A landing page has one job: move a specific person one step further. Not describe your company, not list your services, not win a design award. One person, one step.
Most pages fail because they try to serve everyone who might ever land on them. The result reads as vague to everybody, because copy written for four audiences speaks clearly to none.
The three ones
- One visitor: the person arriving from one specific source with one specific problem.
- One promise: the single outcome you are claiming, stated plainly enough to be argued with.
- One action: the only thing you want them to do, repeated rather than joined by alternatives.
Every extra call to action lowers the conversion of the main one. "Book a call, or download the guide, or follow us" is three requests, and a visitor faced with three requests usually picks the fourth option: leaving.
Match the page to the traffic
A page is only as good as its fit with where the click came from. If your ad promises a checkout audit and the page opens with your agency history, the visitor feels a small betrayal and bounces. The words in the ad should reappear near the top of the page.
Try it
Write down, in one sentence each, the visitor, the promise, and the action for your page. If any of the three takes more than a sentence, the page is trying to do too much and should be split into two.