A landing page is a page with one job. That is the entire definition, and almost every mistake people make with them comes from forgetting it.
Your homepage has several jobs. It explains what you do, points at your services, links to your blog, and gives people a way to contact you. That is right for a homepage. A landing page is the opposite: somebody arrived from one ad, one email, or one search, wanting one thing, and the page exists to help them do that thing.
The test
Before you build anything, finish this sentence: "Somebody who reads this page should ______."
Book a call. Download the guide. Request a quote. Start a trial.
If you can name two things, you have two landing pages. If you cannot name one, you have a homepage.
What goes above the fold
Three things, in this order.
What this is. A headline that names the thing plainly. Not clever. If somebody clicked an ad about gutter cleaning, the page should say gutter cleaning in the first line, in the words the ad used. The most common cause of a bounce is a visitor wondering whether they are in the right place.
Why it is worth their time. One or two lines. The specific benefit, not the category.
The action. A button that says what happens when you press it. "Get a quote" beats "Submit". "Book a 15 minute call" beats "Contact us", because it tells somebody what they are agreeing to.
Everything else can be below.
Take the navigation off
This is the change people resist most and it is the one that moves the numbers.
A landing page with your full site navigation invites the visitor to go and read your About page instead of doing the thing. You spent money getting them here. Every link is an exit.
Keep the logo, drop the menu. If someone genuinely wants the rest of the site, the logo takes them there.
Ask for less
Every field you add costs you completions. Name and email is usually enough for a first conversation. You do not need their company size before you have said hello.
If your sales process needs more, get it on the call. The form is not a qualification interview, it is a door.
Proof, and what counts as proof
The order of usefulness, roughly:
A specific result with a number and a name. A named customer saying something concrete. A logo of somebody recognizable. A star rating. A generic testimonial from "J.S." that could have been written by anyone.
Aim as high up that list as you honestly can. One real, specific testimonial does more than six vague ones, and six vague ones actively read as filler.
Answer the objection
Every landing page has one question standing between the reader and the action. Usually it is cost, or how long it takes, or what happens next.
Answer it on the page. Not in a brochure, not on a call. The business that says "most jobs run $400 to $900 and take a morning" gets called by people who would otherwise have quietly closed the tab.
Speed, because you are paying for the click
If you are running ads, a slow landing page means you paid for a visit you did not receive. People leave before the page paints, and you are billed anyway.
Swiftrics publishes pages as static HTML from a CDN, so there is no database query between your visitor and the page. Test yours on a phone on cellular, not on the office wifi where everything looks fast.
The mistakes worth naming
A carousel at the top. Nobody waits for slide three. Pick the strongest message and commit to it.
A headline about you. "Welcome to Hartley Plumbing" tells the visitor nothing they did not know from clicking.
Stock photography of people in a meeting. It reads as a placeholder, because it usually is one.
Sending every ad to the homepage. Common, and it wastes the ad. If you are paying for a click about one service, send it to a page about that service.
When you do not need one
If your business gets its work from referrals and search rather than campaigns, a good services page will do everything a landing page would. Landing pages earn their keep when you are directing traffic at them deliberately.
Build one when you have something specific to point people at. Until then, put the effort into the pages people are already finding.