Landing Page Checklist

How to use this checklist

Run it on the page you are about to advertise, on a phone, on mobile data, as if you had never seen the business before. Sections 1 to 4 decide whether the page converts at all. Sections 5 to 8 decide how much of the traffic you keep. Section 9 is what to do once it is live.

A landing page here means any page you send paid traffic to, including an ordinary service page. It does not have to be a separate build to work; it has to answer the search that paid for the click.

1. Message match

1. The headline repeats the promise in the ad, using the same words the searcher typed.
2. If the ad says a price, a location, a timeframe or an offer, the page says the same thing above the fold.
3. One page per campaign theme. A single generic page behind six ad groups will underperform all six.
4. The page is not the homepage, unless the campaign is genuinely about the brand.
5. The language matches the ad: if the ad is in Nepali, the page is too.

2. What is visible before scrolling

1. A stranger can answer three questions in five seconds: what is this, is it for me, what do I do next.
2. One primary call to action, repeated further down rather than competing with a second one.
3. The phone number is visible and click-to-call on mobile.
4. A supporting line under the headline says who it is for and what makes it different, in plain words.
5. The hero image shows the actual work, product, team or place, not a stock photograph of a handshake.
6. No cookie banner, chat bubble or pop-up covering the offer as the page loads.

3. The offer

1. The offer is specific and low-friction: a free 30-minute consultation, a quote within a day, a site visit, a sample, a first session.
2. The page says what happens after the enquiry, and how soon. “I reply within 4 business hours” beats “we will get back to you”.
3. Price or price range is given, or the page explains honestly what the price depends on. Hiding it entirely loses the people who were ready to buy and attracts the ones who were not.
4. What is included and what is not is stated, so the enquiry arrives qualified.
5. Objections are answered on the page: how long it takes, what it costs, whether you serve their area, what happens if it does not work.

4. Proof a stranger will believe

1. Evidence is real and attributable: named clients, real reviews, actual numbers, photographs of your own work.
2. No invented testimonials, no borrowed logos, no statistics you cannot source.
3. Reviews are quoted with the name shown publicly on the platform they came from.
4. Credentials, registrations, certifications and memberships are stated accurately, with numbers where they exist.
5. Case results, where used, say the market, the timeframe and the starting point, not just a percentage.
6. A face and a name are on the page. People buy from people, and this matters more for a solo consultant or a small practice than any design decision.

5. The form and the alternatives

1. The form asks for the fewest fields you can defend. Name and one contact method is usually enough to start a conversation.
2. Every extra field earns its place by qualifying the lead, not by feeding a database nobody reads.
3. Field labels are visible, not only placeholders that vanish when typing starts.
4. Mobile keyboards match the field type: numeric for phone, email keyboard for email.
5. Validation errors appear next to the field and explain what to fix.
6. The submit button says what happens: “Send my enquiry”, not “Submit”.
7. Alternatives to the form exist for people who will not fill one in: phone, WhatsApp, Viber where your audience uses it.
8. The confirmation screen says what happens next and by when, and repeats the phone number.
9. The notification email reaches a person, not a shared inbox nobody opens, and a copy is stored somewhere permanent.

6. Speed and mobile

1. The page loads in under three seconds on a mobile connection, tested on a real phone, not on office wifi.
2. Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds and no visible layout shift as fonts, images or widgets load.
3. Images compressed and sized for the container; hero images are the usual culprit.
4. Third-party scripts on the page are counted and justified. Heat maps, chat, review badges and two analytics tools together will cost you more conversions than they gain.
5. The full offer, proof and form are present on mobile. Nothing important is hidden at small widths.
6. Text is readable without zooming and buttons are large enough to hit with a thumb.

If speed is the problem, that is page speed and Core Web Vitals work.

7. Trust and compliance basics

1. HTTPS with a valid certificate, and no mixed-content warnings.
2. A real business address and phone number are findable on the site.
3. Privacy policy linked from the form, and the form says what you will do with the data.
4. Claims on the page are ones you could defend if asked, particularly in health, finance and education.
5. The page matches the advertising policies of the platform you are buying traffic from, since the landing page is part of what gets an ad approved or disapproved.

8. Tracking

1. The conversion fires once, on a real success signal, and you have tested it yourself.
2. Calls and WhatsApp clicks are tracked, not just form submissions.
3. UTM parameters survive to the form, so you know which campaign produced the lead.
4. The lead source is recorded in the CRM or the notification email, so sales can tell you which campaign produced customers rather than enquiries.
5. A refresh of the thank-you page does not count a second conversion.

The full setup is in the GA4 and GTM setup checklist.

9. After launch: what to test, in order

1. The headline and the offer. This changes results more than anything else on the page.
2. The form length and which fields are required.
3. The proof: which evidence sits above the fold.
4. The call to action wording and placement.
5. The hero image or video.
6. Page length: a longer page usually wins for a considered purchase, a shorter one for a simple offer. Test rather than assume.
7. Test one thing at a time, and wait for enough conversions to mean something. On a small budget that may be a month per test, which is a good reason to fix the obvious faults first and test later.

The faults that cost the most

In the accounts I audit, the same four things account for most of the wasted spend: paid traffic pointed at a homepage, a page that takes six seconds to load on mobile, a form with nine fields, and nobody answering the enquiries quickly. None of them is a design problem, and all four are fixable in a week.

If you want the page built for the campaign, that is landing pages for ads; improving pages that already receive traffic is conversion rate optimization, and the words are copywriting. Send me the campaign for a free Google Ads audit and the landing page review comes with it. The ad-account side is the Google Ads checklist and the Facebook Ads checklist; everything else is on the resources page.

Last updated 2026-09-03.

Updated September 26, 2026