We see one-pagers everywhere: advertisements, on flyers, at bus stops, on social media and on TV. Carefully constructed to fit everything about a company onto just one page, these are designed to reach to the values of target audiences to increase awareness about your business and promote sales.
You may be wondering how to craft the best one-pager for your startup – and we have the magic right here for you.
Simply put, a one-pager is an outline of your business, what your business is about, a showcase of your products or services, and why your startup is different from your competitors.
A startup’s one-pager must be crisp, clear and concise – your information must attract, interest and offer a call-to-action: reader need to have a clear idea of what they can do with that information.
To craft the best one-pager for your startup, you must be familiar with your target audience and your product or service’s value proposition – basically, you need to convey to readers your startup’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
Clearly distilling your business’ vision, your products or services is half the mission, but the most important and oftentimes overlooked aspect is that the method of delivering this information needs to be focused on your target audience at all times.
What does a One-Pager do?
A one-pager serves many different purposes. In fact, there are many types of one-pagers you can create for your startup – for use both internally and externally.
However, for a startup in its early stages of growth, concentrating on a single one-pager is essential.
The best one-pagers are multi-purpose: they are reflexive in their message and design in that they primarily serve to advertise your startup, but they also serve as an internal mission statement to maintain your startup’s vision and direction.
A one-pager can be used for the following:
- To use to pitch to potential investors and creating fundraising campaigns
- To advertise your business locally
- To function as flyers and modern-day brochures to target potential customers
- To provide background for PR and press
What do the best One-Pagers have?
As we’ve already established, the best one-pagers are crisp, clear and concise in their design and execution. There’s no room for flowery language, non-essential content and unnecessary complications.
- Start your one-pager off with your logo and slogan, of course. The actual design can be visual or with text, and that will be hugely dependent on your target audience.
- Write a clear one-liner that describes your value proposition. Keeping it as simple as possible the best practice: “Our startup helps [customer with a problem or a specific need] with [removing problem or creating benefit] through using our product or service’s [key feature].”
- List your products and services to make it clear what you are offering to potential customers.
- Include information about who you are, what your startup does, and why your startup’s products or services are best at helping customers by explaining how it can benefit customers better than your competitors.
- Always add contact information, a map location if you’re a store, and all of your social media handles. If your startup is a tech business or app, then of course include your URL and app store.
How to craft a one-pager?
There are two elements you need to concentrate on for your one-pager that can either make or break them: design and content.
Using the basic tenets of journalism, craft your one-pager as crisply, clearly and concisely as you can:
- Who: As we have mentioned, state who you are and what your startup does.
- What: Offer details of your products or services and what makes them stand apart from your competitors.
- Why: Outline your product or services’ value proposition and the benefits that customers can expect from buying or using your products or services.
- Where: Of course, for “brick and mortar” businesses, detailing your address is important. For tech developments, include your URL and social media accounts.
Keep your one-pager as descriptive and detailed as possible when writing the text. The punchier the text is, the greater it will stick in the minds of your potential customers.
Only once you have finalized the content, you’d like to present in your one-pager can you turn your focus to making it as eye-grabbing and interesting as possible. Your content is only half of the message you’re conveying about your startup.
A wall of text will have a far smaller impact than a flyer with visuals, icons, layers, sections and clever use of fonts and space. Of course, an overly complicated design with negatively impact on the readability of your one-pager.
Finding a balance is key in your approach, and for that you need to research what your established competitors are creating to use those as benchmarks.
However, your identity and branding must be delivered in your one-pager too.
Your industry and its customers will help you to decide on the design of your one-pager. For instance, if you are a digital design studio your one-pager will look and feel wholly different to a law firm’s one-pager. Remember, you are appealing to people that you want to buy your products or services.
You don’t need to a graphic designer to create an attractive one-pager. There are thousands and thousands of templates available online that you can easily download to create the backbone of your own one-pager. These offer a format and standard that is near universal: an A4-sized page used in either landscape or portrait setting that can be easily printed.
To keep your design as readable as possible, it would be best to break your page into two columns as this allows the reader to more easily absorb the content in glance. Text and images placed into sections or compartments such as rows and columns also make it far easier for the reader to find information quicker – because that is what most readers are used to when reading on our screens, in books and newspapers.
Remember to keep your readability as high as possible when tackling the design of your one-pager. We can use a few of the tricks and tips used most often by graphic designers to create your one-pager.
- Using your logo is a given. Does it have a specific font? Make sure to carry that font throughout your document. This aids readability enormously. The look and feel of your one-pager must be consistent, and by saying that you need to create a one-pager that feels like it is an extension of your brand and your logo.
- Don’t try to emulate complex designs. Keeping it simple is far more effective. The most readable design would be an A4-sized page in portrait setting with a white background with your content and visuals placed in readable and logical order.
- A neat trick to make your one-pager immediately look more professional is to add a simple border.
- Use headings and subheadings to order your text and offer readers a flow for your one-pager.
- The objective of a one-pager is to be readable, and for that you need to keep your fonts readable. A good size for your one-pager’s font is 10 or 12 pt. If your text drops off onto a second page with that font size, perhaps you need to revise some of your text to make it even more concise.
- Most graphic designers will tell you to stick to the colors of our logo and your other branding. It gives a more professional look and it maintains a balance.
- Another trick to use is bold type. This is a quick and very effective way for your content to stand out – and it works to focus the attention of the reader. However, you need to use it sparingly; if most of your one-pager’s text is in bold, then the effect is lost.
- Using a picture of your product or an illustration of your services is essential. These need not dominate the design, but should rather form a screenshot of what it is your startup offers. This is also a way for your readers to take action to head to your store or your website to check the products or services out in greater detail.
