What Makes A Good Landing Page Headline

Most people read your headline and nothing else. If it does not land, the rest of the page never gets a chance.

And most headlines fail the same way. They describe the business instead of the visitor.

The test

Read your headline and ask whether a competitor could put their logo above it without changing a word.

"Quality service you can trust." "Your partner in growth." "Delivering excellence since 2012." Any business in your industry could run those. Which means they say nothing.

If it survives the swap test, it is not a headline. It is a placeholder that got approved.

Say the outcome, not the category

The visitor does not want a service. They want the thing that happens after the service.

"Structural engineering" is a category. "Know within a week whether that wall can come out" is an outcome. One is what you sell. The other is what they are buying.

Write down what the customer's life looks like on the other side of working with you, then put that in the headline.

Be specific enough to be uncomfortable

Specificity is the whole game. A number, a timeframe, a named situation. Anything a competitor would have to think twice about copying.

Our own guarantee is a million views in six months or you do not pay until we do. It is specific, it is checkable and it makes the claim carry weight. A vague version of the same promise would convert a fraction as well.

Specific is harder to write because you have to actually mean it. That is exactly why it works.

One idea

A headline trying to say three things says none of them.

Pick the single most important thing and put it in the headline. The second and third go in the subheading and the section below. This is the most common fix I make on a page and it usually doubles how quickly the page reads.

Match the ad

If the ad said one thing and the page says another, the visitor thinks they are in the wrong place and leaves. It takes about a second.

Whatever brought them here should be the first thing they see when they land. Same words if you can manage it.

The subheading does a different job

The headline makes the claim. The subheading makes it believable.

Headline: the outcome. Subheading: who it is for, and one reason it is credible. Together they should answer "what is this" and "is this for me" before anyone scrolls.

Write ten, keep one

Nobody writes a good headline first go. Write ten and most of them will be bad, which is the point. The good one usually shows up around number seven, after you have exhausted the obvious ones.

Then say it out loud. If you would not say it to someone across a table, do not put it at the top of the page.

Then test it

The headline is the cheapest thing on the page to change and the most expensive to get wrong. Change it, watch what the traffic does, keep the winner.

Most businesses redesign an entire page when changing eight words would have told them more.