Whilst there is a lot of potential in the digital advertising brillea can run for you, there’s only so much we can control! We could run the best ads in the world with clever targeting and amazing creative, but if the page or website we send the customers to isn’t optimised and ready, it won’t result in a profitable positive campaign.

Here’s 5 key things you should check before you press go and start paying for your Facebook, Instagram & Google ads.__

1. Is your homepage/landing page content working hard enough?

Your homepage is the 'shop window' for your site. First impressions count and can often be the difference between making a sale and losing a potential customer for good.

Check your homepage, does it have these winning ingredients?:

• Is it crystal clear what you are selling? If someone saw your website for 5 seconds, would they immediately be able to recall what you sold?
• Do you have a strong value proposition? What makes you unique? Why should users purchase from you and not someone else? It’s really important to stand out and shout about what makes you different.
• Who are your products for? Your potential customers want to identify that your products are meant for people like them.
• Is there a clear call to action in an easy to click/tap area? Is there clear signposting to get people to do what you want them to do? People hate too much choice; are you helping your customers by prioritising where they should go? E.g. to look at the bestsellers or the product pages.
• Have you shown clear signs of social proofing? You need to show potential customers that they are not alone in making the decision to purchase from you. User reviews and testimonials or statistics showing the numbers of customers are all powerful and useful purchase reinforcers.

2. Are you product pages doing you justice?

If you’ve got someone to a product page it’s great news, they’re likely very interested. These pages now need to work hard for you to sell.

Have a look at your product pages, are you ticking these boxes?:

• Does the imagery do your products justice? High quality photos of your products will instill trust and create desire. Poor quality images or stock photos can very quickly kill credibility and significantly reduce the likelihood of a purchase. It really is worth investing in some high quality photography if you can.
• If your products aren’t very glamorous when shown solo (black bin liners!), can you show your products being used, or add a colour background to bring them to life?
• Is it clear what options a customer may have, such as size, colour or personalisation?
• Have your products won any awards, been featured or mentioned in the press or anything else that helps them stand out? If so, add these logos to the product page, celebrate these wins!
• Is the pricing clear? Are the shipping costs clear and information accessible? Is there an obvious ‘buy now’ button? You’d be surprised how often this gets overlooked!

3. Are you tracking every action?

Sending traffic to your site without tracking it is like firing a gun with no bullet.. You’ll have no idea if your aim was wrong or right.

• Have you installed the Facebook Pixel correctly?

If your website is built on Shopify, WooCommerce or other major eCommerce platforms, setting up tracking should be fairly straightforward through the pre-built app. This should also mean you shouldn’t have any problems with your Pixel firing (we say this because it’s not always as straight-forward as it should be).

To test to ensure the pixel is firing correctly on each page install the "Facebook Pixel Helper" Chrome extension, a really useful little tool.

Having the Facebook Pixel correctly setup and firing is great for us at brillea so that we can track and measure your ads. It’s also beneficial for you in the long run to also set up an overarching analytics platform, such as Google Analytics. Website analytics is an important aspect of growing your online business, as it will provide you with visitor data so you can identify what they are doing on your website; where are they landing, how long are they staying on the website, which countries are they visiting from, and much, much more!

• Do you have Google Analytics (or similar) installed?

4. Have you checked your checkout?

This may seem obvious, but we’ve seen it happen a lot. Make sure you (regularly) use your website as a customer would. Click through different pages, add products to your basket and run test transactions.

• Are all the links in your website leading to where they should?
• Is your basket page as optimised as it could be?
• Does your checkout process work seamlessly?

Brillea top tip: include ‘reinforcers’ within the checkout process; small messages that reinforce the customer is making the right decision to purchase. These could be mentioning some of the benefits of the product, that postage is free or when the person could expect to receive their delivery.

5. Does your website look good on mobile?

98% of people browse Facebook & Instagram on their mobile devices. If your ads are then directing them to your website, you need to make sure that it works well and looks good on mobile.

Open your website on your mobile device then take a look at this checklist:

• What’s the first thing you see on your mobile when you hit your homepage? Do you immediately see your value proposition and what you sell? If not, users may not be excited enough to scroll to find out.
• How easy is it or how far do you have to scroll before you get to the products? (The less the better here!).
• Is it easy to add to the basket? Or do things get a little fiddly?
• How is the checkout process? Is it easy to add in your address and payment details on mobile?

6. How quickly does your website load?

Most studies agree that pages that take longer than three seconds to load lose around 53% of mobile users. With ever shortening attention spans, people just aren’t willing to wait. This is especially true on mobile.

• “How quickly do I need my page to load?”. If you want a quick answer, the Google recommended page load time is under two seconds; “Two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.”
• Use this handy tool from Google to see your website pagespeed, and recommendations on how to improve this: Google Pagespeed Insights

If you’ve ticked off the full checklist, your website should be in a great place and ready to receive traffic from digital ads.