You will be able to outline a landing page section by section and say what each section has to do.
Open the page your ad, post or email sends people to right now, and count every link on it that leads somewhere other than the thing you are offering. Include the menu, the blog, the social media icons and any "see our other programmes" section. Each of those gives a visitor who arrived for one thing a way to leave without doing it.
A landing page is a page built for one offer and one action. It is usually the page people reach from an ad, a post or an email. A homepage serves everyone who might arrive, so it points in many directions. A landing page serves one kind of visitor who came for one thing, and points in one direction. When you send ad traffic to a homepage, you bring the right people to a page built for everyone, and many of them leave.
Priya (an invented example) runs small group maths classes for P5 and P6 on Saturday mornings. She ran an ad for a free trial lesson, and parents clicked, but most of them left without booking. The ad had sent them to her homepage, which had an eight-item menu, a welcome message, news about the holiday programme and photos from prize-giving, and mentioned the trial lessons only further down the page.
What Priya needs is a separate page for the trial, built on the structure from lesson 4.1: problem, solution, proof, action. That structure runs through the landing page from top to bottom, and each part becomes one or more sections. The page has three zones: the top, the middle and the lower part.
The top of the page is what a visitor sees before scrolling. It has four parts. First is an outcome headline that says what the visitor gets; take it from the headlines you chose in lesson 2.4. Under it goes a supporting line saying who the offer is for, plus the most important detail. Then comes an image or video of the real thing: the actual class, the actual cake, the actual blouse on a real person. Stock photos of smiling models tell the visitor nothing and make your page look like every other page. Last is your main call to action, written as in lesson 4.3, with a reassurance line under it.
For Priya, the headline is "Try one Saturday class before you pay for a term". The supporting line is "Small group maths for P5 and P6. Six students per class, Saturday mornings." The button says "Book a free trial lesson", with "No payment, no commitment to a term" underneath.
Many visitors read only the top, so it has to be enough on its own. Someone who reads nothing else should know what is offered, who it is for, and what to do next.
Visitors who scroll are asking whether this is right for them, and the middle answers that question. Open it with the problem in the reader's own words. Priya's problem section opens with "Knows the work at home, goes blank in the test. Makes the same careless mistakes every time. You only find out when the results arrive." Take your own wording from your voice-of-customer file, because a reader who recognises their situation in the problem keeps reading the rest of the page.
Next come three to five benefits, each with proof beside it, from your benefit and proof sheet. Fewer than three can feel thin, and more than five start to blur together. For each one, lead with the benefit, give the feature as the reason for it, and put the proof straight after.
Close the middle with a few simple steps showing how it works. Steps remove uncertainty about what happens after the click. For a product, they might cover ordering, delivery and what to do if it does not fit. Priya's steps for the trial are:
Pick a Saturday slot. Get confirmation by WhatsApp. Your child joins a class of six for 90 minutes. You get a short note afterwards on what was noticed.
Visitors who reach the lower part are close to deciding and have specific doubts, so the sections here answer them. Start with testimonials. A testimonial that answers a common doubt is worth more than one that only praises, and you can use as many as are genuine and relevant, following the rules in lesson 3.3.
Then answer common objections directly, often as a short question-and-answer list. The objections column in your voice-of-customer file is there for this. Priya answers "What if my child is shy in a group?", "Will the class be too fast?" and "What happens after the trial?"
After that, give the price. If price comes later, say exactly what happens next and when they will hear about cost. Hiding price entirely makes many readers assume it is high and leave. If the trial is free and the term has a fee, as with Priya, state the term fee or how to see it.
Finish by repeating the call to action at the bottom with the same words you used at the top, so readers do not have to scroll back up to act.
A landing page has one goal, and every exit, meaning any link on the page that leads elsewhere, gives the visitor a way to leave without taking the action. The usual exits are the main menu, blog links, social media icons and a "see our other programmes" section. Where your tools allow, remove the menu and outbound links; many website builders let you publish a page without the main navigation. If yours does not, keep the extra links as small and as low on the page as possible. The exits worth keeping are the ones a visitor needs, such as a privacy notice and a way to contact you with a question.
The main difference between the two kinds of page is that a homepage tries to send each visitor where they need to go, while a landing page has already decided where that is.
Now sketch the outline for one offer, section by section, with one line describing what each section will say. Use the order above: headline, supporting line, image or video, call to action with reassurance line, problem, benefits with proof, how it works, testimonials, objections, price or what happens next, the repeated call to action, and the exits you will remove. Fill each line from your writing kit, so the outline already holds your real headline, your real problem phrase and your real proof.
Pick one offer and sketch the sections of its landing page. Under each section, write one line saying what it will say.
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