So you are rushing for time and you haven’t a clue what to feed the kids for dinner tonight………and its already 7:45 pm. Oh well, better late than never. Children’s Aid haven’t been called… yet, so everything should be OK unless the kids start sizing up to eat the goldfish.
You do a Google search for quick dinner recipes – A broad word search for you PPC geeks
And this is what you get.
Now what I always think about when I see PPC is what is the advertiser trying to accomplish.
Reasonably, they should probably only be doing one of two things
- Get you to buy something right away, or
- Get you to give up a bit of your personal information to them, like an email address, a name or some basic demographic information, so they can sell you something at a later time or maybe do some market research
Regardless of which of the two above tasks the advertiser is attempting to accomplish, they should make it as easy as possible for the customer/surfer to complete the task.
So the first ad looks totally useless (I’m looking for quick dinner recipes and some brilliant copy writer and marketing specialist things I might like a journey around the world), but in the interest of market research I click on it
And where do I end up…….
At a landing page for G.H. Mumm – a French Champagne Producer. Shall we have a peak at the landing page?
So after 1 click I have landed at a page that really doesn’t do much in either:
Getting me to buy something; or
Getting me to give up some uselful information.
In fact, all it does, after requiring me to tell them what country I live and how old I am (and confirming that I have read the terms and conditions of the site) is sent me to a pop-up page of flash animations of getting on a private jet and being whisked around the world.
So now I am on the second page of the site and they still haven’t attempted to get me to surrender a piece of useful personal information. I guess this is what you call an exercise in branding……
So now I am sitting inside the plane and have more options to click on to pick my “fantasy settings”
After a few more clicks…………I settle on a beach seafood picnic.
All the while people at home are looking for dinner……
Screw them, I’m on a beach!!!
So what am I, 4 or 5 pages in to the site, I haven’t been asked for any information and all I was looking for was quick dinner recipes, I probably should have just ordered pizza.
So now I hover over some images and it looks like I can get some quick dinner recipes
Oysters anyone?
Maybe some crab?
This is great example of a basic fail for landing page/microsite design on so many levels
- The lead in to the site was crappy. I was looking for a fast dinner and it is showing me an animated private jet. The keyword should never have been used for this.
- The site structure itself was lacking. Poor naviagation. Didn’t give the surfer what they wanted………..a solution to the lack of dinner.
- On top of it all, for all the time, money and effort that was invested in the site, they never even attempted to get an email address from me for future follow up or promotions.
I don’t see many positives to this attempt……….do you?