Draft: hidden from Google until Dan signs it off.
A landing page is the page someone arrives on after clicking an ad or a search result. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) means getting more of those visitors to enquire or buy, without paying for more clicks. Google says to give people what the search and ad promised, keep the message consistent, and make pages fast and mobile friendly. Most of the pages I review fall at the first step: they don't say what the ad said. I'm based on the Central Coast, NSW, and work with businesses across Australia.
Written by Dan Picken, founder. Last checked 28 October 2026.Audience first
Most landing pages try to talk to everyone, so they say nothing in particular. The person who clicked an ad for 'emergency hot water repair' and the person who clicked 'new hot water system cost' want different things in the first five seconds. I work out who is arriving, from which ad or search, and what they need to see before they'll act.
Group the visitors
By the ad or search that brought them and the state of mind they arrived in.
Match the first screen
Headline, proof and next step for that visitor, before they scroll.
Test on real outcomes
Enquiries, bookings and sales, not time on page. One change at a time, with enough traffic to tell.
Worked example: a hot water business
Two ads, two very different visitors:
The emergency
'no hot water emergency repair'
The planner
'heat pump vs gas hot water running costs'
Send both to the same page and it fails both. Two pages, each matching its ad, usually beat one clever page.
From my audits
Most of the pages I review lose visitors in the same few places, in roughly this order.
The ad promises 'Open Sunday in Gosford'. The page says 'Welcome to our website'. The visitor wonders if they are in the right place, and goes back.
The home page has to serve everyone, so it serves nobody arriving from a specific ad.
'Quality', 'trusted', 'professional'. Every competitor says it. Facts persuade: hours, prices, areas, how long it takes.
Ten fields to ask a question. Baymard found most checkouts need only 8 fields, against an average of 11.3. Lead forms usually need fewer still.
Fine on the office computer, slow on 4G with a big image loading first. Most ad clicks are on phones.
Months spent on small tweaks with too little traffic to tell, while the headline and offer go untested.
What Google rewards
Landing pages don't only affect who enquires. For Google Ads, they feed into how your ads are rated and what you pay.
Google rates how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad, as part of Quality Score.
What I do: Check the landing page status for your main keywords in Google Ads. Below average is a to-do list.
Google says the quality of your ads and landing page is one of the things that decide your ad's position, and that higher quality can mean lower costs per click.
What I do: Improving the page can be cheaper than raising bids.
Google advises keeping your messaging consistent from ad to page and giving people what they were looking for.
What I do: Use the checker below on your top three ads.
Google's guidance for search is a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, INP under 200 milliseconds and CLS under 0.1.
What I do: Test on a phone, not your office computer. Compress images and cut what the page loads before the headline.
Worth knowing: Google also says a better conversion rate doesn't change your landing page status by itself. The page has to actually be relevant and useful, not just persuasive.
Message match checker
Paste your ad headline (or the search you're targeting) and the first thing people see on your landing page. It checks whether the page repeats what the ad promised. It's a word check: it can't tell if the page actually delivers, but a low score almost always means people are leaving.
Message match
-%
Paste both, or load the example.
Consumer psychology
A landing page is judged almost instantly. These are the parts of that judgement that research explains, and what to do about each.
01Arriving
People follow the scent of what they're after, and leave when a page doesn't smell like the promise that brought them.
If the first screen doesn't echo the ad, it reads like a wrong turn.
What I do: Repeat the ad's key words and offer in the headline.
02The first glance
In one study, people formed a reliable first impression of a web page's look in about 50 milliseconds.
Visitors decide whether a page looks right for them before they read a word.
What I do: Make the first screen look like the ad that sent them: same image, same offer, same words.
03Filling in the form
Small changes in effort change behaviour: switching the default option shifted organ donor consent rates dramatically.
Every extra field or step costs some people. Defaults are decisions.
What I do: Cut fields you do not need now. Pre-select the most common choice where it is honest to.
These come from published studies, linked above. How they apply to local search is my reading of them, from audits.
Method: Buyer State Mapping
Visitors arrive in different states of mind. The first screen has to meet them there.
1Urgent
'locksmith near me locked out'
Trades
2Comparing
'best accounting software for tradies'
B2B
3Ready to buy
'buy linen sheets queen white'
E-commerce
What CRO covers
Most of the gain sits in the first two. Button colours come last, if at all.
What you are actually offering, and why it is worth acting on now.
Best for: Always first. A clearer or stronger offer beats any design change.
Headline and first screen that match the ad and the visitor.
Best for: Every page that receives paid traffic.
Reviews, numbers, credentials and examples, close to where the decision is made.
Best for: Anywhere trust is the barrier. Within the rules for your industry.
Form length, steps, load time, anything between the decision and the action.
Best for: When people show interest but do not finish.
Showing two versions to similar visitors and measuring real outcomes.
Best for: Once a page gets enough enquiries to tell the difference. Before that, fix the obvious.
How it works
I review your top landing pages against the ads that send people there, and send the top 3 fixes. Then a 20-minute call.
Message match, speed and forms. Usually the biggest gains, and they do not need a test.
A page for each group of ads that make the same promise, with the right proof and next step.
Offer and headline tests, judged on enquiries and sales, reported in plain English.
What you get
Signals this works on
Out of the 8 signals every page and ad sends.
Getting more of the people who already visit your site to enquire, book or buy. It covers the offer, the message, proof, forms, speed and testing.
Not each ad. One page per group of ads that make the same promise is usually enough. Sending every ad to the home page is the most common mistake.
It can. Google says the quality of your ads and landing page is part of Ad Rank, and that higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click.
Google's guidance is for the main content to load within 2.5 seconds, with INP under 200 milliseconds and CLS under 0.1. Test on a phone with PageSpeed Insights.
As few as you need to follow up. Baymard's checkout research found most sites need only 8 fields for a whole checkout. A lead form usually needs far fewer.
Once the page gets enough enquiries to tell a real difference. Before that, fix the obvious: message match, speed and forms. Small sites often learn more from five recorded sessions than from a month-long test.
Yes, landing pages for campaigns. I'm not offering full website builds right now, but I can work with your developer or website platform.
Takes a minute. You'll hear back within 1 to 2 business days.
What happens next
Keep going