Landing pages: what a page that converts looks like (with examples)

A window and door company launches a Google Ads campaign on the search “window replacement”. The ad promises a free site survey and a quote within 48 hours. People who click land on the home page: a slider with three photos of the showroom, a menu with nine items, the company’s history since 1978. The quote form is on the Contact page, two clicks further on. After a month there have been 400 clicks and 3 enquiries (figures invented for illustration). The campaign isn’t wrong: it’s the page that isn’t doing its job.

The short answer: a landing page is the page people reach when they click an ad, built for a single action. It converts when the headline repeats the ad’s promise, when the offer and button are visible straight away even on a phone, when doubts are answered with concrete evidence and the form asks only for the information that’s needed. On Google Ads the quality of the page feeds into every auction, so it affects both position and cost per click. Every significant change should be verified with a test, looking at qualified leads and not just forms submitted.

We look at it from the point of view of the people sending paid traffic to these pages. On the conversion rate of an online shop, there’s our article on ecommerce conversion rate; on how to find the bottlenecks in the whole journey, there’s optimising the funnel with AI. Here we stay on the page.

What is a landing page?

A landing page (or destination page) is a web page designed to receive traffic from a campaign and lead it to take a single action: sending a quote request, signing up for an event, buying a product on promotion, downloading a guide.

Technically, any page people reach after clicking an ad is its destination page. In practice we mean a page built specifically for that traffic, with three characteristics: a single goal, few exits (no full menu, no links to the blog) and a precise audience, meaning people who have just read a specific ad and expect to find what it promised.

How does it differ from a home page or a service page?

The home page speaks to everyone, the service page explains a service to people evaluating it, and the landing page converts people arriving from a specific campaign.

	Home page	Service page	Landing page
Who it speaks to	Anyone arriving on the website	People evaluating that service	People who clicked a specific ad
Goal	Direct people to the sections	Explain and persuade	Get people to take a single action
Main traffic	Brand searches, direct links	Organic search, site menu	Paid campaigns, email, QR codes
Navigation	Full menu	Full menu and internal links	Reduced or absent
Indexing	Yes	Yes, it’s an SEO page	Often not, or not a priority
Lifespan	Stable	Stable, updated over time	Tied to the campaign or offer

Sometimes the service page is enough. If you have a good page on “window replacement” with a visible form, a campaign on that search can send traffic there. You need a dedicated page when the ad contains an offer the website doesn’t show (a discount, a deadline, a site survey within 48 hours), when the campaign speaks to a different audience from the website’s, when the action isn’t “contact us” but a sign-up or a download, or when you want to test without touching pages that work for SEO.

What does a landing page that converts look like?

It’s made up of a few elements, each with a specific job. We’ll look at them in the order a visitor encounters them.

A headline consistent with the ad

The headline has to confirm in a second that the person is in the right place. If the ad says “Window replacement in Turin, free site survey”, the headline must contain the same words or the same idea, not “Over 40 years of quality that makes the difference”. It’s Google’s first recommendation for improving landing page experience: show users what they searched for straight away and keep the ad and the page consistent, honouring the ad’s offer or call to action.

What’s visible above the fold

The “fold” is where the screen ends before you scroll, and on a smartphone it comes very soon. That’s where the headline should go, along with a line explaining who it’s for and what you get, the button or the start of the form, and a trust signal (a rating, a figure, a certification).

The offer

The offer is what the person gets in return for the action, written in concrete terms, with timescales and conditions. “Contact us for more information” isn’t an offer; “Written quote within 48 hours of the site survey, with no obligation” is. Service area, minimum quantities and deadlines should be stated on the page, not discovered on the phone.

Social proof

This is everything that shows others have already trusted you: reviews, customers served, case studies, certifications. It works when it’s verifiable and close to the point of decision, that is, next to the form or the button. In B2B, a short case study with the problem, the intervention and the result carries more weight than ten logos.

