Personally I think a lot of what makes a landing page good is a balance of intentions. The web surfer intends to find the information they were searching for and the website visited intends to convince you to perform an action (lead, e-mail, call, purchase, etc.). Most people see the value in a good landing when it involves gymnasts, divers, and the red eye to Cleveland, but miss its importance to web traffic. A good Adwords Campaign mixed with bad landing pages is just a fancy way to set your wallet on fire. By designing a page that satisfies the intentions of both parties, you have a better shot of turning a surfer into a conversion.
So the first order of business is matching the landing page to the actual intention of the web surfer. Remember, if your ad matches the query you’re more likely to get a click. And if your page matches the query, your visitor is more likely to stick around and do something… so give the people what they want. If they searched for boots don’t send them to a department store homepage, send them to the boots page in the shoes section. They had a simple request and you provided a simple answer, congratulations you are now the proud proprietor of a good visitor experience.
Now that we’ve addressed the needs of the people, you have to get yours too. The biggest mistake I see in most landing pages is that they make it too difficult to perform the desired action. If the lead form or a buy it now button can’t be found in a few seconds you might have just bounced your visitor in the name of aesthetics. Make sure your actionable items are obvious & easy to use! There’s a good chance your web designer may fight you on this one because if messes with his flow. I agree looks are important, I generally won’t do business with a really ugly web site, but I’ll take slightly less attractive over completely ineffective any day.
Applying these simple steps can save you a lot of money by not killing an unreasonable number of visits that you have to pay for irregardless of how long they stay, and you’ll improve the user experience offered by your site in the process.