A single-page site for a campaign

Keep it on your own domain

A campaign on a separate domain starts from nothing. No accumulated trust, no visibility, no history, and a visitor arriving at an unfamiliar address has one more reason to hesitate before entering anything.

On your own domain the page inherits everything the site has built with a search engine or an answer engine. It also keeps the analytics, the tracking and the conversion picture in one place rather than split across two properties nobody reconciles.

Our page on one business, one domain covers the wider principle. Campaigns are the commonest reason businesses break it and the one with the weakest justification.

What a campaign page needs

One offer, one audience and one action. A campaign page that presents three options is a homepage, and it will convert like one, which is to say considerably worse.

Say what the offer is in the first lines, who it is for, what it costs, when it ends, and what happens when somebody takes it. Everything else on the page is supporting material.

Our page on landing page design covers the structure in more detail, including where the action should sit and why repeating it down a long page works.

Where campaign pages go wrong

Navigation that leads people away. A campaign page usually wants fewer exits than an ordinary page, though removing every route out entirely tends to make visitors suspicious rather than compliant.

Countdown timers that reset, deadlines that never arrive, and scarcity that is not real. These are deceptive practices, and our page on deceptive design covers why they are a legal risk as well as a trust problem.

And forms that ask for more than the offer justifies. Every field costs completions, and a campaign that collects a phone number it will never use has paid for it in lost responses.

Building one properly

The list below is what separates a campaign page that converts from one that looks the part. Most of it is about removing friction rather than adding persuasion.

• One offer and one action, stated in the opening lines
• The price, the terms and the end date visible without scrolling far
• A form asking only for what the offer needs
• Proof that is real, with names and photographs
• Answers to the three objections you always hear
• A page that loads quickly on a phone
• A plan for what the address becomes afterward

Claims and terms

Campaign pages attract more regulatory attention than ordinary pages because they carry offers, prices and deadlines. Everything stated has to be accurate and supportable at the moment somebody reads it.

Publish the terms rather than linking to a distant page nobody opens. What is included, what is excluded, who is eligible, and what happens if the customer changes their mind.

Our page on pricing claims covers the wording that creates obligations you did not intend. Nothing here is legal advice, and a regulated trade should take its own.

Measuring it

Decide before launching what counts as success and how you will know. A campaign measured only by visits tells you nothing about whether the offer worked or the page did.

Keep the measurement in the same place as the rest of your site, which is another argument for the same domain. Two analytics properties produce two partial pictures and one argument.

And record what you learn somewhere durable. The objections that came up and the questions people asked are the most valuable output of most campaigns, and they are usually the part nobody writes down.

What happens when it ends

Decide in advance. A campaign page left live with an expired offer is one of the most common embarrassments on small business sites, and it is entirely avoidable.

The usual answer is to redirect the address to the nearest permanent page, so any links built during the campaign keep their value. Our page on redirects covers doing that cleanly.

Where the campaign repeats annually, keep the address and update the content instead. A page that has run for four seasons is far stronger than a new one each year.