Landing pages: the structure of a page that gets people to act

Landing page, sales page, home page: the difference

“Landing page” is searched 8,100 times a month in France, “page de vente” (sales page) 260 times. A landing page is the page a visitor lands on after a search, an ad or a link. A sales page is a landing page whose action is a purchase. The home page, on the other hand, is there to guide: it presents everything and only converts well if it leads quickly to the right page.

For a small business, every important service or product deserves its own landing page: “roof refurbishment in Nantes”, “energy audit for a block of flats”, “bundle of guides to prepare for a competitive exam”. That is the page that ranks for the precise search, and that is the page that converts.

The structure, block by block

The order of the blocks follows the order of the visitor’s questions. This is the one we use on our own sales pages and on our clients’ sites:

1. 1
   The headline (H1): what you sell and to whom, in the words of the search. Example: “Electrician in Lyon: bringing your fuse board up to standard”.
2. 2
   The sentence that answers: the concrete promise in one sentence, with the lead time or the result. It must work on its own if Google or an AI assistant quotes it.
3. 3
   The main action, visible without scrolling on mobile: a buy button with the price, or a tappable number and a short form.
4. 4
   What is included: the precise list, the options, the price or the price range. Vagueness drives serious buyers away.
5. 5
   The proof: photographed projects, real dated reviews, qualifications you actually hold, sourced figures.
6. 6
   How it works: three steps, from the order or the request to the delivery or the job.
7. 7
   Frequently asked questions: the real questions people ask on the phone, with short answers.
8. 8
   The action repeated at the bottom of the page, and the seller’s full contact details.

The copy: answer, do not seduce

Landing page copy does not need to be brilliant; it needs to be precise. The visitor is looking for three answers: is this for me, how much, what do I do now. Short sentences, true figures, action verbs.

The first block matters more than everything else. In our study, 45% of small business websites have no single H1 saying what the business sells, and 40% have fewer than 400 words on the home page: on arrival, neither the visitor nor Google knows what is on offer.

• Write the page from the questions your customers really ask, on the phone or in meetings.
• Replace every adjective with a fact: “on site within 48 hours” rather than “fast service”.
• Keep a single main offer per page; variants go into a clear list.
• Limit the choices: three readable packages convert better than a long table.

The form and the button: as little as possible

Every extra field is a reason to leave. The Baymard Institute counts on average 23.48 form elements shown by default in the checkout of a US e-commerce site, and a checkout that is too long is cited by 17% of shoppers who abandon. The same principle applies to a quote form.

1. 1
   Three to five fields: name, phone or email, the need in one sentence, postcode if the area matters.
2. 2
   The button says what happens: “Get my quote within 24 hours” rather than “Submit”.
3. 3
   A tappable number next to the form: many customers prefer to call.
4. 4
   The response time stated under the button, and kept.
5. 5
   For a sales page: the button goes straight to payment, with Apple Pay and Google Pay, no account needed.

Speed and mobile: the page must show up straight away

61% of measured visits to our sites happen on mobile. Google recommends that the largest element of the page renders within 2.5 s (LCP) and that the page responds within 200 ms (INP). In the study Google commissioned from Deloitte, a 0.1 second improvement on mobile went with 8.4% more conversions in retail.

A fast landing page is a simple page: one light main image, no autoplay video, no duplicated tracking script, no carousel.

The mistakes that cost sales

• Sending every ad and every link to the home page instead of the service page.
• Hiding the price or the price range “to discuss it on the phone”: visitors who are comparing leave.
• Several competing actions (newsletter, social networks, brochure) on the same level as the main action.
• A capture pop-up that opens before the visitor has read the first sentence.
• Proof that cannot be checked: testimonials with no name or date, client logos used without permission, fake badges.
• No measurement: without a conversion event in Google Analytics 4, there is no way to know whether a change helped.