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

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

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

What makes it one

• One offer. The thing the advertisement promised, said again in the same words, at the top.
• One action. A form or a call. Every extra choice on a page is a way of not choosing.
• Nothing to wander into. Menus, related pages and footers full of links are all ways out of a page you paid to get somebody to.
• Proof close to the ask. Reviews, real photographs of real work, and who you are. Beside the form, not on another page.

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 asks them to make a decision first. If you are advertising, the page you send people to is half of what you are paying for.

Advertising sends somebody who was interested enough to tap. What happens next is decided by the page, and a home page hands that person a menu.

The mismatch is the common version. An advertisement offers one specific thing, the tap lands on a home page that talks about everything the business does, and the visitor has to work out where the thing they wanted lives.

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

The offer in the same words as the ad, what is actually included, proof it is real, the ask, and the answers to whatever stops somebody. In roughly that order.

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

What is on it, in order

• The offer, in the advertisement's words. The visitor is checking they are in the right place. That check takes about a second.
• What is included. Plainly. What they get, and what happens after they ask.
• Proof. Reviews under real names, photographs of real work, and who you are. This is where a local business is at an advantage.
• The ask. 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. Cost, timing, whether you cover their suburb. Answered on the page, because they are why somebody closes it.

Count enquiries against visits, and count them against what the visits cost. Opinions about a landing page are the least useful thing in the room once it is live.

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

What to measure

• Visits and enquiries. The share of people who did the thing. Track it from the day it goes live, not from when somebody remembers.
• What a visit cost. From the advertising side. The two numbers together are what tells you whether any of it works.
• Where people stopped. How far down they got. A page people leave at the same point has a problem at that point.
• What the enquiries were like. Volume without quality is a page attracting the wrong people, which is usually the offer rather than the design.

Change one thing at a time and give it long enough to mean something. Changing the headline, the picture and the form in one afternoon tells you nothing about which of them mattered.

Settle the offer, write the page before designing it, keep the form short, put the measurement in before it goes live, then change one thing at a time.

1. Settle the offer first

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

2. Write it before designing it

The words in order, in a document. Design is deciding what to emphasise, and there is nothing to emphasise yet.

3. Match the advertisement exactly

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

4. Keep the form short

Name, number, and what the job is. Anything else can be asked when you ring back.

5. Put the measurement in before it goes live

Visits and enquiries, counted from day one. Adding it later means the first month is a guess.

6. Then change one thing at a time

Headline, then picture, then form. Long enough between each to tell whether anything happened.

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

The order it happens in

• The offer is settled and written. In a document, in order. Nothing designed yet, and this is the part that decides how the page performs.
• The page is built and measured. Short form, matching headline, and the counting in place before anybody spends on traffic.
• It runs, then it changes one thing at a time. This is where the numbers actually come from, and it does not stop.

A landing page is never finished in the way a service page is. It is a thing you keep adjusting while the advertising runs.

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

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• What is being measured, and from when? Visits and enquiries, counted from the day it goes live. Ours is in place before any money is spent on traffic.
• Who writes the offer? It is a business decision rather than a design one. We will help shape it and it is the owner's to set.
• Does the page match the advertisement? The same words at the top of both. It is the most common gap and the cheapest to close.
• Who owns the page afterwards? The business, on its own hosting, with the form submissions going to the business.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

If you are not paying 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.