5 critical questions to ask yourself *before* building your startup's landing page

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Unless you're a landing page obsessive like me, you'll probably find building your first landing page a daunting task. Do not panic, my list of five simple but critical questions will help you understand the key messages you want to communicate through your landing page. An hour reflecting on these questions will help you approach the task with focus.

Who is your ideal customer?
Known as your buyer persona, ideal first customer, or customer avatar. There are lots of people who might fall under your persona, but first focus on the group of people who are the BEST fit for what you're building. Oh, and however niche y0u think you're starting, it's not niche enough. How to build a buyer persona.

What problem do they have?
And what value are you creating for them? What outcomes will they achieve? Why is your method more effective? The key here is to understand the value your product or service creates and use that language throughout your landing page.

Without your product what would they be doing?
What are they doing currently to achieve the outcome even if it's less than ideal.?

This is best illustrated using an example: you're building a marketplace for technical mentors and mentees. Currently the mentee may be: reading blogs, reviewing YouTube, asking friends of friends, attending events, booking an online course or buying books.

All of these are the existing processes they may be following.

How is your product unique?
It is critical that your landing page captures your business's unique selling points (USPs) throughout. Unless your market is totally new you will have competitors in the space (including the existing processes listed above). For that reason focus on what you do uniquely when compared with your competitors.

Note! Price is rarely a strong differentiator!

What do you want them to do on your landing page?
Sign up? Buy? Download an asset? Decide your CTA and focus on it. Avoid giving your visitors too many choices - which creates confusion and analysis paralysis. Also if you have one CTA exposed multiple times on the page, remember to use consistent language and formatting.

One you've answered these questions, review the anatomy of a landing page which deconstructs the elements your landing page needs.