Landing Page Design

Landing pages that continue the promise the ad made

A landing page exists for one campaign and one action. Its first job is message match — saying back to the visitor what the ad said to them. Everything else on the page either supports that or is costing you money.

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Where the money leaks

The gap between what the ad said and what the page says

Paid traffic is the most expensive traffic you will ever buy, and it is routinely delivered to a page that makes the visitor start the conversation again from the beginning.

The ad is specific and the page is general.: The ad said "commercial roof repair, 24-hour callout". The page opens with a company introduction and a photo of the office. The visitor now has to work out whether this business does the specific thing they clicked on. Some will. Many will go back and click the next ad, and you have paid for both clicks.
Everything goes to the homepage.: A homepage is designed to serve every audience and every intent, which makes it the worst possible destination for someone with one specific intent. It is also full of navigation, which exists to let people explore — the opposite of what you want from traffic you have just paid for.
The page is a brochure.: Company history, values, a team section and four service categories. All reasonable content for a website. On a campaign page it is competition for the one action you are paying to produce, and every additional path is a place to lose someone.
The form asks for more than the offer is worth.: Eleven required fields, a budget dropdown and a mandatory phone number for someone who wanted an emailed quote. People assess these trades accurately and quickly. If the request feels disproportionate to what they are getting, they close the tab.
Nobody can change it.: The page was built as a finished deliverable and every edit needs a developer. Six weeks later the campaign has evolved, the page has not, and the testing programme it was built for never started.

The governing idea

Message match is the whole discipline

A person clicking an ad is running a quick check: is this the thing I just clicked on, and do these people do it for someone like me? They will answer that in a second or two, mostly from the headline and the first thing under it. Everything else on the page is only read by people who passed that check.

Message match means the page continues the sentence the ad started. Not the same words as a slogan — the same promise, in the same terms, with the same specificity. If the ad said same-day, the page says same-day near the top. If the ad named a city, the page names the city. If the ad quoted a price, the page addresses the price rather than hiding it behind an enquiry form.

This is also why one landing page per campaign rarely holds up. The moment two ad groups promise materially different things, they need different pages, because one of them will otherwise be landing on a page that answers somebody else’s question.

Message match extends past the headline. The proof should be relevant to that service, the imagery should show that work, and the form should ask about that job. A page that matches in the headline and drifts by the third section has only delayed the mismatch.

The first screen

What earns a place above the fold

The fold is not a fixed line, and on a phone it is far higher than most designs assume. Treat it as the region a visitor sees before deciding whether to continue, and be ruthless about what occupies it.

Each item below has to justify the space it takes. Anything that does not help the visitor confirm they are in the right place or take the action belongs further down, or nowhere.

The promise from the ad, restated plainly — the service, the qualifier and the place if the campaign is geographic
A single sentence confirming who this is for, so the visitor recognises themselves
The action, visible without scrolling, with a label that says what happens rather than "submit"
One piece of evidence that makes the action feel low-risk — a credential, an accreditation, a response time you genuinely meet
What happens after they act: who contacts them, how, and how quickly
On mobile, a tappable phone number where the campaign is likely to produce calls rather than forms

Structure

The four jobs the rest of the page has to do

Confirm relevance
Show the specific work, for the specific situation, in the specific place. Generic capability statements do not confirm anything. A short description of the exact job the visitor is likely to have does.
Answer the objection
Every offer has one dominant hesitation — cost, disruption, contract length, whether you cover their area, whether they will be handed to a call centre. Name it and answer it on the page rather than waiting for the sales call.
Supply proof that fits
Evidence that relates to this service and this audience. Credentials, accreditations, guarantees and specifics carry more weight than volume of praise, particularly where the purchase carries risk.
How we handle guarantees
Make the action obvious
One primary action, repeated at sensible intervals, with a form that asks only what the next step genuinely requires. Secondary paths should exist only where they serve a different, real intent — such as calling instead of filling in a form.

How we build them

A landing page is a testing surface, not a deliverable

The page you launch is a first version. If it cannot be changed quickly, the campaign will outgrow it and the spend behind it will quietly get worse.

Every page we build

Restates the campaign promise in the first screen, in the words the ad used
Ships editable by your team — headlines, proof, offers and form fields, without a development ticket
Has conversion and call tracking verified before a single pound of media runs to it
Justifies every form field against what the visitor receives in return
Is checked on a real phone on mobile data before launch, not only in a desktop browser

What we will not do

Send every ad group to one page and call it a landing page strategy
Add company history, values or a team section to a page that exists to produce one action
Use a form field because it might be useful to someone internally one day
Report on total form submissions without reference to how many were qualified
Quote a conversion rate we expect the page to achieve, because that depends on your offer and your market

Questions

Landing page questions from people running campaigns

Why not send ad traffic to our existing service page?

Sometimes you should. A well-written service page that matches the ad closely and has a clear next step can outperform a hastily built landing page, and it also earns organic traffic, which a landing page usually does not.

The case for a dedicated page is specificity. A service page has to serve every visitor from every source; a landing page serves one campaign, can name the exact offer, and can remove navigation and other paths that only exist to distract someone who arrived with a single intent.

How many landing pages do we need?

One per genuinely distinct promise, not one per ad group. If three ad groups all promise emergency plumbing in the same city at the same price, they can share a page.

The moment the promise changes — a different service, a different offer, a different audience, a different price point — the page should change with it, because that promise is the thing the visitor is checking for when they arrive.

Should the form be short or long?

Neither by default. The right length is proportionate to what the visitor gets in return. Asking for a name and a phone number to get a callback is proportionate; asking for eleven fields to download a two-page PDF is not.

Longer forms also filter. On high-value services, a slightly longer form producing fewer but better enquiries is often the better commercial outcome, which is why form length should be judged on qualified leads rather than total submissions.

What belongs above the fold?

What the ad promised, restated in the visitor’s language; enough context to confirm they are in the right place; the action; and one piece of evidence that makes the action feel safe.

The fold is not a fixed line, and it is far higher on a phone than most designs assume. The practical test is whether someone can tell, without scrolling, that this page is about the thing they clicked on.

Can we edit the pages ourselves afterwards?

Yes, and we consider that a requirement rather than a nice extra. Pages are built so headlines, proof, offers and form fields can be changed by your team without a development cycle.

A landing page nobody can edit stops being a testing surface within a month of launch, which removes most of the reason to have built it.

Show us an ad and the page it points at

Most campaigns have a message match problem that can be seen in under a minute. Send us your top-spending ad group and where it lands, and we will tell you what the page is failing to say back.

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Where to go next

Last updated September 7, 2026 · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal