500 Startups Growth Handbook

Landing Page

What Is a Landing Page?

A landing page is any page on a website that a visitor can “land” on for the first time. For an app, this is your Appstore or Play Store app page. Each landing page has a Call To Action (CTA) that either asks for some information (name, email, etc.), or asks the visitor to download/sign up/buy, or there are links to click through to another page. For early stage startups, there’s probably just one page explaining the problem, the solution & its benefits, and a Call to Action. Maybe social proof. If you’re a later stage startup, you building a different landing page for every new marketing campaign and launch. Landing pages are tailored towards a particular target audience and a particular offering.

Someone usually lands on a landing page because they are somewhat interested in the content on the page. The goal of a landing page is to convert them i.e have them participate in some sort of transaction (Download an app, make a purchase, give you their contact info, read a white paper, etc.)

Beta Stage:

This is most likely your only page and at the minimum needs to have an attention grabbing headline, copy tailored specifically for your customer, and a CTA. Objective of the page is to convince visitors to click on your Call To Action. Remember, they’re not just buying your product; they’re also buying how it makes them feel. People know and care only about how they feel now (shitty because they have a problem) and can only relate to how they will feel after their problem is solved. They don’t care about your product. Iterating on the landing page at this stage means understanding why they aren’t clicking on the CTA and fixing it. How? Talk to them. Here’s an sample usability testing script.

Growth Stage:

When running customer acquisition campaigns, ensure every campaign is paired with one or more landing pages - each landing page matching the target audience and the creative in the ad or original source that directed the traffic to your page.

Common Mistakes Founders Make

Not focusing enough on user perspective. Spending more real-estate/time explaining your product and not how it solves their problem and how it will make them feel
Using your language. Curb your urge to sound professional. Be relatable instead. Even if you’re B2B. Talk to enough existing and potential customers and user their words (not yours) contextualize it to their situation so they can imagine themselves when they read/browse/watch
Highlighting ALL the potential benefits and trying to target ALL customers in the same page - going with the “comprehensive” approach results in no one being interested, and everyone being confused
No clear CTA

Fictitious Example

Let’s say you’re selling an accounting product, you might have two different target customers: the accountant at a mid-sized company, and the freelance accountant who manages multiple small businesses. While the technical problem you’re solving for both might be same, how they experience it in each of their individual contexts (a report for a boss vs a report for a client) is different. When you do customer interviews with them, you will hear the differences in how they describe their problems and ideal solutions. So the customer acquisition campaigns and creatives you use for each of these targets will be different - and hence require different landing pages.

Similarly, if you’re selling a kids app, the positioning would be different different relatives “be a cool aunt” “play on the iPhone with your grandchildren” “parents: a fun way for your kids to learn xyz” etc etc. - ideally, each of these will have different landing pages

Real World Example

List of 12 High Converting Landing Pages Being Used Today - Here

More Inspiration for you Landing Page - Here

Related Keywords

Call To Action, Click-Through, Lead Generation, A/B Testing, Conversion Rate,