Landing pages that convert: the structure, section by section

A landing page has one job: to get one kind of visitor to do one thing. Everything on it either helps with that or gets in the way. In practice that means seven sections in a set order, with your main menu, and anything else that offers a way out, taken off.

Why a landing page, rather than your homepage

Your homepage has to serve everyone: new customers, old customers, suppliers, people checking your address. A landing page serves only the people who clicked one ad, opened one email or followed one link, so it can say exactly what they came to hear.

It matters most when you're paying for the visit. Google's Quality Score includes landing page experience, which it describes as how relevant and useful your landing page is to the people who click your ad. Sending those clicks to a generic page means paying for visitors and then making them hunt, and a mismatch between ad and page is one of the first things to check when ads don't convert.

The running order

1. A headline that matches the promise

Whatever sent someone here, the headline should echo it. If the ad promised a free quote for garden rooms, the page opens with free quotes for garden rooms, not with your company name or a general slogan. Visitors want to know straight away that they've arrived where they expected, and the headline is where they look.

Write it like this: the thing they asked for, in their words, plus the most important detail. "Garden rooms designed and built in six weeks, with a fixed price before you commit" does more than "Welcome to our garden rooms".

2. A short explanation and the main action

Write one or two sentences on what they get and why it matters, then the main button. Many visitors decide straight away, so don't make them scroll to act.

On a phone, check that the headline, the explanation and the button are all visible without scrolling. If they aren't, the usual culprits are a large decorative image at the top and a logo bar that takes up half the screen.

The button says what happens when you press it: "Get my quote", "Book a call", "Download the guide". "Submit" and "Learn more" say nothing at all.

3. The problem, in their words

Show that you understand the situation they're in. The closer this is to how they'd describe it themselves, the more they'll trust you with the solution. The best source is your customers' own words: the phrases they use in emails, calls and reviews.

Keep it short, with three or four points rather than an essay. What you're after is recognition: "yes, that is exactly my problem".

4. How it works

Three or four simple steps are usually enough: what they do, what you do, and what they get and when. Steps like these reduce uncertainty about what happens next, and uncertainty is a reason to put off deciding.

Be specific about time and effort. "We call you within one working day" is more reassuring than "We'll be in touch".

5. Proof

Reviews, results, client names, qualifications or a short example of the work: put the most specific, believable proof you have here. Specific beats glowing. A review that mentions the actual job and the actual outcome does more than five stars and "great service".

Use only what is real and what you have permission to use. Invented testimonials, or ones anonymised beyond recognition, do more harm than good when readers spot them, and in the UK fake reviews are now against the law.

6. Objections answered

Add a short set of questions and answers covering whatever makes people hesitate. For most businesses that's some mix of:

• Price: what it costs, or at least how it's priced and what affects it. We publish our own, and what marketing costs in the UK shows how that can look.
• Time: how long it takes and when it can start.
• Commitment: whether there's a contract, a minimum term or a cancellation fee.
• Risk: what happens if it goes wrong or they aren't happy.
• Fit: who it's for, and who it isn't for.

Your sales conversations are the best source. Write down the questions people ask before they buy, and answer them here.

7. The action again

Repeat the call to action at the end for the people who needed the full picture before deciding, with the same wording and the same form or button. By this point they've read everything, so don't make them scroll back up.

The form

The form is where the page succeeds or fails, and asking for too much is the easiest way to lose people at the last step.

• Ask only for what you need to take the next step. That's usually a name, a way to reply and perhaps one question about what they need. GOV.UK's service manual puts the principle well: know why you are asking every question.
• Put labels above the fields, not inside them as placeholder text that disappears when someone starts typing.
• Use the right type of field so that phones show the right keyboard: email fields bring up the @ key, and phone fields bring up numbers.
• Explain errors in words. "Enter an email address, like name@example.com" beats a red outline and nothing else.
• Say what happens next, right beside the button: who replies, how and when.
• Offer an alternative for people who'd rather call or email.

After someone submits, show a proper confirmation, and either send them to a thank-you page or trigger a tracked event, so that the enquiry is recorded as a conversion.

Speed and the phone

A landing page is often the first page of your business someone sees, on a phone, straight from an ad they tapped. Run it through PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile results. Google's Core Web Vitals count the main content appearing within 2.5 seconds as good.