The form

The form is where you lose most people: every field is one more question and one more reason to put it off. Ask only for what’s needed for the first step, usually name, phone or email and a line about the need; VAT number, address and budget can be gathered on the first call. In B2B, a few qualification fields (sector, company size) can help route enquiries: it’s worth testing them rather than removing them by default.

Next to the form you need a link to the privacy notice and, if you want to use the data for marketing, a separate consent. The EU General Data Protection Regulation states in recital 32 that pre-ticked boxes do not constitute consent. After submission, a thank-you page says what happens next (“we’ll call you by tomorrow during office hours”) and is used to record the conversion.

The call to action

The call to action (CTA) is the button, and its text states the action and the result: “Book your site survey”, “Download the guide”, “Sign up for the 12 March course”. “Submit” and “Find out more” say nothing. One main call to action, repeated in the same words if the page is long. On mobile the button must be easy to press with a thumb and the phone number must be tappable.

FAQs and objections

At the bottom of the page, 4–6 questions the sales team hears every week: how much does it cost, how long does it take, what happens after I fill this in, do you work in my area. Answering them here removes doubts that would otherwise turn into drop-offs or pointless phone calls. Ask the people who answer the phone.

Mobile speed

In Meta and TikTok campaigns, most traffic usually comes from phones, and on Google the mobile share is often high too: check it in your account’s reports. Google lists loading times among the factors of landing page experience.

The measurable benchmark is Core Web Vitals: according to web.dev, a page is “good” with an LCP within 2.5 seconds, an INP within 200 milliseconds and a CLS within 0.1, assessed at the 75th percentile of visits. What they mean is explained in our article on Core Web Vitals. On landing pages the culprits are almost always the same: heavy images and videos at the top, third-party scripts, chats and pop-ups loaded straight away.

Element by element: the summary table

Element	What it does	Typical mistake
Headline	Confirms the page is the one the ad promised	A brand slogan instead of the ad’s words
Above the fold	Makes the offer and the action clear without scrolling	A full-screen image hiding the headline and button on mobile
Offer	Says what you get, how quickly and on what terms	“Contact us for more information”
Social proof	Reduces perceived risk	Anonymous reviews, logos without context, placed at the bottom
Form	Collects the information for the first step	Too many fields, marketing consent pre-ticked
CTA	States the action and the result	“Submit”, several buttons competing with each other
FAQs	Answers objections before they become drop-offs	Questions written by marketing, not the ones customers really ask
Mobile speed	Gets people to the page	Video at the top, scripts and pop-ups loaded straight away
Thank-you page	Says what happens next and records the conversion	Conversion counted on the button click instead of on successful submission

Landing page examples by goal

The structure changes with the goal. These are typical examples, built to illustrate the choices: they don’t describe real clients.

B2B lead generation: quote or consultation requests

A company that manufactures industrial extraction systems promotes a “free system check” on Google Ads and LinkedIn to production and safety managers.

• Headline and above the fold: “Extraction system check: site survey and technical report within 10 days”, sectors served, a “Request your check” button, a certification.
• Body: what the report contains, how the site survey works, a short case study from a similar sector.
• Form: name, company, email, phone, province of the plant, sector from a drop-down menu.

The metric that matters isn’t the number of forms but how many become opportunities, and you read that in the CRM.

Events and sign-ups: a course, a webinar, a race

A training provider promotes a course with a fixed date and limited places. Here the deadline is real and helps people decide.

• Above the fold: course name, date, duration, price, places available if they’re genuinely limited, a “Sign up” button.
• Body: the programme in bullet points, trainers with name and role, what participants take away (certificate, materials).
• Journey: from sign-up to payment without going back. After the deadline the page is updated or switched off along with the campaign.

Ecommerce and promotions

An online homeware shop launches a promotion on a product line. The frequent mistake is sending traffic to the generic category, where the discount isn’t visible.

