What is a landing page and when do I need one?

You need one when you are sending traffic from a particular source with a particular promise. An advertisement offering something specific should not land on your home page, which describes everything you do and asks the visitor to find what was advertised. A page continuing exactly the thought they had when they clicked converts several times better, and the difference is large enough that running advertising without one is usually the reason the advertising appears not to work.

The same applies to anything you send people to deliberately. A printed code on a flyer, a link in an email campaign, a partner listing, or a talk you gave. In each case the visitor arrived with a context, and a page that acknowledges that context and offers one clear next step outperforms a general page that makes them start over.

The elements that matter are few and are frequently done backwards. The headline should match the wording of whatever brought them there, close enough that they recognise it immediately. The action should be visible without scrolling on a phone. There should be one action rather than three, since a page offering to book, call, download, and subscribe converts worse than any of them alone. And the form, if there is one, should ask for the minimum required, because every additional field reduces completion measurably.

For a first year business you rarely need dedicated software for this. A page on your existing site with the navigation hidden does the job, and most site builders allow that. Buying a landing page platform before you are running enough campaigns to justify it is a subscription that solves a problem you have not yet reached.

Keep the page out of your main navigation and, if it exists only for a campaign, consider whether search engines should index it at all. A landing page competing with your ordinary service page for the same terms can split your visibility between two pages that each rank worse than one would have. That is a small technical decision with a real consequence, and it is easier to set when the page is created than to unpick afterward.