Reach out to more mobile users
Mobile is where a significant share of travel research happens — and for PPC campaigns in particular, failing to optimise for mobile means paying for traffic that’s unlikely to convert. In our experience, tour operators who treat mobile as an afterthought consistently see their mobile CPA running 2–3x higher than desktop. The good news is that the fixes are usually straightforward. Here’s what to focus on.
What is a landing page?
A landing page is the specific web page a user reaches after clicking your PPC ad. Unlike a homepage, it’s designed for one campaign, one offer, and one audience. For a tour operator running ads for “self-guided cycling tours France”, the landing page should be specifically about that experience — not a generic cycling holidays page. The key difference between a good and bad landing page is how precisely it matches what the ad promised and what the user was looking for when they searched.
How to drive conversions from a mobile landing page
1. Create a separate landing page for mobile
Desktop and mobile users are often at different stages in the booking journey and interact with content very differently. What we’ve found is that travel brands who build mobile-specific landing pages — with shorter copy, larger tap targets, and a single clear CTA — convert mobile traffic measurably better than those using a responsive version of their desktop page. The investment is worth it for high-spend campaigns where mobile accounts for 40%+ of clicks.
2. Add mobile-optimised popups
Exit-intent popups and scroll-triggered offers can recover some of the traffic that would otherwise leave without converting. For travel, these work best when they’re contextually relevant — a discount code on a tour the visitor was viewing, or an invitation to join a departure date notification list. Keep any forms minimal: name and email is usually enough at this stage. A popup that asks for six fields will be closed instantly on mobile.
3. Use a click-to-call button
For higher-value tour bookings, phone calls are often the conversion that matters most. Clients often ask us why their mobile landing pages have high traffic but low enquiries — and a missing or hard-to-find call button is one of the first things we check. A prominent, sticky click-to-call button means a prospective customer can go from ad click to speaking with your team in two taps. Make it visible immediately, not buried at the bottom of the page.
4. Click-to-scroll
Keep the essential information — the tour name, key selling points, departure options, and CTA — above the fold on mobile. If your landing page requires scrolling to find the key details, a large proportion of visitors won’t reach them. Anchor links that jump to specific sections (itinerary, what’s included, pricing) are a simple way to make longer landing pages more navigable on mobile without cutting content that desktop users value.
5. Use shorter copy
Shorter paragraphs
On mobile, large blocks of text are a conversion killer. Break everything into short paragraphs of 2–3 sentences. A visitor on a phone deciding whether to enquire about a tour needs to be able to scan and find what they’re looking for quickly — they’re not going to read an 800-word tour description in full.
Bullet points or numbered lists
Trip highlights, what’s included, departure dates — all of these work better as scannable lists on mobile landing pages. For tour operators, this often means reformatting desktop content that was designed to be read linearly into a more skimmable structure for mobile visitors who are comparing several options simultaneously.
Less visuals
Large images slow down mobile load times and push key content below the fold. We tend to see travel landing pages with heavy image carousels or video headers performing poorly on mobile for exactly this reason. One strong hero image, optimised for mobile load speed, is almost always better than a gallery that takes three seconds to load. Speed is a conversion factor in its own right — Google’s data shows mobile conversion rates drop sharply with every additional second of load time.
Need some extra help with a campaign?
If your travel PPC campaigns aren’t converting mobile traffic at the rate you’d expect, get in touch with the Summon team. We work exclusively with tour operators, ferry companies, airlines and activity providers, and improving mobile landing page performance is one of the areas we focus on regularly.