In short and in plain language
This post is about online ads that you pay for per click. Often the ad just links to the homepage. There the visitor does not find right away what they want.
A better way is a page of its own with just one goal. It is called a landing page.
At the top is a clear promise. Below it come some proof and a button to ask. There is no menu to distract.
The ad and the headline should say the same thing. Count enquiries, not just clicks.
We build your landing page at a fixed price.
Running an ad costs money, and it costs money per click. What happens in the second after that click decides whether the money works or evaporates. In many small businesses the ad link points at the homepage - of all pages, the one that has to do everything at once: introduce the company, show every service, list opening hours, lead to the blog. For someone who just clicked on one very specific claim, that is an imposition. They look for what the ad promised, find a menu with eight items instead and go back to the search results. A landing page reverses that relationship: one page, one promise, one action. Eye tracking research shows how much the upper part of the page matters - around 57 percent (Nielsen Norman Group 2018) of viewing time is spent above the fold. And loading too slowly costs you a large share of your visitors: 53 percent (Google) of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds. This article shows how a campaign page is structured, why ad copy and headline have to carry the same statement, how to retire seasonal pages cleanly and how to tell whether a campaign pays for itself. That is exactly how we build a landing page at a fixed price.
Key takeaways
- The homepage has to serve every audience, a campaign page only one. That is why paid traffic belongs on a dedicated landing page rather than the homepage.
- The blueprint is plain: one promise as the headline, one piece of proof underneath, one call to action - and no main navigation leading away from the goal.
- Ad copy and page headline have to carry the same statement, otherwise the click feels like a mistake to the visitor and still costs you money.
- What counts is the enquiry rate, not the click count. And every campaign page needs a retirement date and a redirect target from day one, so no dead links are left behind.
Homepage and landing page: two different tools
Both page types look similar at first glance, yet their jobs are opposites. The homepage is a reception area: it serves new customers, existing customers, applicants, suppliers and search engines at the same time and therefore has to branch in many directions. A landing page is the opposite - a corridor with exactly one door at the end. It receives visitors from a single channel, such as a search ad, a poster with a short code or a post on a social network, and leads them to a single action. It is hardly surprising that many businesses have not considered this difference: in 2023 92.9 percent (Federal Statistical Office) of companies in Germany with ten or more employees had a website, while among businesses with fewer than ten employees it was only about 65 percent (Federal Statistical Office). Anyone who has only just got a website rarely thinks about advertising campaigns needing a second, specialised tool. Which pages a company website should contain in any case is covered in the article on the five most important website pages.
Homepage: many routes
It serves every audience at once and deliberately branches in many directions. That same openness is what makes it weak as the target of a paid ad.
Landing page: one route
It picks up a single statement and leads to a single action. Everything that distracts from that is removed - including the main menu.
Both together
The campaign page does not replace your website. It complements it for the duration of the campaign and links to the legal pages in the footer.
The difference becomes tangible as soon as money is involved. A visitor arriving on the homepage from organic search brings time and patience: they browse, click through the menu and reach their goal even by detours. A paid click works differently. It is created by a concrete promise in the ad, it is measured in seconds, and it costs you regardless of whether anything happens afterwards. Sending that click to a page that starts by introducing the company asks the visitor to do a search job they are in no mood for. The same pattern applies to clicks from social networks, where attention spans are even shorter - why your own page is still the better destination than a profile on someone else's platform is described in the article on having your own website rather than only social media.
Why paid clicks evaporate on the homepage
Search engines assess not only the ad itself but also what comes after the click. The quality score in the ad platform is made up of three (Google) components: expected click-through rate, ad relevance and the landing page experience. It is rated on a scale from 1 to 10 (Google). A landing page that does not visibly pick up the promise from the ad pushes that score down - and a lower score usually means you pay more for the same position. The homepage is structurally at a disadvantage here: it cannot be tailored to a single ad promise because it has twenty other jobs to do. If your ad advertises a price, that price should appear immediately on the target page - what prospects expect from price information is covered in the article on whether you should show prices on your website.
Cost per click times wasted reach
The second reason for wasted reach sits in the visitor's head. Someone who clicks an ad carries an expectation in memory, often word for word: "website at a fixed price from 290 euros". If they meet a homepage that starts with a large image and the company name, a small irritation appears - did I click the right thing? That irritation costs seconds, and seconds decide the outcome here. Language on a campaign page is therefore not decoration but craft: the headline has to confirm the expectation before the visitor scrolls at all. How to write copy that gets a statement across immediately is shown in the article on writing good website copy yourself.
