Most people reject your site within the first few words

This page exists for one reason.

The person landing on this page doesn’t leap from stranger to loyal lifelong customer in one huge jump. Instead, the relationship develops in a series of small steps. This page exists to get that stranger to take the first step. In this case, the first step is to fill in the enquiry form.

The layout nudges visitors towards the form.

I want the stranger landing on this page to fill in the enquiry form. That’s the first step that’ll get us closer to a sale. The layout of the page promotes that. The enquiry form is the most prominent element after the headlines. I’ve made it that way by:

• Showing it early, near the top of the page.
• Using a contrasting background.
• Giving the button colour. It’s one of the few coloured elements on the page.
• Using contrasting white text on the button.
• Giving it space around it.

The words nudge people towards the form.

You won’t find anything about our mission statement or company values. You won’t find anything like:-

• "Personal, friendly and efficient service"*
• "Driven by knowledge and quality".
• "Over 20 years' experience".

Establishing credibility will be important later in the relationship. But talking about yourself isn’t convincing enough to get your visitor to fill in the form. Focus on what she cares about instead.

The words are small enough to read.

You won’t find long words like expeditious or perspicuous when short ones like fast and clear will do. Fancy words and corporate babble don’t win sales leads.

The words are big enough to read.

The font size on this page is comfortable. It’s big enough for most people to read without squinting. Tiny fonts are a legacy from printing where big fonts cost more in paper and ink. There is no good reason to make your site hard to read.

Hi, Pete Bowen here.

I've been a soldier, a Mormon missionary, and an engineer. I've owned a sound hire service, a plant nursery, and student housing.

But since 2007, I've focused on Google Ads.

I stumbled into Google Ads by accident. My wife and I moved with our four young kids from South Africa to the UK for a job as a structural engineer. Then the global economic collapse hit. Construction projects dried up within months of our arrival, making that job a lot less secure.

My family didn’t starve because Peter Carruthers invited me to team up. We taught small business owners to advertise on the internet.

I took the techniques we taught and programmed them into a tool to make it easy to build campaigns and landing pages. It worked like magic - even though our clients had never used Google Ads before.

We started receiving emails like:

• Just got my first lead and the student is coming on Monday for an introduction meeting!
• I put site up yesterday and in minutes had an enquiry, to date had 18 clicks and 4 leads!
• I have gone from zero enquiries and zero income to 20-30 enquiries and +20k income.

One day, one of our clients asked if I'd manage the ads for him because he was too busy to learn how. That request sparked the idea of using the tool to manage ads for other people.

I’ll never forget the excitement of hitting our first 1,000 leads. Later, we celebrated our first 1,000-lead month. Today, that tool has generated over 2,000,000 leads.

I plan to continue doing some version of this work for as long as I can add value to my clients.

I am concerned about the long-term viability of Google Ads, especially for smaller businesses.

Google seems determined to capture as much of the profit from their ads as possible. Somewhere at Google HQ, an MBA has figured out that advertisers only need to make just enough money to stay. This means the cost of generating leads from Google Ads will keep rising.

But, I'm also excited and optimistic because businesses will always need clients. I believe that businesses which blend human warmth and authenticity with technological opportunities will thrive.

I currently live in paradise (aka Gran Canaria) and try to start as many days as possible by surfing the dawn patrol.

I'm starting to build trust on the page.

You see the bit about me above? That's there because knowing who's behind the business can help build a connection and trust.

At this stage we don't need the visitor to trust us with their life. We just need them to trust us enough to contact us. Touches like this help.

There is no clutter.

Every heading, logo, picture, link, paragraph, button etc either encourages her to fill in the form or distracts her from it. There are no neutral elements. If you put it on the page it will either move the visitor towards the next step, or get in the way. It's either signal or it's noise. The busier a page is the better chance of her hitting the back button.

The site is designed to look light and easy to use:

• There is no background image or texture.
• There is lots of white space.
• It has a light background with a dark text.

The site looks and works like thousands of other sites on the internet.

• It’s got sub headlines and paragraphs of text.
• Underlined words are links to other pages or websites.
• The form works in the usual way.

It feels familiar to a stranger landing here for the first time. It builds on what she knows about websites from visiting other people's sites. It doesn't interrupt the flow by making her ask "What now?"

Following conventions make it more likely that she’ll fill in the form.

The site is snappy.

You might not have noticed how quickly this page loaded. You would definitely have noticed if it took more than 5 seconds. In most cases you should be able to start reading this page about a second after you clicked the link to get here. There is nothing good about a slow page.

The site is secure.

This page uses the secure HTTPS protocol. If you look at the top of your screen next to the address bar you’ll see a lock icon or note that says the site is secure.

Some may say that it's unnecessary because I’m not asking for credit card details or password. That’s not true.

• Some of your future customers are security savvy. They’ll look for the lock icon and bounce off your page unless it’s secure.
• Many of your future customers use a web browser that will warn them when they start filling a form on an insecure site.

Losing these future customers might have been an acceptable trade off in the past because making your site secure used to be expensive and could be painful. Today it costs nothing and takes two clicks. There is no reason to lose people because of security concerns.

The site is responsive.

It resizes automagically. You can read the text and complete the form on a mobile phone. It’s also comfortable on the 27" Apple screen on my desk, and every size screen between.