You've landed 🚀🚀
A big guide to landing pages and why you should use them.
What are landing pages, and what can I do with them?
A landing page is a standalone web page that fulfills a specific marketing function for your brand. Landing pages clarify the ideal behavior you want from your customers, and make it as easy as possible for them to complete that desired path - whatever it may be. You’ve probably encountered a ton of landing pages in your time on the internet, because they fulfill a bunch of purposes. Here are some ways you can use them:
As email or SMS sign-up pages
As a way to highlight a specific promotion or event
As a spotlight on specific products, like bestsellers or a just-launched collection
As a way to communicate with a geo-targeted, or other segmented customer group
Why should I use landing pages on my site?
It’s in your best interest as a brand owner to make things as clear as possible for your customers. Your loyal, brand-aware customers may already know where they want to navigate to from your homepage - but they likely aren’t the people you should be targeting with landing pages. It’s easy to get so tangled up in the inner workings of your brand that you forget how much traffic is incoming from customers who have never encountered your site before. For these people, you want a less-is-more tactic. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to give you their email, or spend money at your annual sale, or hone in on a specific product category (like holiday giftables). Landing pages let you drill down like this without having to overhaul the structure of your existing site.
Another key reason to use landing pages is if you’re running a paid ad campaign and you’d like to direct customers somewhere specific once they’ve clicked. For example, let’s look at INBLOOM, who’s running a promotion in collaboration with Barry’s Bootcamp. If INBLOOM opts to run paid IG ads about this collaboration, it may not make sense to direct customers who click through to the homepage, since that’s targeted to a broader international audience. Instead, ad links should send customers to a landing page specifically for the promotion, which looks like so:
Note how this page is simple, graphic, and clearly highlights both the promotion details and some of INBLOOM’s related bestselling products. This is the level of simplicity and clarity you’re going for.
Landing pages can also operate as traffic funnels when they’re properly optimized. Take Clare Paint, who generates a ton of organic site traffic through their Color Genius quiz. The quiz has its own landing page, which is a great way to funnel in potential new customers via Google (and hopefully snag their emails in the process):
Landing pages can be even simpler than either of these examples, though. You can use them to highlight a specific promotion or offer a discount code, especially if you’re running multiple promotions at once. You can use them as a super direct way to collect emails - maybe in exchange for a discount, or as an incentive to receive quiz results. It’s entirely up to your brand’s needs.
Okay, you’ve convinced me. How do I build a landing page?
If you’re a Shopify user, the good news is that it’s now easier than ever to build landing pages without paid apps. Shopify’s OS 2.0, released last summer, allows for sections on every page of the site rather than just the homepage - which means you have much more flexibility to design landing pages without having to pay for a page builder. To do so, you’ll need to create a template for your new landing page and add in your desired sections and content. (Shopify has a templates tutorial here - but if you need more help, respond to this email and I’ll write a follow-up article 😉). Then, simply create the landing page URL in the site’s Page settings, and assign the new template you’ve created.
If you’re looking to build a simple email or SMS sign-up page, Klaviyo allows you to build landing pages with sign-up forms. Here’s a how-to. This is what they look like (pulled from Loops):
If you need maximum formatting and design control over your landing pages (without custom development), Shogun and Zipify are the two best bets for Shopify-compatible page building apps. But take note that they’re both pretty pricey per month - so, if you install, make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.
Have any follow-up questions about landing pages? Hit the reply button and reach out!
Want to learn more? Interested in working together? Get in touch with me here.