A Page That Answers and a Page That Sells

Two visitors, one page

Somebody trying to understand whether they have a problem wants an explanation, patiently, with detail.

Somebody who has decided and is choosing a supplier wants a price, a timescale, and a way to get in touch.

A single page serving both tends to explain at length and then attach a call to action, which serves the first badly and the second worse.

The fix is two pages doing one job each, linked to each other.

How the two differ

• The answering page is long and patient.
• The selling page is short and specific.
• One explains the whole subject.
• One states what you do about it.
• One has few calls to action.
• One has one, repeated.

The last pair is where combined pages fail most visibly. An explanation interrupted three times by a contact form is unreadable, and a service page with the contact route buried after two thousand words of background loses the person who was ready.

Which one you need first

Since most businesses do not need both for every subject.

If you have neither, write the selling page first, because that is where the enquiries come from.

The answering page is worth adding where the subject genuinely needs explaining before anybody can decide, which is true of some work and not of others.

A trade where customers already know what they want needs service pages and very little explanation.

A trade where customers have to be told the options first benefits from both.

Judge it by whether the questions you get on the telephone are about what to buy or about who to buy from.

A worked example

A business had one long page covering a service, running to about three thousand words, which explained the subject thoroughly and ended with a contact form.

It ranked well for general questions and produced almost no enquiries.

They split it: a shorter service page with the price range, the timescale, the areas covered, and a form near the top, and a separate longer explanation of the subject linking to it.

The explanation kept the general traffic and the service page began ranking for the buying phrases, which the long version never had.

Enquiries roughly tripled from the pair against the single page.

Nothing was thrown away and the work took an afternoon.

Link them properly

Since the pair only works if people move between them.

From the explanation, link to the service page where somebody would naturally have decided, which is usually after the section on what it costs.

From the service page, link to the explanation for anybody who wants the background, near the top and unobtrusively.

Use link text that says what is on the other end rather than read more.

That is a small amount of work and it is what stops the two pages competing rather than cooperating.

Watch that they do not compete

Which is the risk of splitting.

Two pages on the same subject can end up appearing for the same searches, which splits the signals and helps neither.

Keep them clearly different: the explanation about the subject, the service page about what you do and charge.

Use different titles and different headings, and make sure the service page contains the buying words and the explanation does not.

Check after a few months which appears for which, and merge them back if they are fighting.

The order matters for the reader too

Beyond the search consideration.

Somebody arriving on the explanation is early and should not be pushed; somebody arriving on the service page is late and should not be delayed.

So the explanation can be generous with background and the service page should get to the price within the first screen.

Designing each for its own visitor is the whole benefit of the split.

A service page that opens with three paragraphs of context has taken the explanation page's shape and lost the advantage.

Not every subject needs a pair

Worth saying, since this can multiply pages unnecessarily.

Nine services do not need nine explanations, and most trades have one or two subjects where the background genuinely matters.

Write the pair for those and single service pages for the rest.

A site with eighteen pages where nine are explanations nobody reads has done this mechanically.

The test is whether you actually spend time on the telephone explaining that subject before anybody can decide.

The same split applies to a quote

Worth extending, since the pattern is not only about web pages.

A quote that explains the whole approach and then gives a figure at the end has the same problem as the combined page: the person reading it wants the number and has to work for it.

Put the figure and the timescale on the first page, and the explanation of method, materials, and exclusions behind it.

Somebody comparing three quotes will find yours easier to read, and easier to read is a real advantage when two of the three are similarly priced.

The explanation still matters, and it matters after the decision to keep reading has already been made rather than before it.

The counter-case

One page is sometimes better.

A short subject does not support two pages, and splitting it produces two thin ones where one adequate page existed.

A single well-structured page that answers first and sells at the end can serve both, particularly where the explanation is brief.

And two pages is more to maintain, which for a small site is a real cost.

Where the prices change regularly, two pages means two places to update and one of them will be forgotten.

Split where the explanation is long, keep the service page short and specific, link them both ways, and check they are not competing.

What to do

1. Find your longest service page.
2. Check what it produces.
3. Split the explanation out.
4. Put price and timescale near the top.
5. Link both ways.
6. Use different titles.
7. Check in three months for competition.

Step four is what makes the selling page work, since somebody who arrived ready to choose has no patience for background and will leave before reaching it.

The failure mode this avoids is covered in a page that ranks and helps nobody.

Frequently asked questions

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.