Landing page design in Newcastle, NSW: turn clicks into enquiries.

It is a page with one offer on it and one thing to do. No navigation to wander off into, and nothing on it competing with the action you want.

The difference between a landing page and a service page is what somebody can do on it. A service page belongs to a website and lets a visitor go anywhere else. A landing page has one exit, and it is the form.

What makes a page one

• It carries one single offer and no others.

  The thing the advertisement promised, said again in the same words, sitting at the top of the page.

• It asks for one single action.

  It is either a form or a phone call. Every extra choice on a page is another way of not choosing anything.

• There is nothing to wander into.

  Menus, related pages and footers full of links are all exits from a page you paid to get somebody onto.

• The proof sits beside the ask.

  Reviews, real photographs of real work, and who you are. Next to the form rather than on another page entirely.

A form collects contact details, so it is worth reading the ACMA's rules on consent before you switch one on.

Because a paid visitor costs money, and a home page hands that person a menu instead of an answer. Where you are advertising, the page is half of what is being paid for.

Advertising sends somebody who was interested enough to tap. What happens next is decided entirely by the page they land on.

The mismatch is the common version of this. An advertisement offers one specific thing, the tap lands on a home page describing everything the business does, and the visitor has to go and find what they came for.

None of that means a home page is bad. It is doing a different job. A landing page exists because paid traffic needs a page with exactly one job.

The offer in the same words as the advertisement, what is actually included, proof it is real, the ask, and the answers to whatever stops somebody. Roughly in that order down the page.

What the design costs is a separate question to what the page has to do, and quotes get compared badly when the two are rolled together.

The order comes before the length. Somebody convinced early stops reading and fills in the form, and the rest of the page is there for the people who are not convinced yet.

What is on it, in order

• The offer, in the advertisement's own words.

  The visitor is checking they are in the right place, and that check takes about a second before they decide.

• What is actually included in it.

  All said plainly. What they get, what it involves, and what happens after they ask for it.

• The proof that it is real.

  Reviews under real names, photographs of real work, and who the business is. This is where a local business is at an advantage.

• The ask itself, which stays short.

  A name, a number, and enough to know what the job is. Every extra field is somebody deciding not to bother.

• The things that stop people asking.

  Cost, timing, whether you cover their suburb. Answered on the page, because those are why somebody closes it.

Count enquiries against visits, then count both against what the visits cost. Opinions about a landing page stop being useful the moment it is live.

A landing page is the one page where an argument can be settled with a number, which is why it is worth measuring rather than debating.

What the counting covers

• The visits and the enquiries together.

  The share of people who actually did the thing. Tracked from the day it goes live rather than from when somebody remembers.

• What each of those visits cost.

  Taken from the advertising side of it. Those two numbers together are what says whether any of it is working.

• Where people stopped reading the page.

  How far down the page they got. A page people leave at the same point has a problem sitting at that point.

• What the enquiries themselves were like.

  Volume without quality means the page is attracting the wrong people, which is usually the offer rather than the design.

One thing changes at a time, with long enough between to mean something. Changing the headline, the picture and the form in one afternoon says nothing about which of them mattered.

Settle the offer first, then write the page before anybody designs it. Keep the form short, put the counting in before launch, and then change one thing at a time.

Each step is cheap in this order and expensive in any other.

1. Settle the offer first

What somebody gets, and why now. A page cannot rescue an offer nobody wants, and the offer is the cheapest thing on this list to fix.

2. Write it before anybody designs it

The words in order, written in a document. Design is deciding what to emphasise, and until the words exist there is nothing to emphasise.

3. Match it to the advertisement exactly

The same words at the top of the page as in the advertisement itself. This is the most common gap of all and the easiest one to close.

4. Keep the form short

A name, a number, and what the job is. Everything else can be asked on the phone when somebody rings back.

5. The measurement goes in before it goes live

Visits and enquiries, counted from day one. Adding it afterwards means the first month is a guess rather than a result.

6. Then one thing changes at a time

The headline, then the picture, then the form. Long enough between each to tell whether anything actually happened.

The page itself is short work. Settling the offer and getting real photographs takes longer, and the useful learning only starts once traffic is running.

The order it happens in

• First the offer is settled and written down.

  In a document, in order. Nothing is designed yet, and this part decides how the page performs.

• Then the page is built, with the counting in it.

  Short form, matching headline, and the counting in place before anybody spends on traffic.

• Then it runs and changes one thing at a time.

  This is where the numbers actually come from, and it does not stop while the advertising is running.

A landing page is never finished the way a service page is. It is something that keeps getting adjusted for as long as the advertising runs behind it.

Ask what is being measured, who writes the offer, whether the page matches the advertisement, and who owns it afterwards. The measurement question keeps everybody honest.

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• What is being measured, and from when?

  Visits and enquiries, counted from the day it goes live and in place before any money is spent on traffic.

• Who is going to write the offer?

  It is a business decision rather than a design one. It takes shape here, and it stays the owner's to set.

• Does the page match the advertisement?

  The same words at the top of both of them. It is the most common gap and the cheapest one to close.

• Who ends up owning the page afterwards?

  The business does, on its own hosting, with the form submissions going to the business rather than through an agency.

Where nothing is being paid for traffic yet, a landing page is early. A service page on your own site does the same job for people who found you on their own.