The structure: one promise, one proof, one call to action
A campaign page has a manageable blueprint, and that blueprint follows the eye. Eye tracking studies show that around 57 percent (Nielsen Norman Group 2018) of viewing time is spent above the fold and about 74 percent (Nielsen Norman Group 2018) within the first two screen heights. What sits in the first visible area therefore carries most of the decision. Exactly three things belong there: the promise as a headline, one sentence of context and a visible call to action. Everything else - proof, details, answers to typical objections - follows below and supports that one promise instead of opening a second one. A common mistake is the reverse order: company history first, offer second. On a campaign page the offer comes first. Which services are included in which scope is shown transparently in our overview of packages and prices.
- One promise as the headline: the same statement as in the ad, in one sentence, without jargon and without a welcome phrase
- One piece of proof directly underneath: a real reference, a review, a before-and-after example or a verifiable figure
- One call to action, placed repeatedly: the same button at the top, in the middle and at the end - yet each time the same action
- One short form: only the fields you need in order to reply, with a visible privacy note right next to it
- No main navigation: no menu, no jumps to other services, no blog excerpt in a sidebar
- A lean footer: legal notice, privacy policy and one way to get in touch as text links, nothing more is needed there
The menu can go - the footer cannot
Ad copy and headline have to match
The most effective lever on a campaign page costs nothing: write the headline so that it repeats the ad copy word for word. If the ad says "landing page at a fixed price from 290 euros", the headline does not say "welcome" but carries exactly that statement. The visitor then needs no time to orientate - they see that they are in the right place and read on. The same principle applies to the form at the end: only ask for what you need in order to reply. Reviews of online checkout flows find an average of around 11.3 (Baymard Institute) form fields, although 8 (Baymard Institute) fields would be enough for the same purchase - a contact form needs even fewer. Every additional mandatory field costs completions: a form with three fields is submitted noticeably more often than one with eight. How lean a form may be and which fields are genuinely necessary is explored in the article on the contact form with fewer fields.
One goal means: one goal
Technology is part of the message match too, because a page that does not appear in time has no message at all. The documentation on web vitals names 2.5 seconds (Google) as the target for rendering the main content; beyond that, the loading experience counts as needing improvement. And 53 percent (Google) of mobile visits are abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds. With paid clicks that is especially expensive, because the click has already been billed before the page even appears. Large background videos, uncompressed images and late-loading fonts are the usual brakes; a campaign page typically manages with a single good image. Which adjustments deliver the most in practice is shown in the article on how to make your website load faster.
Legal details that apply to a campaign page as well
A landing page is not a legal special zone. As soon as it is operated commercially, the same requirements apply as to any other page. The provider identification under section 5 (DDG) has to be easily recognisable, directly accessible and permanently available - a text link in the footer meets that, a note in the small print rather less so. Added to that is the privacy policy with the information duties under article 13 (GDPR) as soon as a form receives personal data. If you name prices on the page and address consumers, section 3 (German Price Indication Ordinance) requires the total price including VAT; in a purely business context net prices are customary, and then the word "net" belongs visibly alongside. Which details make up a complete legal notice is listed in the article on imprint requirements for websites.
Link the legal notice
A text link in the footer leading straight to the complete provider identification. No graphic, no dropdown, no detour via the homepage.
Privacy policy
As soon as a form receives data, the policy belongs with it - reachable from the footer and as a short note right next to the submit button.
State prices correctly
Towards consumers the total price including VAT, in a business context the net price with a visible qualifier. Both unambiguous and not in the small print.
Consent only where needed
A consent banner is only required if the page uses techniques that need consent. A lean campaign page often manages without one.
Name the campaign period
Limited offers need a date or a clear condition. A promotion without a recognisable end looks arbitrary and can be challenged under competition law.
Usable for everyone
Sufficient contrast, large tap targets and labels on the form fields. That helps every visitor and is legally relevant depending on your offer.
Most ad clicks come from a smartphone, and that is where the success of a campaign page is decided especially quickly. On a small screen barely more than the headline, one sentence and a button fit into the first visible area - which is exactly why those three elements have to land. Proof, details and the form follow below, in a single column, without sideways scrolling. Watch out for tap targets that are large enough, for buttons that are not covered by a sticky bar, and for form fields that open the right keyboard. A consent banner taking up half the screen has a double effect here: it covers precisely the area you paid for. What else matters when displaying on small screens is explored in the article on mobile website optimisation.