• Above the fold: the promotion in the ad’s words with its end date, the products with full and discounted prices, the add-to-basket button.
• Body: reviews near the products, shipping costs and times, returns and payments.
• Journey: from click to basket in one or two steps.

In Shopping campaigns the destination is the product page: the levers on shipping, checkout and reviews are covered in our article on ecommerce conversion rate.

Downloading a guide or template

A business software company offers a PDF guide to changes in electronic invoicing in exchange for an email address, to build a list it can nurture over time.

• Above the fold: what’s in the guide and who it’s for, a preview of the contents, three points on what you’ll learn, the short form.
• After submission: the guide arrives by email or from the thank-you page, with an invitation to the next step.

The ad can’t point directly to the file: Google Ads’ destination requirements don’t allow direct downloads and links to files such as documents, with exceptions for some sectors. You need a page.

What does the landing page have to do with Google Ads Quality Score?

Quality Score is a 1-to-10 indicator that Google Ads calculates for each keyword, and one of its three components is landing page experience; the other two are expected click-through rate and ad relevance. Google defines it as how relevant and useful your landing page is to people who click your ad, with a status (above average, average, below average) compared with other advertisers appearing for the same search.

The same guide makes clear that Quality Score is a diagnostic tool, not an input used in the auction. But the page still counts in the auction: among the factors of Ad Rank, calculated for every search, Google lists the quality of the ad and of the landing page, including ease of navigation. The score helps you understand where to intervene.

How we use it: we add the columns for Quality Score and its three components and look at the keywords with the highest spend. If landing page experience is “below average” and the other two components are fine, the problem is the page: an inconsistent headline, content that doesn’t answer the search, slowness on mobile. If ad relevance is low, the problem lies further upstream, often ad groups with keywords that are too different from each other.

The score isn’t a goal: a page with a score of 6 that brings in good leads is worth more than one with a score of 9 that brings in useless ones.

How do you check consistency between ad and page?

Put each ad group side by side with its page and check four things.

The words. Keywords, ad headlines and the page headline must all be about the same thing. If an ad group contains “PVC windows” and “security doors”, you need two pages or at least two ad groups. Understanding what people who type a query are really looking for helps you choose the right page: we discuss this in our article on search intent.

The offer. Price, discount, deadline and conditions must be identical in the ad and on the page, and when the promotion ends both are updated on the same day.

The technical destination. Google Ads’ Test your landing page tool flags pages not found, domains that don’t match the final URL and pages blocked to Google’s crawler. Pages under construction, errors, pop-ups that stop people leaving and very slow loading are among the cases the destination requirements don’t allow.

The page Google actually chooses. With AI Max and Performance Max, final URL expansion can send traffic to other pages on your domain. It can work, but it needs checking: the AI Max guide provides for URL exclusions and for switching off expansion in the campaign settings. We always exclude pages such as careers, privacy and expired promotions. We explained how AI Max works in this article.

On Meta and LinkedIn there’s also an alternative to the page: forms inside the platform, which Meta calls instant forms and LinkedIn calls Lead Gen Forms (we cover them in the FAQs).

How do you run an A/B test on a landing page, and what do you measure?

An A/B test shows two versions of the page to two randomly selected groups of visitors and compares conversions. You change one important thing at a time and decide in advance how much traffic you need.

Small changes, such as the colour of the button, need a great deal of traffic to show a difference. With an SME’s budget it makes sense to test big changes: the main promise, the length of the form, the type of offer.

Traffic can be split with a testing tool on the website or with the ad platforms. Google Ads custom experiments create a trial version of the campaign and split traffic and budget, using a cookie-based split in which each person sees only one version: if you change the final URL in the trial, you’re comparing two pages. Meta offers A/B testing with audience groups that don’t overlap. How much traffic you need, with the calculations, and why you shouldn’t stop a test as soon as you like the result, is explained in optimising the funnel with AI.

