What Is a Landing Page: Types, Structure and When Your Business Needs One

A landing page is a page built around one offer and one action you want the visitor to take: send an enquiry, buy, sign up. The name says it: people “land” on it from an ad, an email or a social media link, and everything on the page leads them to a single goal.

A landing page isn’t necessarily a separate one-page website. It can also be a page inside a larger site, built for a specific ad campaign. What matters isn’t the number of pages but the focus: one offer, one audience, one button.

Below: how a landing page differs from a regular website, the types of landing pages, the blocks it’s made of, what affects the number of enquiries, and how to build one.

Landing page, small business website or corporate website

If you have one service or product and plan to attract customers with ads, a landing page is a logical start. If you have several services and want customers from Google search, you need a website with a page for each service. More on this choice in our article on website or Instagram for business, where we look at what kind of site you need at the start.

Types of landing pages

By goal:

• Lead generation. The most common type for services: the visitor leaves their contact details and a sales rep calls back. Repairs, education, B2B services, healthcare.
• Sales. The purchase happens right on the page: a course, a product, a ticket. You need the price, payment and everything that removes doubts before buying.
• Registration for a webinar, conference or free lesson. The key elements are the date, programme, speakers and a short form.
• Subscription: the visitor gets a checklist, a guide or a discount in exchange for an email address.
• Click-through: it presents a product or promotion and sends people on, to an online store or a checkout page.
• Pre-launch: it collects a waitlist before a product launches.

By format:

• A standalone one-page site with its own domain, when the product lives separately from the company, or there isn’t really a company yet.
• A page inside a website for a specific campaign or audience. A company can have several such landing pages for different ads.
• A microsite: a landing page with a few supporting pages, such as the course programme, reviews or terms.

When you need a landing page, and when you don’t

A landing page works well when:

• you have one service, product, course or event;
• customers come from ads, and every dollar of the budget should lead to a page that matches the ad;
• you need to test quickly whether there’s demand for a new offer;
• different audiences need different offers: for example, separate ones for homeowners and for companies.

A landing page isn’t enough when:

• you have several services, and each needs its own explanation, prices and case studies;
• Google search is your main source of customers: one page can’t answer dozens of different queries well;
• trust in the company as a whole matters: partners and large clients look for a website with a history, a team, case studies and company details.

Landing page structure: blocks from top to bottom

There’s no universal template, but most effective landing pages answer the visitor’s questions in the order they come up.

1. The first screen. What you offer, for whom and what the benefit is, in the heading rather than a slogan. Below it, one button for the main action and, if needed, a phone number. People should know they’re in the right place without scrolling.
2. Problem and solution. Which customer problem the offer solves and how your approach is different.
3. What’s included. The scope of the service, the course programme, the product specifications, specifically and point by point.
4. How it works. 3–5 steps from enquiry to result, with timelines.
5. Price. At least a “from” price or a range and what it depends on. A missing price is one of the most common reasons people leave a page.
6. Proof. Case studies, reviews with names, photos of your work, certificates, numbers that can be checked.
7. Answers to objections. The questions customers most often ask your sales team: guarantees, timelines, what happens if it doesn’t suit them.
8. The enquiry form. A minimum of fields, and it’s clear what happens after submission.
9. Contacts. Phone, messengers, address, for those who’d rather write or call.

The main action button is repeated after a few blocks so people don’t have to scroll back. How to write copy for each block so it works on a phone is covered in our article on website content creation.

Landing page examples from our projects

Beauty International School is a landing page for an aesthetic cosmetology school, built for advertising. The brief called for maximum conversion, maximum loading speed and clear on-page navigation. Because of a limited budget, the design was based on a template but adapted to the brand, with some unique blocks added. A separate course page was built too; enquiries go into the school’s CRM via API, and Google Analytics tracks every goal action.

RV Mobile Roofing is a promo landing page for a California company that services motorhome roofs. The site became the main tool for attracting customers through advertising. The enquiry form has three steps (vehicle details, a description of the problem, location and contacts), so the rep immediately gets the full picture. To make it more engaging, we added an interactive element: visitors can “wash” the roof with their cursor.

ReForma is a landing page for an online fitness and nutrition course. The task was an automated sales funnel, a simple design and fast loading. The page is built on a custom WordPress theme, so the course author edits the copy herself without a developer.

What affects the number of enquiries from a landing page

Matching the ad

If someone clicked an ad saying “Roof repair in 1 day”, the first screen should talk about exactly that, not about the company in general. Google Ads takes landing page experience into account: how relevant and useful the page is to the person who clicked. Different ad groups often get different versions of the first screen.