The quickest wins are nearly always images: compress them, and serve them at the size they're displayed rather than the size they came off the camera. Then remove anything the page doesn't need, such as chat widgets, social feeds and scripts from tools you no longer use.

What to leave out

• The main site navigation, which offers a dozen ways to leave. Keep your logo and a way to contact you.
• Anything not relevant to this one offer, however proud you are of it.
• A second, competing action. If you want people to book a call, don't also ask them to download a brochure and follow you on social media.
• Long forms asking for information you don't need yet.
• Pop-ups that cover the page before people have read it.
• Stock photos of people who have nothing to do with you. Real photos of your work, your premises or you are better, and no photo at all is better than a fake one.

How to tell whether it's working

Set up tracking before the page goes live, so you have a clean starting point, and let the five GA4 reports guide what you record.

1. Record the main action as a conversion in Google Analytics and in any ad platform sending traffic.
2. Note the conversion rate, the share of visitors who take the action, over a few weeks.
3. Change one section at a time if you have enough visitors to see a difference, or make a bigger change and compare periods if you don't.
4. Look at where people stop. Many analytics and heatmap tools show how far down the page people scroll. If most never reach the proof, move it up.

If you have enough traffic, test two versions of one section against each other. Start with the headline or the offer, because they change what the page says, not just how it looks. If you don't have the traffic, trust bigger, clearer changes over small tweaks you can't measure.

The landing page checklist

Use this before any page goes live. The ticks are saved in this browser.

• The headline echoes the ad, email or link that sends people here.
  What good looks like

  The headline uses the same words as the ad, email or link that sends people to the page, so a visitor knows at once they are in the right place.

  Takes fifteen minutes. Covered in full above.

• The headline, a short explanation and the main button are visible on a phone without scrolling.
  What good looks like

  On a phone, before any scrolling, a visitor can see the headline, a sentence or two of explanation and the main button.

  Takes twenty minutes to check and adjust. Covered in full above.

• The button says what happens when you press it.
  What good looks like

  The button says what the visitor gets, such as "Get my quote" or "Book a call", never "Submit" or "Learn more".

  Takes five minutes. Covered in full above.

• The problem is described in the customer's own words.
  What good looks like

  The section on the problem uses phrases taken from customer emails, calls or reviews, not industry terms.

  Takes half an hour, with a few customer emails to hand. Covered in A messaging framework for your business: who you are for, why you, and how to say it.

• How it works is set out in three or four steps, with times.
  What good looks like

  Three or four short steps, each with how long it takes, take the visitor from getting in touch to the result.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in full above.

• The proof is specific, real and permitted.
  What good looks like

  Every review, figure or example on the page is real, specific to a result, and you have permission to use it.

  Takes half an hour. Covered in Only ask happy customers for reviews?.

• The main objections, price, time, commitment and risk, are answered.
  What good looks like

  The page answers the questions that stop people acting, about price, time, commitment and risk, in plain sentences.

  Takes half an hour. Covered in full above.

• The action is repeated at the end.
  What good looks like

  The main button appears again at the foot of the page, saying the same thing as at the top.

  Takes five minutes. Covered in full above.

• The form asks only for what is needed, with labels above the fields.
  What good looks like

  The form asks for a name, a way to reply and a short message, and little else, with each label sitting above its field.

  Takes twenty minutes. Covered in full above.

• It says what happens after someone submits.
  What good looks like

  Near the form, a sentence says what happens next and when, such as when you will reply.

  Takes five minutes. Covered in Nine homepage mistakes.

• The main site navigation and competing actions are removed.
  What good looks like

  The page has no main menu, no links to other services and no second action competing with the main one.

  Takes twenty minutes, depending on the site builder. Covered in full above.

• PageSpeed Insights shows no poor Core Web Vitals on mobile.
  What good looks like

  The mobile results in PageSpeed Insights show no Core Web Vital marked as poor for this page.

  Takes ten minutes to test; fixes vary. Covered in Nine homepage mistakes.

• The main action is tracked as a conversion, and a test submission has been recorded.
  What good looks like

  A test submission you made appeared once as a conversion in your analytics and any ad account sending traffic.

  Takes fifteen minutes, then a day's wait. Covered in GA4 tells you nothing useful? Set up key events, step by step.

Our landing page sprint finds where your current page loses people, then writes, designs and builds one page and tests two versions of its key section. It's a fixed £3,500, and it takes about three weeks.