Metric	What it tells you	Where to find it
Page conversion rate	How many visits turn into an action	GA4, testing tool
Cost per conversion	How much each action costs	Google Ads, Meta Ads
Qualified lead rate	How many leads the sales team considers good	CRM
Opportunities and sales	Whether the page brings customers, not just forms	CRM, management system
Scrolling and clicks	Where people stop	Heatmaps and recordings

The third row is the deciding one: a page that doubles form submissions but halves the good ones is worse. Before testing, conversions must be tracked properly, on successful form submission or on the thank-you page; on consent and tracking there’s our guide to Enhanced Conversions and Consent Mode. To understand why a page isn’t converting before you even start testing, session recordings help: Microsoft Clarity, for example, is free and offers recordings and heatmaps, to be switched on in line with cookie consent.

Which tools can you build a landing page with?

With your website’s CMS, with a dedicated landing page builder or with custom code.

Tool	Examples	When it makes sense	Watch out for
Website CMS	WordPress with the block editor or a page builder, Shopify, Webflow	Stable pages, updated by the in-house team	Heavy page builders that slow down mobile
Dedicated builders	Unbounce, Leadpages, Landingi, Instapage	Many pages for different campaigns, built-in A/B tests	Domain, tracking and CRM connection to configure, monthly cost
Custom code	Static sites or modern frameworks	Speed, integrations with CRM and payments, many variants	You need a developer for changes, unless there’s a control panel

Builders’ features and prices change often: check them on the supplier’s website. Either way, the page must sit on your domain or a subdomain, and every lead must reach the CRM with the campaign source. Generative AI produces a first draft in a few minutes, but the offer and the evidence need to be written by people who know the customers.

Mistakes to avoid

Sending traffic to the home page. The home page speaks to everyone, and therefore to no one in particular. People who clicked a specific ad need to find that promise.

Changing the promise between ad and page. If the ad says “free site survey” and the page doesn’t mention it, the person thinks they’re on the wrong page.

Designing for desktop. In social campaigns most traffic comes from phones: the page should be designed and checked there first.

Leaving expired pages live. Finished promotions and past events burn budget.

Measuring only forms submitted. A page should be judged on the qualified leads and the sales it brings.

Checklist before switching on your campaigns

• The page headline repeats the ad’s words, and offer, price and deadline match.
• On a phone, the headline, offer and button are visible without scrolling.
• The form asks only for the information needed for the first step, with a privacy notice and separate marketing consent.
• The conversion is recorded on successful submission and the lead reaches the CRM with its source.
• PageSpeed Insights on mobile flags no serious problems with LCP, INP and CLS.
• “Test your landing page” reports no errors.
• With AI Max or Performance Max, pages that shouldn’t be used as destinations are excluded.

Want landing pages designed for your campaigns?

When we manage campaigns, the landing page is part of the job: we check consistency with the ads, tracking and Quality Score, and suggest what to change based on search terms and CRM data. We do this in our Google Ads service. We design and build the pages with our web and e-commerce team, on WordPress, Shopify or with our own code, with speed and measurement checked before launch.

You can book a call with Federico or write to us via the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

Should a landing page be indexed on Google?

Not necessarily. Campaign pages are often temporary or very similar to one another, and many companies exclude them from the index. If the page covers a topic people also search for organically, it’s better to make it an indexed service page and use it for campaigns too.

How long should a landing page be?

It depends on how big a decision it is. To download a free guide, a short page is enough; for a quote worth thousands of euros you need more information, more evidence and answers to people’s doubts. The right length is verified with a test.

Is a landing page better, or the form inside Meta or LinkedIn?

The in-platform form usually brings more leads at a lower cost, because the person doesn’t leave the app. The landing page asks for more commitment and filters more. It’s worth trying both and comparing them on qualified leads and on opportunities in the CRM.

Is a low Quality Score always down to the landing page?

No. The score has three components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Google Ads shows the status of each one, so you can see straight away whether the problem is the page, the ad or the way keywords are grouped.