Your landing page is one of the most important elements of your website. As the name suggests, it is intended to be one of the access points to your product or services. But how to put one together? What should go on? What should you never include? How long should it be? Here are some answers to common questions. Whether you’re a jobbing artist or a multinational company, you need the following.

Descriptive Headline and Subheadline

Time is money. Time is also a finite resource when deciding whether you’d rather be doing anything else. Your audience seeks information about you and they need it right away, not at the end of a page. The quickest way to do this is in your page’s headline. With the right content or copywriter, you can explain in just a handful of words precisely what you are all about. Take my Upwork headline, for example: Professional Content Writer and Proofreader. I admit it’s not imaginative, but it is descriptive. Potential clients looking for a web developer will see immediately that I do not fit their required skill set. Play around and have fun, but make sure the headline and any sub-headline explain the relevant information.

An Introduction to You or Your Business

Your landing page is your platform to your audience or potential audience. You need to tell your story, explaining who you are, what you do and how you got there. This not only makes you more personable, it also presents the information your audience needs to decide whether or not to stick around. Tell them about you and what you do, but cut back on the self-congratulation. Nobody likes a braggart and there are better ways of explaining how awesome you are – the best is to explain what is unique about you, your business or your product or service.

Tight Writing that Gets to the Point

Nobody wants to read a 2,000-word landing page. It will be a waste of time, effort and money. Brevity is the key here; most landing pages are in the 400-500 word mark. 400 is a great length, less than a five-minute read. Don’t be tempted to flesh it out. The trend now is for shorter and shorter as the video below shows.

Internet culture has also encouraged impatience in surfers looking for the next distraction. Potential customers will go to a competitor if they don’t find what they are looking for.  If you don’t grab their attention right away, they move on. Use paragraphs and break it down into sections – that makes it digestible and user-friendly. The key here is “benefit selling”. This is where cutting back on the self-congratulation is key. Your audience wants to know how you will benefit them.

Videos and/or Images

As the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words.” A video is worth even more than that. Did you know that video makes up around 5% of the internet’s content but around 95% of viewed content? If you didn’t know it before, it is worth being mindful of this for all of your web content, not just your landing page. While a 400-word article can convey your message, a video is ideal for presenting a little bit more information about you. Those who are genuinely interested will watch it; others might watch it anyway just to be sure. Either way, this is good for your SEO.

A Call To Action

This is your sign-off. It can be as simple as “Do you want to know more? See our contact page for further details.” It needs a bit more than this, though. You need to appeal to their emotions. Common phrases include:

• Affirmative statements such as “Yes, I want to improve my SEO and increase my outreach”
• Emotionally charged FOMO statements such as “This is a limited time offer for new customers. To avoid missing out, contact us now.”
• Or it can be a boast. “We have improved the profile of over 100 businesses already, To join our growing ranks of delighted clients, please send us a query.”

Here is mine:

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