A holiday landing page should carry one offer, one action and the date it ends, with a short form or a direct link to buy, and be tested on a phone days before the promotion goes out.

Built the night before

The promotion is booked. The email goes out at nine tomorrow morning and the ad starts at the same time. The page they both link to is being built at eleven tonight, by whoever is free.

It ends up with three offers stacked one above the other, a form copied from the contact page, no end date, and a template with no menu, no phone number and no way back to the shop.

Nobody opens it on a phone before the email goes out. Many of the people who click will be on one.

Everybody who arrives has already shown interest by clicking. The page has one job, and a rushed page tends to get in its way.

What goes wrong in a hurry

The fourth is the one that strands people. Dropping the full menu can be a sensible way to keep attention on one offer; removing every exit loses everybody the offer does not suit.

One offer per page

The visitor clicked on one thing: the offer in the email or the ad. The page should open with that offer, in the same words.

Two more offers underneath ask the visitor to decide all over again, between options they did not come for. Comparing takes effort, and leaving is easier.

If there are three holiday offers, give each its own page and its own link in the email. A page listing all three, each linking onwards, works as a menu rather than a landing page.

The date it ends, in words

An offer with no end date gives nobody a reason to act today, and later, for most people, turns into never.

Write the end date and time near the top, in words: ends Sunday, December 1, at midnight Pacific time. A plain date is clearer than a countdown, and nobody mistakes it for a trick.

It also has to be true. A sale that quietly carries on after its deadline, or a timer that restarts for every visitor, is a misleading claim, and regular customers notice.

When the date arrives, change the page to say the offer has ended and point to what is current.

A form that asks for less

A form copied from the contact page brings all its fields with it: address, phone, how did you hear about us, a message box. None of them helps somebody claim a holiday offer.

Ask only what the offer needs, often a name and an email address. Where the visitor is buying something, skip the form and send them to the product or the checkout.

The button should say what happens, such as get my gift pass, and a line beside it should say what comes next.

A way back

Keep the logo linking to the home page, a phone number in the header, and one plain link to the shop or the full list of services.

A visitor this offer does not suit may still want something else you sell, and some visitors check the rest of the site before trusting a page they reached from an ad.

None of that competes with the offer. It simply stops the page being a dead end.

A worked example

An indoor golf centre with simulator bays ran a holiday promotion last year: a ten-hour gift pass at a reduced price, announced by email to members and in a social media ad.

The landing page went up the night before. It offered the gift pass, a discounted winter membership and a party package, one above the other, with no end date.

Below them sat the centre's general enquiry form, with eleven fields including handicap and preferred booking times. On a phone it started two screens down, under a large photograph of a golfer mid-swing.

The template had no menu or phone number, and the logo linked nowhere. Staff spent December answering messages asking which offer applied and whether it was still on.

This year's page offers the gift pass alone, gives the price and the date it ends, and sends visitors straight to the centre's online checkout for the pass.

The membership and party offers have pages of their own, linked once near the foot of the page beside the phone number. The page was built a week early and tested on three different phones.

Write the terms before the page

Rushed promotions often go live before anybody has settled the details customers ask about first.

Decide them in writing: what is included, when a pass or voucher expires, whether it combines with other offers, and what happens if somebody wants a refund.

Put the answers in plain text below the button. Staff then give the same answer as the page, and nobody improvises at the counter.

Testing on a phone

Open the real link, from the real email and the real ad, on a phone with Wi-Fi switched off.

Check that the offer and the button appear without much scrolling, that the form or checkout works, and that the confirmation arrives by email.

Do it days before the send, not minutes. A problem found the night before is fixed in a hurry, which is how the page went wrong in the first place.

The counter-case

A short promotion for a small, loyal audience, such as existing members, can live on an existing page with a clear banner rather than a page of its own.

A business with several genuinely equal offers may reasonably publish one holiday page, provided each offer links onward to its own page with its own action.

And a quick page is better than none, if it has been tested. But wherever a single offer is being promoted, give it one page, one action and a date it ends.

A week before the promotion

  1. Pick the one offer the email promises.
  2. Write the end date and time in words.
  3. Cut the form to what the offer needs.
  4. Keep the logo, phone and one shop link.
  5. Write the terms before the page.
  6. Open the email's link on a phone.
  7. Put the end date in the calendar.

Step six is the one rushed pages skip. A page checked only on the computer it was built on hides exactly the problems a visitor on a phone meets first.

A page with the opposite problem, one customers struggle to find at all, is covered in a gift card page that is hard to find.

Frequently asked questions

What should a holiday landing page offer?

One offer, the one the email or ad promised. Other offers deserve pages of their own, linked once below, so visitors do not have to decide twice.

Why does an end date matter?

It gives a reason to act now rather than later, which often means never. It must be true, and the page must change when the date arrives.

Should a landing page have a menu?

It can drop the full menu, but keep the logo linking home, the phone number and one link to the shop for visitors the offer does not suit.

How long should the form be?

Only what the offer needs, often a name and an email address. Where people are buying, send them to the product or checkout instead of a form.

What should be tested before launch?

The real link from the email and the ad, opened on a phone: the offer and button position, the form or checkout, and the confirmation email.

What happens to the page afterwards?

On the end date, replace it with a short note that the offer has ended and a link to what is current, rather than leaving it live.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Holiday promotion going out next week?

Send us the page a week early. We will test it on a phone and cut it to one offer and one action.

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