Landing Page Checklist

Work through this in order. It is designed to stop you “tweaking forever” and start improving conversion.

If the ad promises one thing and the page talks about something else, people leave.

The quickest way to catch this: read your ad headline out loud, then read the page headline straight after. If they do not share the same words, you have found your leak. Not similar words, the same ones. Someone who clicked an ad for emergency boiler repair should land on a page that says emergency boiler repair, not one that says heating solutions for the modern home.

This is also where dynamic keyword insertion catches people out. It makes the ad match the search, then drops the click on a page that matches neither. If you use it, go and check where those clicks actually land.

Checklist:

• Headline repeats the offer in plain English
• First paragraph confirms who it is for and what happens next
• The page matches the keyword or ad theme

Decide the single action you want.

Two calls to action is one too many. Every extra option is a decision you are asking someone to make before they have decided to buy anything, and the usual result is that they make none of them.

The navigation bar counts. If your landing page carries your full site menu across the top, you have given every visitor eight ways to leave and one way to convert. Strip it back to a logo and a phone number.

Checklist:

• Call, form, booking, or purchase, pick one primary action
• One main CTA repeated, not five different CTAs
• Remove distractions that pull people away

People decide fast.

Try this. Show the top of the page to someone who does not know your business, give them five seconds, then take it away and ask what you sell and who for. If they cannot tell you, neither can a stranger who has just arrived from an ad.

Above the fold on mobile is a lot smaller than you think it is. Check it on a phone before you decide it is fine.

Checklist:

• What you do, who it’s for, and the benefit is obvious
• One clear CTA visible without scrolling
• Key trust signal visible early

Most landing pages fail because they ask for trust they have not earned.

If you do not have a wall of recognisable client logos, do not try to fake the effect with stock photography and vague claims. Specific beats impressive. One review that names the job, the town and the outcome does more work than five generic five star ratings with no detail behind them.

Proof also has to sit next to the thing you are asking for. A testimonials section at the bottom of the page is proof nobody reads. Move one line of it up beside the form.

Checklist:

• Reviews or testimonials near the CTA
• Short proof points: numbers, outcomes, timeframes where relevant
• Photos or examples that feel real
• Guarantees only if you actually mean them

Friction is anything that makes it harder to convert.

Every field you add is another reason to give up. Ask for what you need to have a useful first conversation and nothing else. You do not need their company size or their budget range before you have spoken to them once.

Tell people what happens next, in plain terms. “We will call you back within one working day” removes more hesitation than another paragraph about your values.

Checklist:

• Keep forms short
• Explain what happens after they submit
• Reduce required fields to the minimum
• Offer an alternative if they’re not ready (call, email, WhatsApp if you use it)

Most small businesses lose conversions on mobile without realising.

Test it on an actual phone, on mobile data, not on your desktop with the browser window shrunk down. Those are two different experiences and only one of them is what your customers get.

Pay particular attention to the form. Forms are where mobile pages break most often, and a broken form looks exactly the same as a page nobody wanted to fill in.

Checklist:

• Text is readable without zooming
• Buttons are easy to tap
• The form works properly
• The page loads quickly over 4G

You do not need perfection, you need “fast enough”.

One number matters more than the rest: how long it takes for the main content at the top of the page to appear. Chasing a perfect score in a speed testing tool is a good way to spend a week and gain nothing a customer would notice.

The usual culprits are an oversized hero image and a stack of tracking scripts nobody has audited in a year. Start there before you start rebuilding anything.

Checklist:

• Compress images
• Avoid massive videos on the page
• Reduce third-party scripts
• Check the page on your phone, not just desktop

You cannot improve what you do not measure.

Expect your Google Ads conversion count and your GA4 number to disagree. They measure different things and they attribute them differently, so pick one as the number you make decisions on and stick with it rather than trying to reconcile them every month.

If enquiries come in by phone, track calls properly. Otherwise half your results are invisible and you will eventually switch off the campaign that was actually working.

Checklist:

• Track form submits
• Track calls if calls matter
• Confirm conversions in Google Ads, not just GA4
• One simple dashboard view you actually check

Do not change ten things and guess what worked.

Honest caveat for small budgets: proper testing needs more conversions than most small businesses get in a month. If you are getting a handful of enquiries, a test comparing two button colours will never tell you anything you can rely on.

So make big changes rather than small ones. Rewrite the headline, change the offer, cut the form in half. Those are large enough to show up even in small numbers. Save the fine tuning for when you have the volume to measure it.

Checklist:

• Change one section
• Give it time
• Keep the winner, bin the loser