Retiring campaign pages without leaving dead links
Seasonal pages have an expiry date: the summer promotion, the open day, the anniversary offer. Simply deleting them afterwards leaves dead links behind - in old ads, in newsletters, in shared posts and in bookmarks. The visitor then lands on an error page, and that is the worst possible ending for a campaign that worked until then. A planned exit is cleaner. Either you redirect the address permanently to a suitable page, or you keep the page and replace the promotional part with a short note that the campaign has ended, plus a route to the regular offer. For a permanent redirect the status code 301 (Google Search Central) is intended; it tells search engines and browsers that the address has moved for good. That a website needs attention after launch as well is described in the article on why website maintenance matters.
- Set the retirement date while building and note it in the calendar, instead of thinking about it once the campaign is over
- Stop the ads and mailing lists first, so no paid click runs into an expiring page any more
- Collect every reference: ads, newsletters, short codes on printed material, posts on social networks, posters, business cards
- Determine the redirect target: the closest page by topic, not the homepage as a blanket answer
- Set up the permanent redirect and then check that it works by calling the old address
- Account for printed short codes: they cannot be recalled, so their target should remain reachable permanently
Redirect instead of delete
Homepage versus landing page: the comparison
| Aspect | Homepage as ad target | Landing page (Webstart) |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Every audience and concern at the same time | Exactly one offer, exactly one action |
| Navigation | Full menu with many exits | No main menu, only the route to the goal |
| Headline | Kept general, the same for every origin | Matches the ad copy word for word |
| Form | Often only reachable via the contact page | Directly on the page, with few fields |
| Measurement | Mixed in with the rest of the site traffic | Enquiry rate per campaign clearly readable |
| Retirement | Stays in place, the promotion has to be cut out | Planned exit with a permanent redirect |
The landing page is therefore not a replacement for your website but a tool beside it. Every recurring campaign is worth its own page, and the effect grows with the number of campaigns: if every advertised offer has its own page, the visitor does not have to go looking. No small business needs fifteen pages for that, and the pattern holds on a small scale too: two targeted pages for two offers beat one general page for both. The principle of "one page, one goal" also works outside advertising - a careers page for small businesses follows the same logic, only with applicants as the audience.
An ad buys attention for a few seconds. What you show in those seconds decides the value of the entire cost per click - and in that time the homepage shows everything except the answer to the ad.
Measurement: the enquiry rate counts, not the click count
Campaigns are often judged by clicks, because the click count is the first thing that catches the eye in any report. For a business, though, it is the least interesting figure: clicks cost money, enquiries bring it in. The decisive metric is the enquiry rate - how many of the paid visitors end up sending the form or calling. That figure can be read cleanly on a landing page precisely because the page serves one purpose and receives its visitors from one source. On the homepage, campaign traffic mixes with regulars, search results and applicants, and the rate becomes an estimate. The second look belongs to the cost per enquiry: cost per click times clicks, divided by the number of enquiries. Only that figure can be compared with the value of a job and answers the question of whether a campaign pays for itself. If you also want to be found nearby, maintain your Google Business Profile in parallel, because some enquiries arrive without any paid click at all.
Enquiry rate
Enquiries divided by visitors to the campaign page. The metric that shows whether the page does its job - regardless of how many people clicked.
Cost per enquiry
Budget spent divided by the number of enquiries. Only this value can be compared with the contribution margin of an average job.
Time on page and exits
Very short visits point to a headline that does not pick up the ad promise. A usable hint as to where to sharpen the copy.
Split by device
Phones and desktops behave differently. Looking at both figures together makes it easy to miss a purely mobile problem.
How we build your campaign page
We build your landing page at a fixed price from 290 euros net, typically around seven days after you approve the content. Included are the structure with exactly one goal, copy that matches your ad promise, a short contact form, encrypted transmission and the integration of the legal details. If you have no website at all yet, a campaign page is one possible entry point; a complete starter website with several subpages begins at the same fixed price, and additional subpages are quoted transparently up front. Maintenance and hosting are optional from 19 euros net per month, with no subscription lock-in and no minimum term in the small print. All amounts and the respective scope of services can be found in our price overview.
- Define the goal: which single action should the page trigger - enquiry, appointment, sign-up or sale
- Match the ad promise: we read your ad copy and derive the headline of the page from it
- Collect proof: a reference, a review, a figure or an example that makes your promise credible to strangers
- Build the page: promise, proof, call to action, short form and a lean footer with the legal details
- Check the technology: loading time, display on a phone, form submission and confirmation in a practical test
- Record the retirement plan: date, redirect target and responsibility are noted in writing at handover
An honest assessment
Sources and Studies
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