60+ landing pages: helping media buyers work without code edits

Why the pages needed a custom builder

The agency's media buyers run campaigns that direct visitors to advertisers through landing pages. They periodically need to create new pages and update existing ones. These pages contain complex components, including analytics scripts, that require careful configuration. Understanding the code is not straightforward, and a mistake can cause substantial financial losses.

Off-the-shelf builders could not support the pages' custom logic and analytics scripts, so media buyers edited the code themselves. When this manual work began taking too much time, the head of media buying asked me for a solution.

Why configuration mistakes could go unnoticed

Manual edits slowed campaign launches and increased the risk of errors. A broken script could go unnoticed after publication, while advertiser statistics arrived with a delay, sometimes of several days. The team would not immediately know that paid traffic was failing to reach the advertiser or was not being tracked.

For example, a JavaScript error could prevent visitors from reaching an advertiser's site or completing the intended action. A script could also omit the advertiser identifier or send an incorrect value, disrupting traffic tracking. The agency would pay for visitors but lose the result. More manual edits meant more opportunities for these failures.

Defining the workflow before building the tool

The client brought me the problem; I proposed the solution and handled all the work, from designing the builder to migrating the live pages. I first defined the logic and interface, then presented and demonstrated the proposed tool. Before development began, the head of media buying could see how it would work and how it would change the team's workflow.

I then built the web interface and deployed it on the server already hosting the landing pages. For daily use, the builder included:

• User access permissions.
• Page creation, editing, copying and deletion.
• Configurable logging.
• Rollback to restore a page to its previous state.

Covering page variations without exposing every detail

The existing pages differed in structure and available settings. The builder needed to accommodate those differences, preserve every option the buyers used and remain easy to understand.

Simply giving each parameter its own field was not enough. An oversimplified editor would force buyers back into the code. An overloaded interface would leave the risk of errors unchanged. The system also needed to be reliable and practical to maintain and extend.

I selected a set of templates covering the required page types and settings. This gave media buyers a clear workflow while avoiding unnecessary complexity in future development.

Building an importer from the migration scripts

Migrating all the live landing pages manually would have taken substantial time. The team had more than 60, with different structures. Simply copying them was not enough: each page needed to retain its working scripts and the complete visitor journey through to the advertiser.

I wrote scripts that automated part of the migration and reduced manual work. These later became the basis of a separate builder feature: one-click import for supported existing pages. The tool could now import ready-made landing pages as well as edit them.

Replacing routine code edits with a web interface

Previously, the head of media buying changed page code in a plain text editor. With the builder, he could configure the same pages through an admin interface. The media buyers also adopted the tool, creating, copying and editing landing pages in the browser without touching the source code.

This saves the team hours of work each week. Errors have become less frequent, reducing traffic losses that previously could go unnoticed for hours or days.

The builder is an internal tool for the media buying team, accessible only through the corporate network. Read more about developing tools like this for employees and other business needs on the internal systems and web services page.