes of work, and it saves a month of wasted clicks.

Ten minutes you can spend today

Open the ad account and look at the list of ads. Next to each ad is the address it leads to. Do not click your own ad on Google to find out: that is a click that is not a customer, and it goes into the same report.

Take your phone and do the same for each different address:

1. Read the ad text and write down what it promises: the service, the price, the deadline, the place.
2. Open the address on the phone. Do not scroll.
3. Look at the first screen. Is the ad's main word there? Can you see the promised price or deadline? Can you see the call or enquiry button?
4. Write yes or no next to each question.

Every "no" is a place where you pay for clicks that cannot go any further. The order of repair is simple. First point the ad at the right page, if there is one. Then make the ad's words the page heading. Only then make a new page for the promise that does not have one yet.

If you cannot get into the ad account and do not know who runs it, that is the most important finding. What to do about it is in the article on whose name your accounts are really in. Until it is sorted, every month you pay for something you cannot see.