Speed

Every ad click is paid for, even if the person closed the tab before the page loaded. For a landing page that runs on ads, speed is one of the first requirements. How to measure and improve it is covered in our article on website loading speed.

The mobile version

Traffic from social media and mobile ads comes almost entirely from phones. The button should be within thumb’s reach, the form shouldn’t hide under the keyboard, and text should be readable without zooming. There’s a checklist in our article on responsive design.

One action

The more options a page offers (subscribe, browse the catalogue, follow on social media, download a presentation), the fewer people do the main thing. On a landing page, every button leads to the same goal.

The form

For a service enquiry, a name and a phone number are usually enough. If the quote needs details, it’s better to split the form into a few simple steps, as with RV Mobile Roofing, than to show ten fields at once.

Trust

People often see a landing page for the first time and don’t know the company. Real photos, case studies, reviews with names, full contact details and warranty terms are what set the page apart from a fly-by-night operation.

What conversion rate is normal

According to Unbounce, which analysed 41,000 landing pages and 57 million conversions, the median landing page conversion rate is 6.6%. In other words, half of all pages turn fewer than 6–7 visitors in a hundred into an enquiry or a purchase, and half turn more.

But treat that number as a reference point, not a target: conversion depends heavily on the niche, the price, the traffic source and what counts as a conversion. Signing up for a free webinar and enquiring about a service worth several thousand dollars are different things. Compare your landing page with itself: before and after changes, across traffic sources, on phone and desktop.

Landing pages and SEO

A landing page can appear on Google too, but its potential is limited. One page answers one or two closely related queries well, while people search for the same service in dozens of different ways. So for search traffic, a website with a separate page for each service, case studies and helpful articles works better.

In that setup, the landing page is a tool for ads, launches and testing new offers. If the business grows later, the landing page can become a service page in a larger site, keeping its address and the rankings it has built up.

How to create a landing page

Site builder or custom development

A site builder is good for testing an idea quickly on a minimal budget: ready-made blocks, published in a day or two. Subscriptions start at $12 a month for Squarespace and $17.77 a month for Wix, billed annually. The limitations are a template look, dependence on the platform and less freedom with integrations.

Custom development is needed when the landing page is your main sales channel, it gets a steady ad budget and every fraction of a percent of conversion counts: a unique design, maximum speed, CRM integration, analytics for goal actions. A comparison of platforms is in our article on what a CMS is and how to choose one.

Stages

1. The task and the audience. Who the page is for, what the one action is, where traffic will come from. A short specification helps; see our article on how to write a website specification, which includes a ready-made template.
2. Prototype. The blocks from top to bottom and what goes in each.
3. Copy. Written before the design, not squeezed into it afterwards.
4. Design for desktop and phone.
5. Front-end and admin panel, so you can change copy and prices without a developer.
6. Analytics and CRM. Setting up conversions in Google Analytics and passing enquiries with UTM tags into your CRM; see our article on website CRM integration.
7. Testing and launch: test enquiries from every form, checks on phones, speed.

What it costs

A landing page on a site builder costs a few dollars a month plus your time. With us, a landing page with custom design costs from $2,000 and takes from 1.5 months. What the price depends on and how to compare quotes from different contractors is covered in our article on how much a website costs.

How to tell whether your landing page works

• Count enquiries, not visitors. Set up form submission as a conversion in Google Analytics and pass enquiries into your CRM with their source.
• Look at the cost per enquiry for each ad channel, not just the cost per click.
• Compare phone and desktop. If far fewer enquiries come from phones, the problem is usually the mobile version.
• Watch session recordings and heatmaps: where people stop, and whether they reach the form.
• Change one element at a time (the heading, the form, the price) and compare the results. With enough traffic, run an A/B test.

If you have visitors but few enquiries, start with a UX audit: the article includes a 20-point checklist you can use to check the page yourself.

Landing page checklist before launch

• Within 5 seconds it’s clear what’s on offer, for whom, and what to do next.
• The first screen matches the ad people will come from.
• One main action, with the button repeated down the page.
• There’s a price or a range and what it includes.
• There’s proof: case studies, reviews with names, real photos.
• The form has a minimum of fields and a clear confirmation after submission.
• A test enquiry has reached the CRM or a sales rep.
• The page loads quickly over mobile data.
• On a phone there’s no horizontal scrolling, and buttons are easy to tap.
• Conversions are set up in Google Analytics, and ads carry UTM tags.