16 Hot Tips - Whitepaper

When running ad campaigns on Google (or Bing), it is important that you build your landing page with mobile visitors in mind. You’re targeting people who are using their phones to reach you, so you need to make sure the landing page looks and works great on mobile devices. We’re going to look at some very useful tips that will help you convert landing page visitors into callers:

Write ads with your landing page in mind. It is very important to write your ads while keeping in mind what is being offered on the landing page. Your ad copy and the landing page are complementary to each other and the copy will work best when it is aligned with its relevant landing page. Many advertisers make the mistake of either sending potential customers to the homepage or creating a generic landing page for all their ads, instead of using separate landing pages for each ad. To ensure consistency, make sure you highlight the benefits and features in your landing page that you mentioned in your ad copy.
Keep users focused on one page. With any landing page, including those targeting phone calls, don’t give users too many ways to get off the page and browse around. Try to give them all the information they need to call on this one page so there is no need to go elsewhere. This means removing top level navigation and slimming down footer navigation to the bare essentials.
Put less emphasis on forms. Something else that people often forget if you want to emphasize calls, then don’t put a form above the fold. When a form is put above the fold and overemphasized, it oftentimes reduces the number of phone calls. If phone calls are more valuable to your business than form fills, then be sure to put the form option lower on the page where it will be used as a last resort option for those who are unwilling to call. This also applies to live chat - try to prevent the chat box from loading until after the user scrolls down the page. This way it is less likely to cannibalize on calls.
Emphasize and sell the call, not necessarily the product or service:

- Create an emotional appeal if possible.

- Underline a low-pressure and stress-free call process.

- The call-to-action (CTA) should encourage people to call in, not to commit to anything.

- Tell users that they’ll get immediate benefits from calling, like receiving answers to questions as well as other important information.

- Include the operator’s name and a friendly face that will encourage visitors to call.

Use a click to call button for mobile users. If you want people to call, make it as easy as possible by including a call button.
Test the size, color and position of your phone number. The number needs to be as visible as possible, both by its appearance and its position on the page. Make it easy to read against the background color, larger than regular content, and placed wherever it would seem natural for a visitor to want to call you, like after a list of reasons to choose your products or services over the competition’s.
Use a phone icon next to the phone number as a visual cue. Again, you want to make the number as visible as possible and images help catch visitors’ attention.
Ask for the call. Use CTAs that focus on calling and explain how easy and beneficial it would be to call and talk to someone.
Assure users that calls are confidential. People want to feel safe and secure when calling you, they want to know they can trust you before telling you about their needs.
Use call tracking software. You should also use call tracking software (Call Rail, Invoca, etc.) for the phone numbers on your website. This software presents visitors with a phone number that will dynamically mask your main phone number, and that number changes depending on how your visitors found you. Visitors dial the new tracking number, the call gets forwarded to your main number, and you answer the phone just like you normally would. They also use cookies, so if a visitor returns to your site within a year, they’ll see the same number. The software forwards calls to your main number and in the background, it records the conversation and gathers statistics, which you can check on in real-time. The whole point of this is to tell which keywords bring you high-quality calls. This is critical data that can’t be left out – you need it to do anything else.
Create a sense of urgency that compels visitors to call. Don’t be afraid to create a sense of urgency, suggesting that the sooner they call, the better. Getting people to take action now rather than at some time in the future is very important and good marketers figure out a way to build urgency into their offer.
Use a local phone number. Using a local area code can really pay off for location specific services that are a good fit for call-only campaigns. There are a lot of national service providers and it can be confusing for someone trying to find a local company. The local area code allows them to see that you really are local. Toll-free is the old standard but most people have unlimited calling plans. For those looking for local services, local area codes are more trusted.
Reassure visitors that you serve their area. This can make a big difference and you can do this with a script that echoes the local city or state, or by building landing pages based on each targeted area.
Track call quality. Track not just calls but be sure to follow through and track post-call outcomes to get a sense of the quality of calls. Some keywords generate a lot of calls, but they are people just looking for general information or are not qualified. Tracking quality of calls and not just quantity of calls can make a major impact on your business results.
Optimize your landing page for mobile devices. Apart from the content of your landing page, design and functionality can also influence whether a potential customer trusts you enough. Since your visitors will primarily be using mobile devices, make sure that your landing page is correctly optimized for mobile and that you’ve used click to call functionality on it.
Improve your landing page’s load time. Our final tip is one of the most important ones and we’re going to go into a little detail about load times. A major aspect of call-focused landing pages is the load time. Many people don’t have fast internet connections on their phones, so you need to make sure the page is as clean and quick as possible, otherwise you risk losing a large part of your mobile visitors due to slow loading times.

Let’s look at a few general tips that will help with overall loading times:

Minimize HTTP Requests

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) Requests are counted whenever a browser fetches any type of information from a web server, and these requests can take up to about 80% of a page’s load time. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to limit these requests:

- Combine CSS/JS files – instead of having visitors’ browsers retrieve multiple CSS or JavaScript files, you can try and combine them into one larger file.

- Use queries to only load what is necessary – if you only need to load certain images on desktop devices or certain scripts on mobile devices, using conditional statements to only load what’s needed can be a great way to improve loading times.

- Use less images – if you think you’re using more images than is necessary, try removing some of them, especially if their file sizes are big.

Use Browser Caching

Browser caching allows assets from websites to be downloaded to visitors’ local drives (or phone storage) so that the next time they visit a website they’ve visited before, or even when browsing other pages on that website, it will load faster. Cached resources can expire anywhere from one day to within a year.

Compress Images

Images on websites usually take up about 60% of the average bytes loaded per page. As mentioned earlier, it’s best to get rid of any images that aren’t essential, and in some cases consider using CSS to replace an image – for example, if you’ve got a simple colored background, you could replace the image with a little CSS that will make your page load faster.

After you finish removing any non-essential images, look at all the remaining ones and see how large their file size is. People often use photos without first optimizing them for the web, and that can sometimes mean big files that visitors have to wait to download.

If you find yourself using large image files, go ahead and run them through optimization software like Compressor.io. In some cases, you’ll find reductions of over 60% in file sizes, and depending on how large the images were initially and how many images you’ve optimized, the difference in loading times could potentially be huge.

16 Hot Tips for Converting Landing Page Visitors into Callers