One problem, explained
Before you pay for traffic, read the page the click lands on.
Every euro of ad spend ends on one page, and that page is usually the part nobody read as a stranger would. These seven checks come from pages I read this week, at the request of the founders who own them.
The free check reads your served HTML and flags five of the seven in a few seconds.
The seven checks
- 01
The price exists in the HTML
Pricing blocks with a monthly and yearly toggle often ship with no number in the served HTML: the amounts appear only after the scripts run. A visitor who came from an ad to compare has nothing to compare, and search engines index a page with no price at all. Put one number in plain text next to the main button.
- 02
The headline names the thing, not the feeling
Read only the first screen and ask what category this is. On a page I read this week, the headline was "Your website, in motion" and the meta description said "point a coding agent at your URL and get a launch video". The second sentence belonged on the page.
- 03
One action, repeated
Seven calls to action on a page paid for by the click means seven ways to not do the one thing you want. Pick the action the ad promised, put it above the fold, repeat it at the end, and move the rest down.
- 04
The button says what happens next
"Get started" hides whether a card is needed, whether an account is created, whether anything is installed. "See a live demo, no signup" costs the same pixels and loses fewer people.
- 05
Someone else is visibly using it
No name, no quote, no number you own, and sometimes a proof section with nothing in it. An empty testimonial heading is worse than none: it shows the slot exists and that nobody filled it.
- 06
The page matches the promise in the ad
If the ad names a platform, a price or an outcome, the first screen has to repeat it. Landing on a generic homepage after a specific ad is the most expensive mismatch there is, because you already paid for the click.
- 07
The link shows an image when shared
Paid traffic gets shared, quoted and reposted. With no og:image, every one of those posts is a grey box. It costs one tag and one file.
Read in full
Four pages read end to end, each after its founder asked in public: VideoFlow Studio, Citex, MomentClip and ForgeVPS. Each one names the cause, the fix, and the rewritten headline.
When the machine is not enough
Checks two, three and six need a reader. I read your page before you spend, and send the three fixes worth most, with rewritten headlines and buttons.