Every ad click is charged whether or not the page loads. Open the exact pages your ads use on a phone over mobile data, then fix redirects, oversized images and leftover scripts first.

Paying for people who never arrive

A click on a search ad is charged the moment it happens. For a local service that can be several dollars, and in some trades a good deal more.

What happens next is up to the page. The visitor is usually on a phone, often on mobile data, looking at a white screen while the page assembles itself.

Some wait. Some press back and tap the next ad, which is one tap away. The click has been paid for either way.

Google's announcement this week about speed in mobile rankings concerns the free results. The cost of a slow landing page is older than that, and it arrives on the invoice every month.

Why nobody at the office notices

The people who give up never appear anywhere useful.

Analytics records a visit only once its code has loaded on the page, so somebody who leaves before then is not counted. AdWords, meanwhile, has already counted the click.

The office looks at the page on a desktop, over fast Wi-Fi, with most of it already stored in the browser from the last visit. It appears instantly.

Nobody there has seen it the way a stranger on a phone does.

Where the seconds go

The first is the easiest to miss. An ad pointing at an old address can bounce from http to https and then to the www version, each step a round trip before the page even starts.

Compare clicks with visits

One rough measure needs no new tools.

With AdWords and Analytics linked, the AdWords reports in Analytics show clicks and sessions side by side. Compare them over a month, split by device.

Some gap is normal. People click twice, some browsers block tracking, and the two systems count in slightly different ways.

A large gap that is much wider on phones than on computers is a hint, not proof, that people are leaving before the page loads. It is worth an hour of testing.

Test the pages the ads actually use

Start with the account, not the website. Every ad has a final URL, the address it sends people to, and an account that has run for a few years usually has several.

Some will point at pages that have since been redesigned. Some point at the home page, which was built to do something else. A few may point at pages that no longer exist.

Open each one in a private tab on a phone running on mobile data. Time it until the offer is readable and the phone number can be tapped.

That is the number that matters, not the time until every last image has arrived.

A worked example

A cooking school running evening classes from a converted storefront advertised its January courses on AdWords, in the weeks when people look for something new to learn.

The ads sent people to a landing page built two years earlier with a page builder. It opened with a full-width video of a chef at work, and carried tags from three previous campaigns.

The final URL in the ads still began with http and lacked the www, so every click passed through two redirects first.

On a phone over mobile data, the visitor saw a blank screen, then a spinning loader the theme added, then the video, and only then the heading and phone number.

The fix took an afternoon. The final URLs were corrected, the video became a still photograph, the old tags and the loader were removed, and the heading, phone number and short form moved above the image.

The ads themselves did not change. The people clicking them now reach a page they can read before they lose patience.

Put the answer before the decoration

A page can be heavy and still feel quick, if the useful part arrives first.

The heading that matches the ad, the phone number as a link that dials, and a short form are all text, and text arrives quickly. Put them at the top and let the photographs load beneath.

Some themes show a spinning loader until everything on the page has downloaded, which guarantees the visitor sees nothing useful until the slowest part arrives. Switch it off.

And size images for the screen they appear on. A phone has no use for a header photograph wide enough for a cinema.

Old tags and missed caches

Two causes are invisible from the page itself.

Landing pages collect tags: a remarketing tag from one agency, a heat map script from a trial, a social media pixel nobody uses. Each adds downloads, and some wait on another company's server.

The other is caching. AdWords adds a tracking code to the end of each address, and on some setups any address with something added to it skips the cache, so ad visitors get the slow, uncached page every time.

Ask whoever maintains the site to check both. The second takes minutes to confirm and is easy to fix once known.

The counter-case

Not every account has this problem.

If most of your clicks come from office computers during working hours, phone speed matters less, and if the pages already appear within a couple of seconds on mobile data, the time is better spent on keywords and ad text.

Some emergency trades use call-only ads, which skip the page entirely. Most advertisers need the page, though.

Open the exact pages your ads use, on a phone, and fix the heaviest parts first.

This week

  1. List every final URL your ads use.
  2. Open each one on a phone over mobile data.
  3. Correct any address that redirects.
  4. Compare clicks with visits by device.
  5. Remove tags from campaigns that have ended.
  6. Move the phone number and form above the images.
  7. Check the cache works for ad visitors.

Step two is the one that changes minds. Five minutes watching your own landing page assemble itself on mobile data is more persuasive than any report, and it shows exactly which part arrives last.

Why the same slow pages may also lose ground in the free results is covered in Google will use speed in mobile rankings from July.

Frequently asked questions

Do I pay if the page never loads?

Yes. AdWords charges for the click when it happens. Whether the visitor waits for the page or presses back, the click has already been paid for.

Why does Analytics show fewer visits than clicks?

Partly because Analytics records a visit only once its code loads. People who leave before then are counted as clicks in AdWords and never appear in Analytics.

How should I test a landing page?

Open the exact final URL from the ad on a phone, with Wi-Fi off, in a private tab, and time how long until the offer and phone number are readable.

What usually slows a landing page down?

Redirects from an outdated address, large header photographs, sliders and video, several web fonts, leftover tracking tags, and chat widgets or pop-ups loading their own scripts.

What should appear first on the page?

The heading that matches the ad, the phone number as a link that dials, and a short form. They are text, so they arrive quickly, with photographs loading beneath.

Can caching fail for ad visitors?

On some setups, yes. AdWords adds a tracking code to each address, and some caches skip any address with extra text, so ad visitors get the slow version.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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