Landing Page Headlines: Formulas That Stop the Scroll
Seven formulas with the offer type each suits, and the specificity test any headline has to pass.
On this page
The short version
- The headline's first job is not persuasion, it is confirmation: proving the visitor is in the right place. A headline that does not echo whatever brought them costs conversions before it has a chance to work.
- Seven formulas, each suited to a different starting position. The one that fits a cold visitor patronises a warm one.
- Every draft should pass a specificity test — could a competitor put their name on this sentence? If yes, it says nothing.
More people leave a landing page in the first two seconds than at any other moment, and the headline is almost all of what they saw. That gives it two jobs in sequence, and the first one is usually skipped.
Before it persuades anyone of anything, it has to confirm they are in the right place. A visitor who clicked an ad about reducing bounce rates and lands on a headline about "transforming your email programme" spends their first second checking rather than reading.
Message match, and what it costs to skip
The words in the headline should overlap visibly with the words that brought them. Not identical — that reads mechanically — but recognisably the same subject in the same terms.
This is why one landing page serving four different ads underperforms four pages serving one each. The generic headline that works acceptably for all of them confirms nothing for any of them.
It is also the cheapest improvement available on most pages, because it requires no new thinking: the wording already exists in the ad or the email that is sending the traffic.
Seven formulas and where each fits
| Formula | Shape | Suits a visitor who |
|---|---|---|
| The outcome | Get X without Y | Knows the problem, wants the result |
| The specific number | The 22 checks we run before every send | Wants something concrete and finite |
| The named audience | For people running their first list | Is unsure whether this is for them |
| The question | Why did opens drop in June? | Has the symptom, not the diagnosis |
| The contrarian | Most spam filters ignore your words | Knows the subject and holds a belief |
| The direct offer | The pre-send checklist, free | Already decided, arrived to get it |
| The timeframe | Fix your authentication in an afternoon | Is worried it will be a project |
The direct offer is under-used. Traffic from your own email or from a link inside an article often arrives already decided, and the most effective headline for those visitors is the plain name of the thing.
Cold and warm need different sentences
A visitor from a cold ad does not know you, may not have named the problem yet, and needs the headline to establish that something is wrong and that you know what. The question and outcome formulas suit that.
A visitor from your own newsletter has already decided you are worth reading. Selling them on the existence of the problem reads as condescension, and the direct offer works better — name the thing and let them take it.
One page serving both is a compromise that suits neither. If the same offer draws from both sources, two pages is a small amount of duplication for a measurable gain.
The same offer, two arrivals
From a cold ad
Problem not yet named
- "Why do your emails land in spam?"
- Subhead names the three usual causes
- The offer arrives as the answer
From your own newsletter
Already reading you
- "The 22-point pre-send checklist"
- Subhead: what is on it, and the format
- The offer is the headline
Length, and the subhead's role
Six to twelve words for the headline. Past that it stops being read at a glance, which is the only way it is read.
That constraint is what the subhead exists to relieve. The headline makes the claim; the subhead carries the qualification, the audience and the cost. Trying to do all of it in one sentence produces a headline nobody finishes.
A useful drafting order is to write the subhead first — who this is for and what they get — and then compress the interesting half of it into the headline.
Headline check
- It echoes the words that brought the visitor here
- Six to twelve words
- A competitor could not put their name on it
- It contains something concrete — a number, a name, a timeframe
- The formula matches whether the visitor is cold or warm
- The subhead carries the audience and the cost
- It reads correctly on a phone without wrapping oddly
Frequently asked questions
Should the headline mention the price or that it is free?
Put it in the subhead rather than the headline. "Free" in a headline introduces the idea of cost at the moment you have their attention, and it uses words that could have carried the offer.
How do I test headlines with modest traffic?
Test formulas rather than phrasings, and accumulate across pages rather than resolving on one. Two wordings of one idea rarely differ by enough to detect on a typical landing page.
Should the headline match the ad exactly?
Recognisably, not identically. Word-for-word repetition reads mechanically; the same subject in the same terms confirms without sounding automated.